Three years ago, I fell in love with the 2017 version of Wonder Woman featuring Gal Gadot. With the action-packed shots and heroic storyline, it was no surprise I had taken a liking to it so quickly. Naturally, I was ecstatic to hear about the sequel being released exclusively on HBOMax on December twenty-fifth. 

The movie starts with the same adventure as the previous movie, with young Diana running around her home—Themyscira—on an obstacle course. It was proven by the end of her challenge, that “no true hero is born from lies.” Although this powerful message can be conveyed as a “live-your-life-by-this” type of notion, I didn’t understand how it fit into the rest of the plotline. 

As Diana moves through her new life almost 70 years after World War I, it is evident that her main goal throughout the movie is to be reunited with her past lover, Steve. Through this, all her actions have been lived by that idea, and while this would have been good for a regular rom-com movie, it isn’t pertinent to the superhero setting that is placed in the first few scenes. 

Despite never having watched it before, this movie soon came to be very familiar to me. The movie emerged as a cliche superhero movie based on the villain’s greed overpowering and destroying the humanity of people. The universal idea of the movie was one that many other lesser-known so-called superhero movies have portrayed. The antagonist—in this case being Barbara—wants what she can’t have, resulting in the need to take power from the person she envies most. 

The sacred object that becomes pertinent in everybody’s minds is a stone that grants wishes. This has been an overbearing concept that is too common in other hero-versus-villain features to be considered original and raw. It seemed almost childlike for so many to be pining after the stone causing destruction. 

Some scenes displayed were unnecessary to the story unless explained further. Multiple times I had wondered what consequence Maxwell Lord’s son would face after verbally announcing a wish, yet there had been none despite the rule of “an eye for an eye.” 

By the end of the movie, I was still left with questions such as “What happens to the stone now?”

The most important details were left out, yet there appeared to be enough time to describe useless events. I wanted to love this movie as much as I had the first, but the banality of the film makes it difficult for me to experience the same thrill and awe I encountered with the first movie.