I interrupt my vacation to review Wonder Woman 1984.

Trump clearly broke the writers and director.

Y’all, I had to come back to do this. I give only one spoiler that highlights just how bad the movie was.

It was a bad movie.

Calling this a “feminist masterpiece” as some are calling it suggests women have to be graded on a curve because they aren’t capable of masterpieces without it. If men and women are equal, this film is not good. If women are inferior to men, I guess it is a good movie. But it really isn’t.

It was a fun movie to watch, until the end, but it was not a great movie. The way they bring Steve Trevor (“Not Rogers, you idiot,” The Editor yelled) back, dead in the first and clearly brought back in the previews of this, was a bit clunky, but okay. We can give it a pass.

The desire of the villain, Barbara Minerva, to stop Wonder Woman, is understandable even if it could have played out a bit more and tied more to the opening of the movie about earning what you’re seeking.

When you start thinking about how they got a fighter jet to fly nonstop to Egypt is right about the time the movie stops making a lot of sense.

But the ending. Oh dear.

Pedro Pascal, better known as the Mandalorian, gives an insane and over the top performance as a TV huckster who has the power to grant wishes. W. W. Jacobs wrote the short story The Monkey’s Paw in 1902. The titular object has the power to grant wishes, but extracts a cost. “Wonder Woman 1984” is a retelling of that story in super hero form. Pascal can grant one wish, but it costs you.

There’s just no reason to belabor the plot here. It is clunky, but as a super hero movie goes it is passable. The problem is really the resolution.

More progressive chick flick than super hero movie, Wonder Woman saves the day, and here is your spoiler, not by beating the bad guy, but by giving a speech. Literally and I wish I was making that up. She speaks to the world and tells the world to abandon their desires, hopes, and wishes, and just accept reality. She is Obama to Pascal’s Trump. I guess that is why it is considered a feminist masterpiece — the woman can’t defeat the man, so she talks him to death.

Patty Jenkins, the director, lamented that Warner Brothers reined her in on the ending of the first movie. This time, however, she had her way and got to do what she wanted. In other words, Patty Jenkins can thank the studio for making her look good the first go round and this time, she proved maybe she needs a babysitter.

The movie isn’t worth spending a bunch of money on. It was clunky, made Wonder Woman both more than she is supposed to be and less at the same time, and gave us a villain whose scripting was broken by the writers suffering derangement over the present state of the American political eco-system. Huh? The main bad guy is a TV con man who swindles people out of their money and makes them believe he can make their lives better while actually making things worse. Trump broke Patty Jenkins and her writers and it shows. Their cure is not to defeat the man, but give a speech and make him see the error of his ways.

Gal Gadot is wonderful as always in a performance that doesn’t really appreciate her. The movie wastes its cast. As an HBO Max subscriber, I got to see it without wasting any more money than the HBO Max subscription.

There is a mid-credit sequence that is nice. It is not enough to make up for the movie.