So I watched the sequel on streaming, and I'm meh on it. It was nice seeing Steve Trevor again, but boy was his "resurrection" weird. Couldn't the magic of the Dreamstone bring him back to life without his soul/spirit taking over another man's body? Was it Quantum Leap style, where the original guy was off in a waiting room somewhere, or was he aware of being possessed, but helpless to stop Steve using his body for sex and everything else? Why the fuck would Patty Jenkins choose this creepy way to bring back Steve? And how come, in none of the arguments about renouncing the Dreamstone wishes, did Steve ever argue "I can't stay here forever, stealing this man's life from him"? Plus, the scene of Steve trying on different clothes just dragged way too long beyond being funny.
Meanwhile, I didn't much like either villain. Cheetah starting out being "Hollywood ugly" and teenage awkward, only to turn evil after she got her powers, was lame and trite. Plus she greedily got two wishes because she wished on the Dreamstone, then Maxwell Lord granted an extra wish after he got the powers. Most of the time, it seemed that Lord could only give one wish per person, which we saw when his son Alistair made a second wish during the TV broadcast. Speaking of which, it was stupid and hand-wavey for the satellite broadcast to somehow let Lord literally "touch" everyone with "particles". That's not how broadcasting works, no matter how the White House staff explain things in layman's terms to the President. It's not like any TV anchor can literally touch any viewer watching his/her news show.
Maxwell Lord was a conman selling Black Gold oil, and we got some backstory on his childhood, but we never got an explanation for how he knew about the Dreamstone beforehand and had been searching for it for long time. Why did he decide to wish himself to be the Dreamstone, instead of making just one wish to be a rich respected businessman? Plus it was so convenient that there just happened to be a Mayan descendent person with a book that explained the Dreamstone's origins. Also, did Diana just claim that Romulus, founder of Rome, possessed the Dreamstone, and it destroyed his empire "without explanation"? What kind of fucked up history are you peddling, Diana? Romulus founded Rome (in myth) and the Roman Kingdom did not collapse immediately after founding. It lasted a couple of centuries before being replaced by the Republic and later the Empire. So it lasted a long time and there was plenty of explanation about why each version of Rome collapsed. Plus I didn't like the Mayan descendent guy saying "my culture was wiped out". No it fucking wasn't, buddy! Archaeology keeps studying the temples and artifacts, while the Mayan culture continues in all the descendants that live today, currently called the Maya people. They're not fucking extinct; they just got conquered by the colonizers, but hung onto their traditions. This shitty writing leads me to think that Patty Jenkins doesn't know or care about history.
The scenes in Egypt didn't bother me that much, really. It was clear that the magical wall was a political commentary on Donald Trump's wall, and that Maxwell Lord was pitting the wealthy oil guy against the peasants in his hereditary kingdom. So it wasn't like Muslim sects warring against each other or even Israel against Arab states. Wonder Woman was really trying to fight the security team just to get to Maxwell Lord. But it is weird that the movie claims that Wonder Woman was weaker, her powers going to Cheetah, yet I thought that Diana seemed plenty strong in a lot of fight scenes, and she had enough goddess powers to turn the plane invisible. At most, she just seemed mortal when she started bleeding from bullets and getting wounded. In the climax, with people around the world renouncing their wishes, I could see the kind of global harmony message that Patty Jenkins was going for, but the movie felt bloated and took a long time to get there. It was nice to see Lynda Carter's cameo as Asteria, at least.
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