Wonder Woman 1984 doesn’t really have much to do with 1984. That first-look photo you see above (tweeted out by Gal Gadot two years before her “Imagine” sing-along video cured COVID and brought all four of my grandparents back to life), full of neon blur and Dallas broadcasts, seemed to imply a narrative or an aesthetic choice to set the film in such an iconic and evocative era. But there aren’t many narrative choices to do anything in the new Wonder Woman, and the only real aesthetic is “big mall.” In the end, that photo feels relevant in only one way: as an odd bit of foreshadowing for how we would wind up watching this strange, unshapely mess of a movie.
The choice by WarnerMedia to unload their entire 2021 theatrical slate onto their fledgling HBO Max streaming service has been unpacked elsewhere, and by more informed writers than me. But if it wasn’t clear a few weeks ago it seems even more evident now, after Wonder Woman’s debut, that this sort of release just isn’t going to work for movies or for audiences. In a way, Wonder Woman 1984 is the perfect litmus test for blockbuster home viewing. It’s not a masterpiece. It’s also not an apocalyptic disaster. It’s just a big, bloated blockbuster, about as good or as bad as your average Marvel movie. Your mileage may vary, we used to say. Two and a half stars!
The reaction online has been a little different, and a lot more heated. I remember being surprised at the reaction to last year’s Marriage Story when it dropped on Netflix and pretty immediately became nothing but meme fodder, or when The Irishman did the same and was met with proud laziness and eventually, outright scorn. But those are movies that demand your full attention, released on a platform with enormous reach to an often undiscerning audience. Wonder Woman 1984 feels like the opposite of that — the kind of movie made for people who thought Martin Scorsese’s comments about Marvel crossed a line. And yet, it’s being met with the same treatment: mocking out-of-context clips and boring, politicized hyperbole.
The easy answer for this kind of division is that the Internet today is made up of hundreds of pockets of niche communities, all of whom want different, often contradictory things from their pop culture. The people who had a good time this weekend roasting Wonder Woman’s shaky digital effects might be the same people who ate up The Irishman’s CGI faces over last Thanksgiving, and the people tweeting out Gal Gadot fancams could also be the ones who turned mocking the Marriage Story fight scene into an omnipotent online force. There’s certainly a tension between these two types of movies; we wouldn’t even be having a conversation about streaming if big blockbusters hadn’t totally monopolized the industry to the point of cruelly forcing Nancy Meyers into early retirement. But all too often, that tension is manifesting as just another way to get some Internet clout.
When a movie goes straight to streaming, the entire conversation around that movie implodes; everyone is so busy racing to join the fray, to screengrab a funny moment and turn it into a viral tweet, to catch up to the conversation because the movie’s been streaming for a full day and all their friends already have a take. Nuance goes out the window and gets replaced with shrieking cynicism. United States Senators start tweeting about how bad your movie is. What used to be a conscious choice, to get into your car and take a chance on a movie you thought looked interesting, has become borderline unconscious, a click on a remote to keep yourself in touch with whatever’s trending for the next two days. And it seems totally clear now that this kind of thing will turn into a slow-motion car accident for any big movie, not just the smart ones.
WarnerMedia’s big move might yet pay off. I have no doubt that upcoming blockbusters like Dune and The Suicide Squad will juice the company’s subscriber base to the point where HBO Max could, someday, ten or so years down the line, turn a profit. But what’s the cost to our cultural conversation? If you put The Matrix 4 in theaters, you’re relying on fans of the original three films to turn out; those movies, initially pretty universally rejected, have developed a devoted cult following. If you dump that same movie on streaming, you’re creating an environment that caters to the curious and the bored, the type of person who hated The Matrix 2 and 3, but who will turn on a new movie because they pay for the service and what the hell, they can always play Candy Crush. Nothing intended for a true attention span — not even a movie as silly and useless as Wonder Woman 1984 — can sustain that kind of attitude. The best you can hope for is the photo at the top of this newsletter: a blank stare, focused on fifty different screens at once.
What’s worth watching this week: Have a beer or two and wash down Another Round on VOD, about a group of high school teachers (including an elastic, delightful performance from Mads Mikkelsen) who experiment with being just a little tipsy all the time. Or find out if you have Apple TV+ (you probably do; for some reason, we all have Apple TV+) and enjoy Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon’s sumptuous, moving, stunningly gorgeous Wolfwalkers.