Wonder Woman: The Excellent Adventure Edit

I hate writing a review when I didn't really like the film or agree with the editor's intent. It is a competent edit, but I feel like it retains too much of what doesn't work while unfortunately adding a few more things to the mix that also don't work.

Making it so Steve Trevor doesn't inhabit the body of another man is an important and necessary change. However, Steve is now introduced in a way that is very abrupt and quite jarring.

I like that more 80's music was added, but I feel like a editor overdoes it and at times all the extra music starts to feel grating.

Wonder Woman 1984's main problem is that it doesn't know what it wants to be (could be because it was co-written by Patty Jenkins and Geoff Johns). On the one hand, it seems to want to be a light-hearted campy homage to the Christopher Reeve Superman films. On the other hand, it wants to be a very serious and preachy feminist critique. It's the latter, in my opinion, that doesn't work. But that seems to be what the editor is intent on retaining. The overall message of the film (about not having the things you want) is also condescending and unsatisfying. Once again, this is all retained.

If this film is to be redeemed at all, I think an edit should go in the opposite direction. Lean into the camp and silliness and make it a fun, lighthearted affair. Maxwell Lord is not sufficiently redeemed by the end of the theatrical cut, so he should be kept as the narcissistic con-man that he is. I really don't think he needs to be made into a sympathetic character, because he's pretty terrible all in all, and I don't think the audience is ready to forgive him by the end. I would cut the child entirely from the film, since his presence is tragic to the point of being comical as it tries desperately to tug at your heartstrings. He's just a poor neglected child that his father barely thinks about. He really brings the film down.

The theme of both Diana and Barbara nearly constantly being sexually harassed doesn't really add anything significant to the film. What is the point being made? When Barbara/Cheetah throws the guy into the truck, I think it should be played for laughs (cut away after she tosses him rather than watch her beat beat the crap out of him).

I could go on and on. Overall, this is a good edit that doesn't quite scratch my itch, but it may work well for some people's tastes. My main point here is that this is an irredeemably silly and stupid story, so the only option, IMO, that a faneditor really has is to embrace the stupidity and let this play out as more of a light-hearted comedy.

Rarely have I been so disappointed with a movie as with "Wonder Woman '84', and I was hoping this fan-edit would eliminate as much as possible of the childish story. Regretfully that is simply not possible with the available material. There is however no question about it that this fan-edit is an improvement.

Shortening the movie (bye bye prologue) and adding '80's music are great ideas and executed almost flawlessly. However, popsongs with vocals are too distracting during action sequences in my opinion. Instrumental pop-songs would have been no problem, but with vocals it turns into some kind of videoclip. And if possible, I'd avoid fading out each song. If the song itself has a solid ending (no fade-out) than try to use it, and time the last beat with a cut. Or have the music dissolve into some kind of sound effect that goes with the scene.
Eliminating the strange scenes with Wonder Woman's returned love interest having a different face at first is also entirely justified. It's just that in this way, she accepts the impossible strangeness of his return too easily, like it's perfectly normal.

Yet all in all I enjoyed this fan-edit more than the original, and the inclusion of different music not only works invigorating, but is also an incredible technical achievement of the editor.

A very clever and sensible tweak to a film that had a lot of potential. Love the music. Loved cutting the Steve body-swapping out.

Would have loved to see Barbara's transformation happen at the end, as an epilogue, versus how the film did it.

Still very well done.

This is an utterly fantastic concept for a fan-edit and I applaud wakeupkeo for it! WW84 was sorely lacking in period appeal and this remedies that to a large extent. In terms of story, pacing, visuals and tone, this edit is a knockout and lets the Silver-Age silliness of the plot sit next to the Bronze-Age cold war setting in spectacular fashion. And considering how much was cut out, the fact that I didn't notice a single missing element (besides the completely unneccessary Themyscira flashback) tells you something about how bloated the original picture was.

However, I have some quibbles and/or suggestions: it seems at times like the song placements are a bit arbitrary, not leading into-and-out-of scenes, but instead dropped into sequences with one song after another, rather than letting the music dictate the shape and pacing of the scene (the back-to-back songs in the mall sequence) or with (the excellent) Killing Joke track playing over a couple of separate, unrelated scenes.

Also, while I wholeheartedly applaud the choice to excise the creepy body-snatching aspect of Steve Trevor's return, my girlfriend and I both bolted upright in shock when he returned, despite having seen the original film. In a way that's a good thing (hey, re-surprises are rare!) but the pacing of the scene didn't prepare us for that reveal in any way, so a bit more smoothing into Trevor's appearance might be desired.

Lastly, it felt as if there were a few long stretches without any 80s music, and when the hook of the edit is cheeseball rock, I want to have my cheeseball socks rocked off. Not a criticism per se, but just that I wanted more of my favourite aspect of the edit.

(Speaking of cheesy, I loved the title card explaining Max's fate, although it stuck out a bit that he was the only character who got one... maybe a second pass where each character gets one? Including over the Lynda Carter sequence? Just a thought.)

In all, this edit is very highly recommended, it's well worth a watch and elevates WW84 from "unwatchable" to "ridiculously great fun" -- and in my estimation it's just a couple of tweaks away from being of the most sublime fan edits out there.