Her story has been written over and ret-conned multiple times, but usually, it involves a deity named Urzkartaga who grants Barbara godlike powers Barbara either actively seeks out these powers or is cursed with them against her will.
#Cheetah wonder woman 1984 movie
And that surreal evolution says plenty about how the movie sees her.īarbara’s transformation into Cheetah in the comic books is, like a lot of comic book origin stories, messy and weird. She goes from self-conscious to wearing skin-tight outfits, and ends the film as an anthropomorphic cheetah, without much explanation. That lack of curiosity is on display in WW84, as Barbara’s happiness is solely determined by the way she looks. These transformations ultimately leave the character’s intelligence, emotions, aspirations, and interior life unexplored. A common flaw in some of these portrayals, though, is that the nerdy-to-sexy transformation is more concerned with aesthetics than character traits. “Lonely single woman” is a trope that a lot of superhero movies rely on to create their villains, particularly female villains -like Catwoman in Batman Returns, Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin, and even Harley Quinn from S uicide Squad and Birds of Prey fame. Clay Enos/DC Comicsīarbara begins the film as an insecure, bookish nerd. Why is Cheetah, umm, a cheetah? Kristen Wiig as Barbara Minerva in Wonder Woman 1984. It actually shortchanges Wonder Woman herself. Like fellow supervillains the Joker, Lex Luthor, Magneto and others, Cheetah is beloved and renowned for having her own array of traits and flaws - she’s more than just “evil.” The beauty of these bad guys is that while we might not agree with them, we can fully understand why they act in the way they do and be a conduit to think about our own fallacies and tragedies.Īnd a shallow Cheetah isn’t just a disappointment for the viewers. But this surface-level adaptation is a waste of a character who, in the comic books, is Wonder Woman’s complicated, fascinating arch-enemy. Perhaps the movie showed its hand in the first place: We never learn much about who Barbara is, anyway, beyond that she’s nerdy, lonely, and would trade everything in the world to be stylish, popular, and admired. She becomes nothing but a secondary villain, a footnote in the larger story.īarbara’s relative lack of screen time doesn’t allow us to explore what makes the character tick - how evolving from a sheepish scientist to a sexy femme fatale affects her psyche. She and Diana are coworkers at the Smithsonian, and they quickly build a friendship after their first workplace meeting.īut after Barbara and Diana make wishes that grant Barbara the superhero strengths and sex appeal she envies of her new friend (and give Diana her boyfriend back), the film largely forgets about Barbara.
The iconic comic book villain gets some screen time in the first and second acts of the movie, allowing Wiig to flex her mastery of social awkwardness and cringe comedy as we meet the bookish Barbara. Oh, and it’s also a superhero movie.īut in its attempt to be all these things at once, WW84 does a disservice to what could have been its greatest asset: Kristen Wiig’s devious performance as Barbara Minerva, a.k.a.
What we end up with is part-romance, part-’80s period piece, and part-clunky global political commentary. At the same time, Pedro Pascal’s dastardly oil tycoon Maxwell Lord is descending into insatiable madness and succumbing to his thirst for power, while also dragging the US, entrenched in the Cold War, into all-out nuclear warfare. Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor is back too, despite his fate at the end of the first film his comeback plunges the movie into a romantic reunion, unrequited love territory. The movie, the second in DC’s latest franchise, is both a return of Gal Gadot’s Diana Prince and a wistful look at how lonely her life is. Wonder Woman 1984 swings for the fences in its 150 minutes of runtime.
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