A delightful gift for the holiday season and a payoff to Warner Bros.’s decision to showcase their films of 2021 in theaters and HBO Max has unfortunately given off a failed first impression for the film production company. “Wonder Woman 1984,” the sequel to the financially and critically acclaimed original, is an odious, incomprehensible mess and presents itself as one of the worst DCEU movies in recent memory.

Living life as a superhero and working as an anthropologist, Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) stumbles across a mineral found by the FBI called the “Dreamstone,” an artifact that happens to grant one wish to whomever wields it. However, once oil entrepreneur Maxwell Lord gets a hold of the stone’s power, it’s up to Diana to prevent the chaos that Maxwell may unleash.

The biggest offense when it comes to “Wonder Woman 1984” is the formulaic and incoherent script, filled to the brim with contrivances and rules that the movie establishes that gets made up as the movie progresses, such as how the mechanics and powers of the wishing stone operate.

The performances range between pretty good, to miscast and dreadfully cartoonish, the visual effects and compositing are eye-poppingly bad, and the actions set-pieces lack any semblance of peril and sacrifice logic for the sake of being light-hearted and goofy as you would see in Richard Donner’s Superman.

If Warner Bros. and Patty Jenkins are considering issuing a third installment, they seriously have to find better writers, and create better characters, otherwise this isn’t going to proceed well for the future of the DCEU and Wonder Woman herself.

For further details on the DCEU’s latest movie, check out my full-length video review on YouTube.