Film / Wonder Woman 1984

A new era of wonder begins.

"You cannot be the winner, because you are not ready to win, and there is no shame in that. Only in knowing the truth in your heart and not accepting it. No true hero is born from lies."

— Antiope

Wonder Woman 1984 (sometimes stylized as WW84) is a 2020 superhero film, the follow-up to 2017's Wonder Woman and the ninth installment in the DC Extended Universe. Gal Gadot returns as the titular character and Patty Jenkins once again takes the director's chair. Jenkins shares a story and writing credit with Geoff Johns with help from screenwriter David Callaham. Hans Zimmer returned to score the film after being absent from the franchise since Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

The film takes place in the year 1984 and follows Diana of Themyscira/Wonder Woman as she fights against new perils including a former friend, Barbara Minerva/Cheetah (Kristen Wiig), and shady businessman Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal). She also finds out that her late lover Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), who perished during World War I, somehow came back from the dead.

The cast is rounded out with Connie Nielsen as Diana's mother Queen Hippolyta, Robin Wright as her aunt Antiope, Lilly Aspell as young Diana, Oliver Cotton as Simon Stagg, and Stuart Milligan as the President.

After several release date changes caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic, the film was released under an unorthodox staggered model. The first release date came December 16, 2020 in some markets (mostly in East Asia, as well as Switzerland) where theaters are open. It opened on Christmas Day in some European and North American ones, and continued releasing into the end of January throughout the world. In markets where HBO Max is available, it was available for streaming starting on Christmas Day but only for one month (the film was subsequently made available as a PVOD rental in February 2021). In the UK, the film was released on December 16th to theaters for one month and then moved to video on demand purchase through WB’s partner, Sky.

A third Wonder Woman film was greenlit following the release of this film, with Jenkins set to return as director and Gadot reprising the title role. In December 2022 however, Jenkins dropped from it amidst the DC Studios overhaul.

Previews: CCXP 2019 Trailer, DC FanDome Trailer, CCXP 2020 Trailer.

Spoilers for previous DC Extended Universe films are unmarked.

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Wonder Woman 1984 provides examples of:

Tropes # to F

• The '80s:
  • The film takes place in, well, 1984. Diana is seen looking at a wall of TV screens that shows Dallas and National Lampoon's Vacation in the earliest released picture of the film, there have been "Silence is Death" posters (referring to the AIDS crisis) seen on set pictures, Barbara is rocking a huge pair of glasses and '80s Hair, and a fight takes place in The Mall (in which women are seen practicing aerobics with the expected garish outfits) so the film is really hitting the highlights of the decade. Additionally, the trailer uses a remix of "Blue Monday" (originally a song from the very influential 1980s band New Order).
  • Unlike most works of fiction set in this period, the film doesn't play up the glamour of the '80s or how so many great things came from that era. Instead, it shows the '80s as a time where people were senselessly greedy and resentful of one another.
• '80s Hair: Barbara Minerva and Maxwell Lord, in particular. They both sport stereotypical haircuts from the era. Hers is poofy curls and his is teased so much that it looks like a bicycle helmet.
• Abstract Apotheosis: Diana states that there are universal concepts, and when these concepts are imbued into objects by the gods whose domains they fall into, those objects become powerful — far too powerful for any mortal to truly handle.
  • Diana's Lasso of Truth, for example, is not powered by Diana (who herself is a demigoddess), but rather by the concept of truth itself — which is why it still works even after Diana begins losing her powers. As she puts it, the truth, and the idea of it, is far greater than Steve or her or any other being, because it will always exist on an abstract level regardless of whether or not there is a god to represent it.
  • Meanwhile, the Dreamstone is initially believed to be powered by love or hope since it brought Steve back to Diana. Only later on is it revealed to be powered by lies and deception. Hence why all the wishes have a bent to them: Steve not truly being alive, just possessing another man's body; Barbara having Diana's strength, speed, and beauty, but not her godhood or her personality; Maxwell becoming the Dreamstone, but not having the durability of the stone or the direct ability to negate its side-effects without copious Loophole Abuse, etc. In the end, these wishes are just lies that the wishers want to be real but truly aren't.
• Adaptational Backstory Change:
  • In the comics, the Dreamstone was created by Dream of the Endless. Here, it was created by the Duke of Deception.
  • The Duke of Deception, while The Ghost, also has his backstory changed. Instead of being The Dragon to Ares (who, incidentally, was the Big Bad of the previous film), he's a Greek god in his own right, identified as Dolos or Mendacius, a god of lies.
  • Barbara Minerva has had multiple revisions to her backstory, but her transformations into the Cheetah typically involve some sort of terrible blood sacrifice to an ancient god that not only imbue her with power, but also curse her with an unquenchable thirst for blood. In this movie, her transformation is due to the Dreamstone and she has no bloodlust, only a lack of humanity.
  • Maxwell Lord in the comics was more of a bureaucrat and strategic mastermind. He was pretty good too, considering he managed a few Justice League teams and orchestrated the dissolution of said League a few years later. Here, he's little more than a Snake Oil Salesman with a Ponzi scheme. In the comics, his power was a minor form of mind-control. In this movie, he starts off with no power but gains Jackass Genie wish-fulfilling powers.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • Barbara and Maxwell are subject to this; in the Golden Age, Barbara tried drowning Wonder Woman by sabotaging her restraints for a charity stunt and Maxwell Lord ended up causing a crisis that was only solved by Diana snapping his neck. Here, both are convinced to stand down and give up their wishes.
  • Simon Stagg is traditionally portrayed as at best a Jerkass and at worst an outright Corrupt Corporate Executive. Here, while he's still rude, he's only ever conclusively shown as a businessman who justifiably wants a return on an investment he made and his arrest for tax crimes happens under extremely dubious circumstances.
• Adaptation Name Change: Downplayed. While he still goes exclusively by Maxwell Lord, this version of the character is revealed fairly early on to have been born Maxwell Lorenzano.
• Adaptational Jerkass: In the comics, Maxwell Lord was more Tony Stark-esque and at worst was a morally ambiguous type a la Gordon Gekko, and only pulled a Face–Heel Turn after several years of publication. In the film, he's pretty much slime from the get go.
• Adaptational Nationality: Barbara is British in the comics but is an American here.
• Advertised Extra: Connie Nielsen and Robin Wright are both billed in the opening credits but only get screen time during the Themysciran race in the opening sequence.
• Anachronism Stew: Steve reacts with amazement when he sees an escalator and an underground train, things that were around decades before his death in 1918. The scene in the Metro station also depicts modern signage that wouldn't have been used in 1984 - the Green and Silver Lines are depicted on maps despite not going into service until years later, and overhead signage shows the upcoming trains even though that didn't exist at the time either.
• An Aesop:
  • Know When to Fold 'Em can be honorable.
  • Entitlement and overconsumption have grave consequences.
• Anti-Air: Sentry anti-air guns at the satellite base fire against Diana in Asteria's armor.
• Anti-Villain:
  • Ultimately, Maxwell Lord is not evil. He is a bit slimy and implied to be running a Ponzi Scheme according to a disgruntled investor, but Max genuinely believes that using the Dreamstone will give his son the life he needs, and earn young Alistair's approval. The issue is he doesn't understand that the Dreamstone is inherently a Jackass Genie and will not let him attain the life he truly desires. When Diana shows him that his wish will kill Alistair, Maxwell suffers a Heel Realization and renounces it.
  • The same goes for Barbara. Her wish comes out of a well-meaning desire to emulate Diana and have her confidence (she didn't even know Diana was Wonder Woman and had actual powers) with no idea that it would work. While Barbara remains in denial that she has to give up the wish before it corrupts her permanently, Diana convinces her to stand down eventually. The ending is ambiguous if she will also give up her resentment of Diana or not.
• Apocalypse Anarchy: This goes From Bad to Worse as Maxwell's influence spreads and people start indulging their fantasies willy-nilly, even before the nukes start launching.
• Apocalypse How: A Societal Disruption on a planetary scale is caused by Lord massively disrupting the world economy, granting wishes to everyone by hijacking TV satellite signals while simultaneously stealing people's health and life force, and causing both the US and Soviets to begin a nuclear war. A societal collapse on the same scale is narrowly averted by Diana convincing everyone to renounce their wishes, causing the nuclear missiles to disappear in the sky.
• Apologetic Attacker: Diana apologizes to Barbara before electrocuting her and then pulls her out of the water so that she doesn't drown.
• Artifact of Doom: As Diana later finds out, the Dreamstone was given to mankind by a Trickster God, and every civilization that previously held it collapsed tragically.
• Armor-Piercing Response: In the end, Maxwell apologizes to Alistair for all the suffering he caused, saying he only wanted to make his son proud of him, and give him a better life. Alistair's sweet response is reassuring and soul-shattering: "I don't need you to make me proud. I already love you, Daddy."
• Artistic License – Biology: A cheetah is an unusual choice of animal to take traits from for Barbara’s wish to become an “apex predator”, since cheetahs are extremely inbred and thus very frail and prone to lose competition with other large predators.
• Artistic License – Geography:
  • The scene where Diana and Steve check out the Washington Metro is full of both this and Anachronism Stew. First, they enter the Metro at L'Enfant Plaza, three miles from Diana's apartment at the Watergate, when there are plenty of closer stations. Then they pass a pillar that directs passengers to the Green and Silver Lines, which didn't exist until 1991 and 2014, respectively. When they get down to the lower level platform for the Green and Yellow Lines, there is an overhead sign showing the upcoming trains, which also didn't exist in 1984 (and to make matters worse, the board shows the current train as "No Passengers".) Then they exit the Metro system, but based on where they were, they would still be at L'Enfant, meaning they walked three miles just to check out the station, then left after seeing one train which wasn't even in passenger service.^note It should be noted that Washington Metro is pretty picky about how they can be depicted on screen, so this may have been a factor.
  • The branch of the Air And Space Museum in DC does not have an airstrip. It's on the National Mall in downtown DC. The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is located near Dulles Airport in Virginia, however, it did not open until 2004.
• Artistic License – History:
  • According to the film, every empire where the Dreamstone has been (including Rome, Carthage, the Mayan) collapsed without any reason at all. While there are a few civilizations like the Mayan whose exact downfalls are a mystery, many such as Rome and Carthage had their downfalls well documented by history. This would not be too abrasive if not for the fact that Diana outright states that the reasons for these empires falling are unknown.
  • In real life, subway already existed for a couple of decades in USA at the time the first movie was set, yet in the montage where Diana shows modern things to Steve, one scene shows Steve being awestruck while watching a moving subway train. Similarly, escalators have been around since the 19th century, so even if Steve wasn't prepared for how they look in the '80s, it's odd that he's so freaked out by the sight of one.
• Artistic License – Military: The plane that Diana and Trevor steal is a Panavia Tornado. The Tornado in reality has tandem seating, not side by side, and is a strike aircraft intended for low-level attacks. It would be unable to fly from DC to Cairo and back without refueling. In addition, Trevor knowing how to fly WWI biplanes should not translate to him being able to pilot a modern jet aircraft with no training. Not to mention the oddity of a brand-new European strike fighter being at the American Air and Space Museum.
• Artistic License – Physics: While it is theoretically possible for the US to have a system that can forcibly broadcast television signals all over the planet, what really has no basis in physics is the idea that the particles the system transmits somehow allow one person to "touch" another person remotely. But it is this idea that serves as the entire basis of how Lord is able to grant wishes worldwide, as he otherwise cannot grant wishes without making physical contact with the wisher. This is acknowledged in the film, which is why Lord takes a moment before he gets started to get one of the techs to wish that it will work.
• Aspect Ratio Switch: The first and last scenes are in the expanded IMAX ratio^note that is 1.43:1 in IMAX Grand Theater (GT) auditoriums and 1.90:1 on HBO Max and other IMAX theaters. Everywhere else, it's all in Cinemascope, thus averting this trope while the rest of the movie is in Cinemascope.
• Asshole Victim: The drunk who attacks Barbara gets easily knocked back by Diana. Barbara is not even remotely as gentle when she encounters him later after being empowered by her wish.
• Attack Backfire
  • A US army soldier fires a Mark 19 grenade launcher at Diana while she's wearing her Asteria armor. She does her bracelet block, deflecting back a blast wave that knocks out all the soldiers.
  • The "use your opponent's strength against them" is used by Diana to explain to Barbara how her attacker got Punched Across the Room. In their final confrontation, once Diana discards her wing-armor she's showing doing this for real.
• Back from the Dead: One day after finding a wish-fulfillment stone, Diana bumps into Steve Trevor, 66 years after he perished in the explosion of Ludendorff's superweapon plane at the end of the first film. Though given he's in another person's body, it takes a while for her to recognize Steve.
• Battle Boomerang: Diana uses her tiara as an improvised boomerang to destroy a security camera at the mall and later to knock out some White House guards.
• Battle Couple: Much like in their first film, Diana and Steve end up whupping asses together in Egypt and Washington.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: The whole Dreamstone story ends up like this, with Steve downright referencing The Monkey's Paw after he learns about its origins. Any wish has a grisly consequence, usually involving taking that which the wisher values most, and especially when it's Maxwell granting it.
  • Diana wishes for Steve to be alive again. The stone grants her wish by taking his soul from the heavens and plopping it into some random guy — though that's not the catch. The catch is that Diana's powers begin to fail, robbing her of her ability to help and save people.
  • Barbara wishes to be like Diana, to be noticed and admired by others. While she does get Diana's physical abilities and near-divine beauty, it comes at the cost of her kind and warm personality, which is the reason why Diana and others who noticed her before the wish became so fond of her to begin with. Her enhanced beauty also causes the street harassment that she already experiences to ramp up.
  • Maxwell wishes to be the Dreamstone and his body falters unless people make wishes for him. In the end, however, even with all that Loophole Abuse, his wish nearly costs him his son, the person he loves most.
  • The Egyptian oil baron that Maxwell tries to use his new powers to steal oil from wishes to have the rights of the surrounding lands (which were once ruled by his ancestors) reverted back to him. A wall subsequently erects itself in the middle of said land, cutting off the inhabitants from resources like fresh water and causing an international crisis that escalates the tensions of the ongoing Cold War.
  • Perhaps the most egregious is the POTUS wishing for more nukes under the misguided belief that it will better protect the country. Instead, Russia takes the sudden appearance of a hundred nukes in missile range as a sign of aggression and it nearly starts World War III.
  • One random scientist upon hearing that the crystal grants wishes (sarcastically) responds by wishing for a cup of coffee, the wish itself was so mundane and so small that there wasn't much the crystal could do to twist it into something bad, aside from making it too hot.
  • Alistair's wish that his father be successful essentially loses him his father, as Maxwell becomes even more busy and obsessive.
• Becoming the Genie: Maxwell Lord's wish is to be the Dreamstone, which grants him its powers and the ability to choose the wishes' cost.
• Big Bad: Maxwell Lord is the main source of conflict, with his wishes causing rampant destruction. He's later joined by Barbara Minerva, who wants to protect Lord from Diana in order to keep her own wish.
• Big "NO!": The four thieves at the mall are apprehended by Diana, but not before one desperately tries to drop a kid off the ledge, resulting in the other thieves and bystanders doing this.
• Bittersweet Ending: Diana manages to convince everybody to renounce their wishes, but the stone itself caused a great deal of damage that will take a long time to repair. While the man who Steve Trevor had possessed is back to normal, he has no idea what has happened to him. Fortunately, we know that humanity will have a chance to heal, and Max Lord will be able to make up with his son.
• Bling of War: Diana inherits the armor of great Amazon warrior Asteria, which is golden, winged and with an eagle-shaped helmet (inspired by the one Wonder Woman first wore in Kingdom Come).
• Book Ends: The film begins with Wonder Woman saving a little girl and winking at her (and directly at the camera too). The film ends with another Wonder Woman saving a little girl and winking at the camera.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Regarding what to do with Max and the Dreamstone. As soon as they learn the Dreamstone causes a civilization to collapse, Steve advocates destroying it immediately. Even if that means killing Max, it would be for the greater good. Barbara protests and Diana admits they can't just act irrationally on limited information; they need to find out more. While the two women are influenced by their wishes, they have a point.
• Brick Joke
  • While Steve is trying out various Eighties fashions using the clothes kept by the man he's wearing, he objects to one particular outfit that Diana quite likes. At the end of the movie Diana encounter this man and praises him on wearing the same outfit.
  • The wall erected around the Emir's ancestral kingdom cuts off his people from their water supply. When the wall collapses it creates a channel that funnels fresh water to them.
• Bullet Time: Diana again is Parrying Bullets in slow motion and manages to even catch one with her lasso!
• Broken Aesop:
  • Maxwell Lord seems to be an indictment of '80s consumerism and capitalism as a whole. However, the rest of the movie goes out of its way to glorify '80s fashion trends, ritzy apartments and office spaces, fancy cars, and shopping malls, i.e. representations of those very things. Also, for all of Diana's talk about how she has given up so much for the world and wants one thing (Steve) in return, she has an enormous condo, tastefully decorated, with a gorgeous view overlooking the Potomac... i.e. the exact sort of space someone like Lord might covet. Diana may not covet more the way Lord does, but still indulges to a hefty degree.
  • The moral of "never take shortcuts" that Diana learns from Antiope rings kind of hollow when one remembers that Diana is a princess and a demigod who was able to enter the toughest athletic competition on Themyscira when she was just a child and nearly outcompeted her older, more seasoned opponents thanks to her royal status and supernatural abilities.
• Brought Down to Badass: Diana begins gradually losing her superhuman abilities throughout the film. However, she never quite becomes "normal", as she still demonstrates exceptional speed and strength and retains her warrior training and athleticism that Antiope drilled into her, more than 60 years of combat experience, bullet-proof armor, and the lasso of Hestia. While she finds herself more vulnerable to injury and exhaustion, she remains very formidable.
• Cadre of Foreign Bodyguards: The American businessman Maxwell Lord has an Egyptian security team that he took from an oil baron.
• Call-Back: When Diana makes her speech, the "Beautiful Lie" track from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice plays, only this time Diana says that there's beauty in truth.
• The Cameo:
  • Glimpsed in Diana's apartment is a photo of her with Chief, Sameer, and Charlie at the latter's wedding, and a later photo of her with an elderly Etta Candy.
  • Jenkins's son and Gadot's older daughter are the kids having the snowball fight at the end of the movie. Gadot's husband and younger daughter are also shown in the Christmas scene, riding a carousel.
  • Lynda Carter appears in the mid-credits scene as Asteria, the lone Amazon who stayed behind in man's world to stave off the assault of men while the Amazonians retreated to Themyscira, and last wore the golden winged armor.
• Car Cushion: Diana drops the thieves she captured in the mall on top of a police cruiser with enough force to stave the roof in.
• Cat Folk: Barbara Minerva turns into a feline humanoid once Maxwell Lord decides to enhance her already powered-up status.
• Central Theme:
  • Considering that this is a Wonder Woman story, truths and lies. More specifically, that nothing good ever really comes from lies, and while the truth might be painful, it's real, and we have to accept it and move on. This is best shown with Diana's wish — while the stone does manage to bring Steve "back" in a sense, he's not really alive. His soul is just possessing the body of another man, and only Diana can see him as Steve; even when Steve himself looks into a mirror, he can't see his own face but instead the face of the man whose body he took. In the end, it's only by accepting the fact that Steve is gone and can never truly come back that Diana is able to regain her powers and save the day.
  • Greatness. It is not power, or wealth, or adulation, but rather being accepted and loved for who you are, who you truly are, by the people who truly care about you.
  • Greed and the human desire of wanting. The gem offers people whatever they want but not what they already have. The consequences from this inherent flaw in us nearly destroys the whole planet.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: Because Young Diana fell off her horse in the Amazon Games, forcing her to take a shortcut and missing a target, Antiope denied her chance at victory.
• Chekhov's Gunman: At the gala, Diana meets an old acquaintance who works at the White House. She later contacts the man to get her and Steve into the White House in search for Maxwell Lord.
• Chekhov's Skill: It was established in the previous movie (and touched upon in this one) that Diana is immune to lightning because her father is Zeus, the god of lightning. She defeats Cheetah by holding her underwater when a live wire falls in, which fries Cheetah while Diana herself is unharmed.
• Chewing the Scenery: Pedro Pascal's acting throughout the movie could be conservatively described as "theatrical," reaching a crescendo at the climax of the film when he goes full ham.
• Civilization Destroyer: The Stone is said to be responsable for the destruction of the Hitite, Cushite, Mayan and Roman civilizations among others.
• Clipboard of Authority: Diana and Steve pick up a box and papers when slipping into Lord's office, but abandon them on seeing the employees are too busy to pay attention to them anyway.
• Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: Again Diana is never called "Wonder Woman", and while Barbara Minerva expresses interest in becoming "an apex predator" and turns into a Cat Girl, the name "Cheetah" is never used.
• Complaining About Things You Haven't Paid For: Subverted. While Diana is delighted to have Steve back (albeit not in his original packaging), she's right to believe there's some kind of catch to this "miracle", and makes it a priority to find the stone immediately.
• Continuity Nod: Diana keeps a framed photo of herself with Etta Candy, "played" by Lucy Davis in old age makeup.
• Continuity Snarl: The entire premise of this movie contradicts Diana's statement about her century-long self-imposed exile in Justice League (2017).
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: All three villains contrast with the villains in the previous Wonder Woman film.
  • Maxwell Lord (the empowered megalomaniac) contrasts General Ludendorff by being driven by greed rather than by bloodlust. Both are also proud men, but while Ludendorff's pride was built on cruelty, Maxwell's came from wanting his son to be proud of him.
  • Barbara Minerva (the god-influenced intellectual) contrasts Isabel Maru by being a kind-hearted woman who was led astray, rather than a sociopath. Maru was afraid to go against Diana, while Barbara goes out of her way to confront her. Maru's villainy caused her facial disfigurement, while Barbara's empowerment made her more confident about her appearance.
  • Dechalafrea Ero (the Mayan god) contrasts Ares by never confronting Diana or even appearing. Ares turned to villainy because he saw humanity as a problem, while Dechalafrea Ero was always cruel towards humanity. Ares gradually corrupted humanity by turning their knowledge on them, while Dechalafrea Ero gave them a magical artifact to break them overnight.
• Cool Plane: Played With. Diana manifests invisibility through magic on the fighter jet she and Steve steal with her powers, creating the Invisible Jet.
• Costume-Test Montage: Steve tries on numerous outfits owned by the man whose body he's inhabiting in a montage.
• Dances and Balls: A gala is held at the Smithsonian when Maxwell Lord announces his intent to sponsor the museum. It also provides a great opportunity for him to take the stone from Barbara's office. It's also where Diana meets Steve again.
• Deal with the Devil: Invoked in the first trailer, with Maxwell Lord's voice-over discussing having everything you always wanted, in return for him taking what he wants.
  Maxwell Lord: Life is good, but it could be better. And why shouldn't it be? All you need is to want it. Think about finally having everything you always wanted! [later in the trailer] Now, I take what I want in return!
• Death Course: An obstacle course between Amazons is held in an arena. It includes running on pillars that stand several meters over a water pond.
• Destroy the Security Camera: While trying to capture a bunch of crooks trying to rob one of the stores in a mall, Diana takes out several security cameras with her tiara to uphold her anonymity.
• Disarm, Disassemble, Destroy: The mall scene has Diana neutralizing armed thieves by breaking their pistols with her Super-Strength, noting "I hate guns". Then she grabs someone's pistol by the barrel, ejecting a bullet from its magazine and pushing it aside while it's in mid-air, all in slow motion.
• Discard and Draw:
  • Happens twice to Diana. Her wish for Steve to be brought back to life has the cost of what is most valuable to her, namely her powers. When she renounces her wishes, Steve vanishes, but not only does she regain her lost power, she gains a new ability to fly.
  • It isn't entirely clear, but if Barbara wished to be like Diana, her powers likely included the latter's affinity to lightning. Her powers as Cheetah do not seem to, as demonstrated by a case of Exploited Immunity during their final battle.
• Disproportionate Retribution: This happens all over the world once Maxwell starts his worldwide broadcast, as people wish for quarrelsome loved ones to die, disagreeable people to be sent to prison, more nuclear weapons...
• Distant Sequel: The first film mostly took place in 1918 (within a Present Day Framing Device). This one is set 66 years later, in 1984.
• Do Not Adjust Your Set: Through a secret network of satellites and the help of the US Presidency, Maxwell Lord hijacks television channels and delivers a Make a Wish message worldwide. And once Diana traps him with the Lasso of Truth and broadcasts the lasso of truth's effect, the people watching realize they'd better renounce their wishes, too.
• Double Standard: Rape, Sci-Fi: Diana has sex with Steve Trevor…while he is possessing the body of another man, who did not consent to having sex with Diana.
• Dramatic Drop: As Diana checks the ring that surrounded the Dreamstone, she drops it in fear once she recognizes the inscriptions as being in the "language of the gods", implying the artifact was forged by a deity, and not necessarily a good one.
• Dramatic Wind: All granted wishes are accompanied by this. By the climax where Maxwell is granting wishes by the thousands, there is a whirlwind in the broadcast studio that pushes even Diana back.
• Drives Like Crazy: Two street-racing teenagers nearly kill a jogger crossing the street. Diana saves the day by kicking the car off course. Later in the film, a panicked bystander mentions that people are wildly driving Porsches on all the streets.
• Drunk on the Dark Side: By the time Maxwell gets everyone in the world to make their wishes, he is utterly consumed by his power and is Chewing the Scenery like there's no tomorrow. It takes a Kirk Summation from Diana for him to realize what he's doing and snap out of it. Also in play with Barbara as she starts to develop Diana's super-strength. She severely beats up the man who harassed her earlier, and would most likely have killed him if she hadn't been interrupted.
• Eating the Eye Candy: Men (and women) stop to check out Diana in her white dress that's slit to show off her impressive legs, and Barbara in her tight black dress and diamond-studded heels, when they turn up at the gala.
• Equivalent Exchange: Diana invokes The Dreamstone to resurrect her dead lover Steve Trevor, but not only does it require him to co-opt another man's body, it also starts to drain Diana's powers. Barbara also uses it to gain powers equivalent to Diana's, but slowly loses her humanity in the process.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • In the opening, a gang of four would-be thieves discreetly carry out relics from a jewelry shop. When one drops his gun, he tries to escape the panicking mall visitors and security by taking a child hostage and threatening to drop her over a railing. His fellow thieves shout at him not to do it, rather than run to save their own skins. One calls him an idiot, that it was supposed to be a quiet operation.
  • Rather, Jumping Off the Slippery Slope has standards, but Maxwell looks disgusted when the emir says he wants to shoo "heathens" off his ancestral lands, regardless of the legal or ethical issues. He grants the wish, but takes the man's security team when he has to face the consequences.
  • While Maxwell's acquired security team has no problem trying to shoot and kill Diana during their confrontation on the road, they swerve around her when she falls onto the road holding the two young children she was trying to save.
• Event Title: As the title suggests, the film takes place in 1984.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
  • The Duke of Deception made the Dreamstone so that it would cause societal chaos and collapse. He didn't anticipate that someone would give up their dearest wish for the greater good and turn the tide.
  • When Diana explains the Dreamstone grants wishes at the cost of the wisher's dearest possession, Barbara scoffs, "What matters most is what you wish for." Justified since by then Barbara's mind was being corrupted.
• Evil Sounds Deep: After Barbara gets her powers and turns to the dark side in her final form, her voice becomes much deeper than before, complete with an animalistic growl behind her vocal register.
• Exact Words: Averted. When Maxwell Lord wishes to “become the Dreamstone”, he does not turn into the literal stone, instead gaining its wish-granting powers.
• Exploited Immunity: Diana's final battle with Barbara has her holding the enemy underwater while a high-voltage cable falls in. The heroine's affinity to lightning has been well established at the end of the first movie and confirmed here, but Cheetah has no such gift.
• Expy: Barbara is a loving Homage to the 1980s Catwoman, with some adjustments. She's a Shrinking Violet who is overworked despite her talents and men see her as a groping target. After the equivalent of a Near-Death Experience—rather Attempted Rape—she slowly starts turning into a sexy, confident woman with a dark side. Much like Halle Berry's Catwoman, the Golden Age Cheetah has a Split Personality.
• Extra-Strength Masquerade: Absolute chaos emerges as Lord grants the US President his wish for more nuclear weapons, and that's before he uses the satellite system to start granting any and all wishes around the world regardless of being in conflict with each other. Diana manages to get him and the rest of the world to renounce their wishes, which seems to stop the immediate problem (supernatural acts are supernaturally reversed) but it's not explained how the world seems to move on so easily after such a strange event. There is some hints that exposure to the magic without understanding what it is creates a disorientation effect, as a few people Lord has to coerce into making their wish, especially the President, seem hypnotically confused at the situation.
• Face Death with Dignity: The minute he learns that saving the world might mean returning him to death, Steve is fine with that. He tells Diana it's amazing they had more time.
• The Final Temptation: When Diana comes to end Maxwell's madness, he offers to give her back Steve instead. Though Diana admits she wants to, she now knows nothing can truly bring him back and she must accept that.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Now it's Steve's turn to be confused by the modern era—Diana even having to tell him that a trash can is not a modern art piece; getting amazed by new technology such as fighter jets, escalators and CCTV cameras; and complaining about 80s fashion.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • After Diana inadvertently made her wish while holding the stone, the focus goes on Steve's inert watch starting to run with audible ticking heard.
  • In the stinger when Asteria grabs the falling pole you can see a golden brace on her hand which is the same as that used by Wonder Woman (1975).
• Flying Brick: Much like at the end of Wonder Woman, Diana can fly, though it takes her most of the film to realize this.
• Foregone Conclusion:
  • From the moment it was announced that Chris Pine would return as Steve Trevor, it was never a question of if, but how he and Diana would be separated again at the end of the film. When Diana makes contact with the Dreamstone, she errantly wishes for Steve to be alive again, and his soul then descends from the heavens to possess a random man, but at the cost of essentially making Diana human. He finally manages to convince her to let him go in order to defeat Lord, the two of them getting a chance to say goodbye properly.
  • We know that the Earth will survive the unintentional catastrophe by Maxwell Lord since Diana saves the planet and shows up alive and well in the present day to join the Justice League.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In her childhood, Diana enters a race and ends up taking a shortcut to reach the finish earlier. Antiope pulls her out of the race at the very end and scolds her for cheating. This sets up the entire point of the film that taking shortcuts to success is wrong.
  • The first wish we see the Dreamstone grant is a scientist in Diana's lab joking wishing he had a coffee, only for an intern to walk in with one extra. Mundane enough for people in the scene to laugh off, even if the audience can clearly infer that the Dreamstone is real. Blink and you'll miss him complaining about the coffee being too hot once he sips it. Every wish has a drawback.
  • The true nature of the Dreamstone is first seen in Diana's wish. While it's seemingly brought Steve Back from the Dead, it actually hasn't — Steve is living in another man's body, and to everyone but Diana, that man is who he is. In short, Steve's revival is a lie that Diana wishes was real.
  • The first hint that Diana is beginning to lose her powers is when she struggles to rip away a metal lock from the garage door of Lord's building. Steve initially chocks it up to a really strong lock, but even then, you can tell that he's sensing something wrong. It's only when Diana gets injured by a bullet and then fails to keep a grip on her lasso while saving a pair of children from Lord's military convoy do both of them begin to realize what's going on.
  • After taking off in the airplane, Diana mentions flight being a gift of Steve's that she's unable to understand. She later gains the ability to fly, or at least some form of Not Quite Flight.
  • Diana mentions that her golden armor came from Asteria, the greatest of all the Amazonian warriors, who stayed behind in the world to cover the retreat of the other Amazons into Themyscira, but that she only found the armor and no trace of the Amazon who wore it. The mid-credits scene shows that Asteria is still alive and played by Lynda Carter.
• Forgot About His Powers: In the end of Wonder Woman, the eponymous character seemingly unlocked her ability to fly toward the end (here implied to just be an extremely delayed super jump), even outright floating more than once. For the vast majority of this film, taking place 66 years later, she seems to have no idea she is capable of such a feat.
• Friend to All Children: Diana saves a child in the mall scene, and later prevents many of them from being run over by a military convoy in Egypt.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Maxwell Lord was a failing businessman, implied to be a conman running a Ponzi scheme and charisma seems to be his only real talent. Once he obtained the power of the Dreamstone, he essentially became a Reality Warper. While he is neither particularly scary nor monstrous on the surface, he is very capable of and indeed came close to destroying the world with the misuse of his powers.

Tropes G to M

• Gatling Good: Maxwell's base in the climax is defended by a couple of Phalanx CIWS Anti-Air guns. They're unable to stop Diana (in her golden armor) from landing in the base.
• The Ghost: The Duke of Deception, who is the Greater-Scope Villain as the god that created the Dreamstone, but never appears in the film to actively antagonize Diana. Considering his names are Greek, he was likely killed long ago by Ares anyway.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: Once Maxwell gets the wish-fulfilling powers, his body starts to falter the more requests he makes. He ultimately decides to use a satellite network to connect with everyone on Earth, allowing him to gather the Life Energy of millions, if not billions, at once to not only restore his body, but to turn him into a metahuman.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Steve versus the Secret Service; he's actually quite impressed with their more modern fighting style and uses one of their moves to capture Maxwell.
• Good Parents: Maxwell is very flawed and sleazy, but he commits to being a good father for Alistair. He makes custody weekends a priority and demands that his assistant spoil his son rotten with a pony or motorcar when he feels guilty about an outburst about Alistair coming too soon in the middle of his success. Diana finds out through the lasso that Maxwell had an abusive father, and he refused to hurt Alistair the same way. It pays off in the end when Maxwell apologizes to his son and said he only wanted to make him proud and worthy of love. Alistair says "Daddy" doesn't need to make him proud, Alistair already loves him. Maxwell is stunned that he is actually a good parent.
• A Good Way to Die: This is how Steve convinces Diana to renounce her wish and let him return to the afterlife. He tells her he lived a good life, and meeting and loving Diana only made it better. And while he would wish nothing more to have more time with her, to spend a life with her, he's content to die again knowing it will allow the woman he loves to save the world.
• Grand Theft Me: Steve accidentally and unwilling possesses a random man in the mortal plane after Diana makes her wish on the Dreamstone.
• Grail in the Garbage: Upon first encountering the Dreamstone both Diana and Barbara seem skeptical of its value, even suggesting it was a forged item hidden among more interesting contraband. It becomes evident something is amiss with the stone, but it's not until Diana sees the writing of the gods on the inside of the ring that she realizes the sheer power it has, and even she looks scared.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Duke of Deception, the unseen creator of the Dreamstone.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Diana is reluctant to kill Lord but has no issue binding him with her lasso and then using him to knock down his Secret Service bodyguards. Then after Steve handcuffs himself to Lord, he shoves him into a Secret Service man.
• Hand Wave: There is no basis in physics for the idea that the television broadcast system's particles actually allow one person to "touch" another person remotely, so Maxwell just has somebody wish that it will work that way.
• Hard Truth Aesop: The have-nots of life will always find the wrong moments to haunt you and oftentimes make it hard to appreciate the world as it is.
• Heel Realization: Weaponized by Diana — she uses the Lasso of Truth to force Max to see and accept the truth about himself and his actions.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • As narrated by Diana, the Amazon Asteria sacrificed herself to hold back the forces of men so the other Amazons could escape to Themyscira. Ultimately subverted; she survived and is living incognito in the 1980s.
  • Once again, Steve gives up on a life with Diana so that she can go and save the world. It's even worse this time, as Diana has to be the one to renounce her wish and banish him, and because he was the only thing she ever wanted after a lifetime of selfless service, this makes it her sacrifice as well.
• Hero of Another Story:
  • One of Diana's photos show her (in civilian clothes) aiding Nazi camp survivors, confirming that she was active in World War II in yet-to-be-revealed ways.
  • Hinted about Asteria according to The Stinger.
• High-Heel Power: Barbara's admiration for Diana is emphasized by how she has difficulty walking and working in heels, while the confident warrior Diana can. After her Dreamstone-induced personality change, she is seen buying a pair of tall, sparkly heels as part of a full makeover.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Diana lectures Barbara on using the opponent's force against themself. She puts this into practice against both Cheetah (physically) and Maxwell Lord who manipulates a soldier into wishing that his worldwide broadcast will 'touch' every person in the world, allowing anyone to make a wish and give Maxwell more power. When Diana realizes that he's become too powerful and she can't physically reach him to stop him, she wraps the Lasso of Truth, a weapon that is made from a similar Abstract Apotheosis as the Dreamstone from whence Maxwell received his powers from, and essentially hijacks Maxwell's broadcast to 'touch' everyone with her lasso and compel them to see the truth.
• Honesty Aesop: One of the film's main aesops is the importance of being honest both with others and oneself. When young Diana is caught cheating to win a competition in the prologue, she's disqualified and reminded that "no true hero is born from lies", nor is there any shame in failure. The Greater-Scope Villain is a god of lies who created a magic stone that grants people wishes at a terrible cost, which Max Lord uses to make himself successful rather than admit his business ventures are failures. Diana saves the day by encouraging Max and everyone else who made a wish to renounce their wishes, saying they must embrace the truth that they can't have it all or take shortcuts to get what they want; Diana herself must accept the truth that her lover Steve Trevor - who she'd wished back to life - is gone and let him go.
• Humans Are Bastards: A recurring theme from the original film and the DCEU as a whole. While the first film focused on our never-ending bloodlust, this one focuses on our needlessly greedy ways. It nearly destroys the whole world.
• I Believe I Can Fly: After getting her powers back, Diana lassos herself to the upper atmosphere, and by taking Steve's description about being a pilot, manages to learn to fly.
• Informed Ability: Asteria's golden armor. Diana explains that all the Amazons gave up their armor to create it so that it would be strong enough to take on the entire world, and we're briefly shown Asteria herself using it as she's being pummeled from all sides by the humans without even budging. When Diana dons the armor herself and fights Barbara/Cheetah, it doesn't really offer her any better protection or new powers that her traditional armor doesn't already have, and Barbara is able to tear through the wings rather easily, forcing Diana to ditch them early on. Granted, Barbara is empowered even further by Maxwell Lord's power at that point, but considering that the armor itself is described as being able to take on armies (and it apparently did, considering Asteria is shown to have survived the experience in The Stinger), one would expect that it would perform better than it did against Barbara.
• I Just Want to Be Beautiful: Barbara after being granted her first wish to become "like Diana", which includes being "strong and sexy".
• I Just Want to Be Special: After a lifetime of being ignored and likely bullied, Barbara Minerva specifically wishes to be special like Diana. It takes her time to understand what that actually means and it's also why she refuses to renounce her wish towards the end.
• Immune to Bullets: Averted as Diana picks up several bullet wounds as her powers start to fade. However she clothes herself in Asteria's armor for the final battle, which is first shown protecting her from a couple of Phalanx CIWS that empty their magazines in the process.
• Interquel: The film is set in 1984, and thus takes place between the first Wonder Woman film (which was set in 1918) and the much earlier released Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (which was Diana's first cinematic appearance, and was set in 2015).
• It Only Works Once: The Dreamstone's rule is one wish per customer. At one point Maxwell tries to get an employee to wish a meeting with the President, only to find said employee has already been granted a new car. By the time Maxwell connects with everyone in the world, Alistair tries to wish for Maxwell to be with him, not realizing he wasted his wish earlier when he wished for his "greatness". Maxwell effectively grants Barbara a second wish, to be "an apex predator," by "redirecting" some of the costs he claims from worldwide wishing to her.
• I Want My Jetpack: Averted; Steve is impressed with the widespread affluence of The Future and inventions like jet airplanes, though he doesn't think much of the futon.
• I Want My Mommy!: Played for Drama. The climax features Alistair calling for his dad as he runs from an angry mob and into deserted fields, while a nuclear countdown starts. Maxwell goes My God, What Have I Done? and renounces his wish to rescue his son. When they reunite, Alistair innocently asks if his wish brought Maxwell to him, who assures him of course that's not the case.
• Jackass Genie: The Dreamstone both demands a steep cost for its wishes and warps the wish itself in some way. Diana wishes for Steve Trevor back, and he comes back possessing another man's body, and the cost is Diana slowly losing her powers. No one gets precisely what they wanted in the way they wanted, and everyone pays a cost they cannot bear.
• Jerkass Gods: The creator of the Dreamstone, aka the Duke of Deception, according to Diana. If Barbara's research is correct, the Dreamstone has caused the downfalls of several civilizations, with the latest one even burying it in an unknown location in hopes that it would never be discovered again. Eventually, the stone nearly causes an Apocalypse How via Maxwell.
• Just Plane Wrong: Diana and Steve sit side by side in the jet, a Panavia Tornado, that they commandeer from the Smithsonian. In reality, the Panavia Tornado has a tandem cockpit layout (one behind the other, similar to the F-14 as seen in films like Top Gun). This can actually be seen in the shot panning over the planes as they exit the hangar where the Tornado can clearly be seen with its tandem cockpit configuration. Tornadoes also have nowhere near the range to make a flight from DC to Egypt (and presumably all the way back) without refueling.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Maxwell Lord does a lot of damage in the movie, ruining several people's lives personally with the wishes he grants and very nearly brings forth the destruction of the entire world. However, after being shown by Diana that his actions have endangered his son, he simply recants his wish and rushes to his son. What happened to Maxwell after that is neither shown nor explained, but he receives no onscreen punishment nor is he shown being arrested and appears to get a happy ending as he hugs his son.
  • Barbara Minerva as well. She too escaped justice at the end of the movie and is potentially even worse off than Max, since at least Max seems to have genuinely repented from his misguided actions, but Barbara ends the film still vengeful towards Diana and still looking out for herself. Even though she lost much of her powers, she's still a very dangerous individual who's still on the loose and never clearly repented for her actions. One can hope Diana sparing her in their battle will have an impact, since she had a thoughtful look on hearing Diana's speech.
• Kirk Summation: Diana starts one to Maxwell, while also wrapping his foot in the Lasso of Truth to make sure he literally sees the error of his ways. And it works, specially as Maxwell sees that all he did is threatening the life of his son.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Diana pleads with the world to renounce their wishes and see the beauty they already got rather than the pain and anger they suffer. And she does all this by staring directly into the camera.
• Lighter and Softer: This movie has a more campy tone than the first film. It takes place decades after both World Wars had ended and during a relative time of peace and prosperity for the United States, so the film fully embraces a fitting 1980s aesthetic. Also, the antagonist is morally conflicted as opposed to outright evil like in the first film.
• Like Reality, Unless Noted: The events of this movie to the greater DC universe. The weird day when everyone was suddenly granted a wish resulting in chaos in the streets and nuclear escalation isn't brought up in the chronologically later, previously released movies.
• Literal Genie: Barbara's second wish is "to be number one, an apex predator. Like nothing there's ever been before." She becomes that exactly, trading what's left of her humanity to get it.
• Literal-Minded: Invoked. When the President mentions the satellite system can "broadcast to any device the radio waves touch". Max Lord uses Exact Words and Loophole Abuse to be able to touch everyone on Earth at once and grant their wishes simultaneously.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • Maxwell is well aware of the potential downsides of the Dreamstone, which is why he wishes to become the stone. This allows him to subvert the consequences of his wish by simply taking back what he lost from the other people he grants wishes to. It's implied, however, that the Dreamstone foresaw this, and that the real cost of his wish was going to be his son, had Diana not convinced him to renounce his wish in time.
  • Diana tries to invoke this in the beginning of the film, when she uses a shortcut during the games after she gets knocked off her horse. It gets subverted, however, as Antiope stops her before she can win the games and points out that she cheated.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Diana uses the ancient armor of Asteria (according to legend, built to protect the wearer from all the armies of Mankind) for the final battle, and it's shown capable of blocking an entire magazine of gunfire from several Phalanx CIWS's. However Cheetah can tear through it with her Super-Strength, so Diana discards the wraparound wings that form the shield because they're just getting in her way.
• MacGuffin: The plot of the movie revolves around the Dreamstone, which grants people their deepest desire while also taking something away from them.
• The Mall: Diana steps in to stop an attack on a mall, done by clumsy thieves who after being discovered threaten a child.
• Market-Based Title: The film is being marketed in China as Wonder Woman 2 instead of Wonder Woman 1984. Likely due to its similarity to the famous novel which is banned there outside of academic contexts.
• Meat Puppet: The nameless man who becomes Steve Trevor's vessel. He has a few lines, but not enough for a real personality, and little is shown of him outside of how his home looks and the clothes he has on hand.
• Meaningful Background Event: When Diana and Barbara first discuss the citrine figure, a stuffed large cat can be seen on a shelf behind them.
• Milking the Giant Cow: Goes hand-in-hand with Pedro Pascal's Chewing the Scenery. His gestures are downright operatic.
• A Minor Kidroduction: Again kid Diana in Themyscira starts the movie.
• Missing Mom: The woman who had Alistair with Max is only ever referred to in her absence. Alistair turns up on Max's weekend, indicating she shares custody but is no more present in his life than Max is.
• Mistaken for Exhibit: After being taken to an art exhibit, Steve looks at a trash can as if it's a work of art for a moment since Diana told him the plaza is "all art"... then she has to tell him what it really is.
• Moment of Weakness: After a lifetime of protecting humanity and asking for nothing in return, Diana refuses to renounce her wish for the one thing she has ever wanted in life: Steve. Even if it costs Diana her powers — or her life with how badly wounded she is — and with the world at stake, she refuses to consider the option, until Steve gently coaxes her to let him go so she can go save the world.
• Moving Beyond Bereavement: Ever since the death of Steve Trevor in World War I, Diana has been unwilling to move on and date someone else. During the film, however, she comes in contact with the Dreamstone, an artifact that grants a person a wish - allowing her to inadvertently bring Steve back to life. But his resurrection comes at a price: Steve's spirit was summoned into another man's body, and Diana's powers begin weakening in the process. So that she has the strength for the climactic battle, Diana is forced to renounce her wish, sending Steve's spirit away and giving Diana back her powers. At the end of the film, she seems to be interested in dating another person (coincidentally the man Steve's spirit was inhabiting.)
• Mugging the Monster: A street drunk harasses Barbara twice. The first time she's saved by Diana. The second time she has Diana's Super-Strength, and it ends badly for him.
• Mutually Assured Destruction: The President's wish to get more nuclear weapons so as to stand up for the Soviets end up raising lots of tension, getting the world closer to a nuclear war.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Maxwell, once he sees that not only is the world endangered, but so is his son.
• Mythology Gag: Has its own page.

Tropes N to T

• New Powers as the Plot Demands:
  • Diana manages to create her comic counterpart's invisible jet by using a cloaking ability just as they're taking off in a plane. This power as applied to her had been previously unmentioned; she admits she had only done it once before (to a coffee cup, which she never found afterward) and that it's based on how Zeus hid Themiscyra.
  • Her ability to deflect bullets by spinning her lasso in circles probably counts as well.
  • Averted with the lasso's ability to make people see the truth as well as tell the truth. Although this is the first movie to explicitly state it, we do see Ares use it this way in his final confrontation with Diana in the previous movie.
• Nice to the Waiter: Barbara is shown to be giving leftover food to Leon, a homeless man in the park with whom she's on a first name basis with, implying they are familiar with each other. When she sees him later after beating the man who harassed her, she responds rudely to him, signalling a change in her personality.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: Ronald Reagan was the president of the United States of America in 1984. The president in this movie is unnamed, and is credited as POTUS (the acronym for the president, generally).
• No Name Given: The man whose body becomes the vessel for Steve’s spirit is never named. Kristoffer Polaha is credited as “Handsome Man”.
• No Ontological Inertia: After all the wishes are renounced, everything physical that was granted (i.e. walls in Cairo, hundreds of extra nuclear missiles, Barbara's Cheetah form) simply vanish out of existence, and seemingly without leaving any permanent traces (i.e. damages across Cairo). Whether the world retains any memories of everything that happened is left unanswered.
• No-Sell: Barbara manages to punch through Diana's bracer shockwave, due to inheriting Diana's powers from her wish while Diana's own powers have been weakened by hers. Notably, while in Justice League Superman was able to interrupt that move no other opponent, ranging from Doomsday to Steppenwolf, were able to withstand it like that.
• Not His Sled: It's established that destroying the Dreamstone (i.e., killing Maxwell Lord) will reverse all the wishes it has granted, and Steve and Diana seem to give the possibility real thought. In the climax, a seemingly unstoppable Lord is addressing the people of the world on live TV, while Diana desperately tries to reach him. All of this seems to be building towards an adaptation of the infamous ending to The OMAC Project, where Wonder Woman snaps Lord's neck on live TV after determining there's no other way to beat him. In the film, however, Diana uses the Lasso of Truth to show Lord the error of his ways.
• The Not-Love Interest: The man whose body Steve possesses looks like he'll hook up with Diana during the epilogue. He doesn't, and Diana never learns his name.
• Not Quite Flight: With Steve's advice, Diana learns how to "fly", which is actually her jumping and using her lasso to reach her desired altitude and gliding to her destination. It's quite graceful and gives her added mobility, but not quite a replacement for other forms of travel.
• Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: The film is titled after the year in which it takes place and is not called Wonder Woman 2 with some sort of subtitle which is the norm for franchise films. According to Jenkins, this is because they're going for something more like the James Bond or Indiana Jones series where it's not necessarily beholden to what happened in the other installments so she doesn't see it as being a sequel, even though it technically is a Distant Sequel (and Steve's return from the dead obviously impacts the plot). However, Wonder Woman 2 is being used as the title in at least the Chinese market.
• Offscreen Afterlife: Steve's soul evidently went somewhere between his death in 1918 and his return in 1984 but he can't really remember anything about the experience and struggles even to contextualize it for Diana when she asks him about it. The best he can manage is that wherever it was it felt good.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Implied when Max has a meeting with the President, who is confused because he's pretty sure he was somewhere else before finding himself in the Oval Office to speak with Max.
• Oh, Crap!: Diana and Steve steal a plane, and Steve confidently says that with the way he flies, no one will be able to find them in the night. Then Diana tells him about radar...
  Steve: Well shit, Diana!
• One True Love: Discussed between Diana and Steve, when the latter is trying to convince the former to renounce her wish. Steve can't understand why Diana is so desperate to hold on to him, when there is an entire world of guys out there (including the very man he's possessing) she can move on with. Diana flatly and rather angrily tells him that she doesn't want any other guy — she wants him. Because in the end, the only person she has ever really loved is him.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: It's one of Maxwell Lord's character traits. He generally speaks with a generic American accent and smarmy business manner. Get him angry, however, and he reverts to a Latino brogue. Justified as he is a businessman in the 1980s at a time when few minorities were in such a position of power.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Early in the film, Barbara is shown to be such a nice woman that she packs her leftover dinner to give to a homeless man in the park, with the implication that this is not the first time she's done this for him. Later, when the same homeless man comes to investigate after she beats the man who harassed her, she's rude to his concerns, proving that the cost of the 'special-ness' she wished for was a loss of her humanity.
  • When Diana realizes the Dreamstone's origins, she actually looks scared. If something scares the woman who's fought an alien monster and a literal god, you know it has to be bad.
• Papa Wolf: Generally, Maxwell will give a Death Glare at anyone who dares speak disparagingly in his son's presence. This is what convinces Maxwell to renounce his wish. He realizes Alistair will die in exchange for the world, and Maxwell is not willing to make his son pay the price.
• Parrying Bullets: Diana is seen blocking bullets with her bracers in the trailer.
• Parting-Words Regret: Subverted; a married couple in the UK get into a nasty fight when suddenly the husband proclaims that sometimes he wishes his wife would drop dead. Unfortunately, Maxwell Lord has already begun his broadcast so the Dreamstone’s powers make the wife have a sudden heart attack. The husband can only look on in horror as paramedics attempt to revive his wife and when Diana sabotages Maxwell Lord’s broadcast and encourages everybody to renounce their wishes to save the world, the husband immediately does so in order to have his wife back.
• Pet the Dog: When Maxwell gains the power to grant wishes, he asks Alistair to wish for anything he wants. Alistair wishes for his dad's greatness, causing his father to give a Little "No" because he wanted Alistair to get something for himself.
• Ponzi: Maxwell Lord's commercials claim to offer high dividends for a monthly recurring investment, but it becomes clear that he has no oil and he's trying to attract new investors solely to pay off his old ones. His chief investor directly accuses him of running a Ponzi scheme.
• Punched Across the Room: Barbara is startled when a drunk who attacks her suddenly ends up on his back quite a few feet away after Diana appears on the scene. After gaining Diana's powers she understands why, and Diana's first indication that Barbara has Took a Level in Badass is when both she and Steve are simultaneously hurled down the length of a White House corridor.
• Psychotic Smirk: Maxwell Lord smirks a lot like this, especially towards the end.
• Punctuated Pounding: "I can do this all... night... LONG!"
• Race Lift: This version of Maxwell Lord is Latino, with Lord being an anglicization of his birth name, Lorenzano.
• Real Event, Fictional Cause: Barbara's research into the Dreamstone suggests that it was the true cause of the downfall of several historical figures and ancient civilizations. Steve is slightly skeptical of this but that hint of doubt is dashed away soon enough.
• Reality Warper: This might be the simplest explanation for the nature of the Dreamstone's (and later on Maxwell Lord's) power. Though the movie never clearly defines the limits of Lord's abilities (if there are any), the only onscreen restriction to the reality altering is that he can only use it when someone who has yet to make a wish from the Dreamstone asks him to, and he needs to be touching them.
• Recurring Riff: In addition to Wonder Woman's Uncommon Time Epic Rocking, Barbara starts getting a four-note trill as she becomes more aggressive and angry, particularly the first time she confronts the heckler on the street. They are the same four intervals as the Wonder Woman theme, if in a faster tempo. Apparently, Power Copying Diana includes getting her theme music!
• Red Herring: Among the artifacts consficated from the black-market is a stuffed feline, which may hint of how Barbara getting her powers. It isn't and Barbara's powers are gained from a completely different artifact.
• Remake Cameo: In The Stinger, Asteria, the great Amazon warrior that was one of Diana's idols in life, is played by the other famous live-action Wonder Woman, Lynda Carter.
• Rescue Romance: Subverted. Diana saves Barbara from a drunk, holding her in a protective position after the lady had dinner with her. Barbara looks at her with awe and admiration. So much admiration, in fact, that she asks the Dreamstone to make her like Diana, to have her confidence. The ship is definitely sunk when Steve returns in another man's body and the wish starts corrupting Barbara, turning her awe into resentment and envy.
• Removable Steering Wheel: At the start of the fight with Maxwell Lord's security force, Diana takes a truckful of mooks out of the picture by leaping onto the truck's cabin and using her Super-Strength to tear off the steering wheel. She then reminds the astonished driver that the brakes still work.
• Retcon:
  • This film very gently changes the decision in the earlier installments in the franchise of Diana walking away from humanity for a century to being an active, albeit underground hero in the interim. Jenkins herself says she considers this a Broad Strokes sequel.
  • It also has Diana learn to fly on her own, something that would have been very useful in her fights with Doomsday, and especially Superman.
• Ride the Lightning: Diana is seen using her Lasso of Truth to swing in the sky using lightning bolts to hook the Lasso on while she is learning to fly.
• Rousseau Was Right: Diana undoes the damage Max does to the world by broadcasting a plea for everyone to see the beautiful world they have in spite of all their anger and hostilities and squabbles and renounce their wishes. Seeing the merit behind her words thanks to the effects of the Lasso of Truth also being broadcasted through Max's power, they all oblige, reversing much of the damage and saving the lives of those they inadvertently took in the process.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • Max Lord's office was practically barren in the beginning of the film in stark contrast to his luxurious lobby when he first enters it. After he grants Raquel's wish of having "more help" with the sudden workload, numerous people start filing in. By the climax of the movie his office is practically bursting at the seams with employees he's granted wishes to. It also makes it much more terrifying during the final battle when it's empty again with the exception of Alistair and then rioters breaking down the door.
  • When Steve and Diana commandeer a plane to travel to Bialya, she mentions that his ability to fly is the one thing she's never understood, and he teaches her the essence of flying. When she renounces her wish and regains her power, she also gains the power to fly, implying that Steve and his love are a part of her power now.
• Sadistic Choice: In order to save the world, Diana needs to regain her powers by renouncing her wish, especially since she's bleeding out. Unfortunately, her wish was for Steve to live again, and it is the one thing she's ever wanted in her long life. Steve convinces her that she not only needs to save the world but also save herself.
• Selective Obliviousness: One possible interpretation of Diana ignoring the implications of Steve possessing someone else; she may have told herself that the other man didn't have much of a life on his own, or that he had actually died before Steve possessed him rather than Steve taking another's life for himself.
• Selfless Wish: Alistair, hoping it will make his father happy, makes a wish for Max's success.
• Sequel Adaptation Iconic Villain: While Ares, the previous movie's Big Bad arguably is an iconic villain for itself, this movie introduces the more iconic villainess Cheetah, Wonder Woman's Arch-Enemy from the comics.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: As Diana is pushing for wish renouncement, Lord tries to explain that he does not want to and could have anything he wants. She tells him she was telling everyone else via a connection to his ankle with the Lasso of Hestia.
• Spanner in the Works: Alistair ends up causing Maxwell to renounce his wish. The man had delusions of grandeur, saying he was a god who could make everyone happy in the world and the wishes would make everything better. Diana snaps him out of it by showing Alistair running in the fields and screaming for his dad, on the brink of nuclear war. Maxwell goes My God, What Have I Done? and renounces his wish to save his son from certain death.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In the comics, Wonder Woman's conflict with Maxwell Lord infamously ends with her executing him on live television as it was the only way to stop him from further ruining the world. In this film, Lord is peacefully removed from power and gets to quietly retire and go back to his family, while the nations of the world begin to heal from the mayhem he wrought.
• Spin to Deflect Stuff: Diana is shot at by security guards at the White House and deflects all the bullets by spinning the Lasso of Truth at high speed in circular motion in front of herself like an impromptu deflector shield.
• Spiritual Successor: To Superman II and Spider-Man 2, both of which feature the central theme of the hero giving up their heart's desire — namely, their love interest — in order to focus on saving the world.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Diana and Steve. Right before the main climax of the movie, History Repeats and sees Steve "die" again in order for Diana to save the world. While both know it is necessary and share a Last Kiss, Diana ultimately can't bear to watch Steve go and runs away before she renounces her wish.
• Stating the Simple Solution: Diana makes it clear she doesn't want to kill Maxwell. She understands he grasped power he couldn't understand. So she tries to catch up and talk to him, to ask him to give up the stone of his own free will. The problem is if she gets even within twenty feet, Maxwell brings out the big guns because he knows what she is. It takes Diana showing him that Alistair will die to snap him out of it.
• Stealing from Thieves: Invoked by the robbers who steal not from the display area of jewellery store, but from the black market stash hidden in the back, knowing the store won't report it. And if one of them hadn't dropped his gun while fleeing the scene, it would have worked.
• The Stinger: A superstrong brunette saves people from being crushed by a falling lamppost. But it's not Diana - Asteria is still alive! And she's played by Lynda Carter!
• Stupid Crooks: The jewel thieves in the mall, especially the chubby one who is so incompetent that he singlehandly ruins what was otherwise a clean operation and only makes it worse like threatening to throw a girl to her death for no reason despite his own buddies shouting at him to stop.
• Stupid Evil: In the opening sequence, the four robbers have a pretty decent plan that would allow them to get in and out without notice. One of the robbers messes it up by having an unsecured pistol tucked in his pants that he drops as they all leave the jewelry store. When he gets noticed, one of his partners tries to appear like another patron, and the robber outs him immediately by calling out to him. Then he panics and holds a child over a railing. How he expected this to allow him to get away is anyone's guess. Even his partners are horrified by this and try to argue him down.
• Superhero Movie Villains Die: Averted. Max and Barbara both survive the film after they recant their wishes.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: Justified. When Max nearly causes The End of the World as We Know It, none of the other heroes show up, simply because they don't exist. Superman had only been sent to Earth shortly beforehand, Batman is just a boy whose parents had been shot only a few years prior, Aquaman’s parents wouldn’t meet for another year, and Shazam, Cyborg, and the Flash all have quite a way to go before they’re born. Hence, Diana is the only one that stands in the way of humanity's total destruction. It's implied that Asteria was Walking the Earth and helping where she could.
• Swapped Roles: The first film features a world-wry Steve guiding a literally-out-of-place Diana on the life outside Themyscira. Once he returns to life through a reincarnation of sorts, Diana has to guide Steve on how things are since his return.
• Sympathy for the Hero: In the climax, Barbara realizes that Diana has her strength back, and what that means. She says, "You renounced your wish" and pauses in their fight. Diana gets up with a look of agony.
• Tempting Fate: When Barbara and Diana examine one relic, they note it's made of citrine, so probably a fake sold at a tourist trap. They even laugh about how it's not worth much while thinking of what they would wish for if it was real. It ended up being not only a real antique but a powerful one, with tragic consequences.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Subverted. While in the comics Maxwell Lord ended up this way, which led to his death, Diana recognizes that he and Barbara are powered by a human desire to have what they want and aren't truly evil, since she also made a wish. She convinces them that they aren't villains and to recant their desires.
• Time-Shifted Actor: Child actress Lilly Aspell returns as the younger version of Diana for the scenes set on Themyscira.
• Title by Year: The film is titled after the year in which it takes place, 1984.
• Took a Level in Badass: Since discovering her heritage in the last movie, Diana has been exploring her powers as a demigoddess. This includes trying to turn things invisible, like her father had done to Themyscira before his death. She then manages to turn the plane Steve and her are flying to Cairo invisible — what makes this even more impressive is that she was (unknowingly) losing her powers at the time.
• Tragic Keepsake: Diana still has the watch of her long-dead love, Steve Trevor, and a photo of him. She also went to his family's ranch and had a photo of herself taken there.
• Trumplica: The resemblance between this movie's version of Maxwell Lord and Donald Trump has been noted by a number of reviewers and media outlets.
• Trickster God: The god who created the Dreamstone, aka the Duke of Deception. According to Diana, he is not a benevolent deity.

Tropes U to Z

• Underside Ride: Wonder Woman tries clinging underneath a truck during the fight with Maxwell Lord's security force to escape the gunfire. Unfortunately they know she's there and start shredding the tires with bullets trying to shoot her, so she uses her Super-Strength to break the driveshaft and flip the truck.
• Universal Driver's License: Steve is able to fly a modern jet remarkably smoothly despite being a biplane pilot, with jet aircraft being introduced 30 years after his death.
• Unholy Matrimony: Downplayed. While Barbara and Maxwell do sleep together early on, their relationship for the rest of the movie is strictly professional.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Let's just say that if the four thieves hadn't nearly stolen a relic made of citrine, and an artifacts black-market hadn't smuggled it in to sell to Lord, the rest of the movie wouldn't have happened.
• Villainous Parental Instinct: The villain, Maxwell Lord, has gained the power to grant wishes but at a great cost. He uses this power with very little discretion, granting them wishes in exchange for their wealth and power. However, he tries to prevent his own son from making a wish while touching him, knowing it could cost him greatly. At the end of the film, he recants his powers, but only after he sees his own son in danger because of everything he has done, and immediately goes to rescue him.
• Villain Team-Up: Maxwell Lord eventually gets the help of Barbara Minerva as she doesn't want to stop being powerful.
• Villainous Underdog: Barbara was an ignored and unlucky nerd before meeting a Statuesque Stunner and saying she wanted to be like her. So when she becomes popular, desired, and above all, as powerful as Diana, she's not willing to leave this new life behind.
  Minerva: You've always had everything... while people like me have had nothing!
• We Do Not Know Each Other: Diana is pursued by the "handsome man" who calls her by name and insists on talking with her, but Diana tries to dismiss him saying he does not know her. Until the illusion is revealed that Steve's soul has taken over his body. At the end of the movie, Diana runs into the same man (not possessed by Steve anymore) and they actually have a short light conversation where she compliments his wardrobe, having recognized the man's face. We never learn the man's name though.
• We Used to Be Friends: Diana and Barbara start the film as friends, and then when the latter discovers Diana's intent to reverse the wish that made her special she decides to fight her. And it's clear the Amazon is guilt ridden about having to fight a person she had liked.
• Wham Line: When Barbara calls Wonder Woman by her first name, after knocking her back ten feet, Diana knows that things have just gotten worse.
  • When Maxwell Lord has reached godly levels of power thanks to the Dreamstone, Diana makes a heartfelt speech pointing out all the damage that selfish wishing has caused, and that the world cannot withstand it. Maxwell laughs this off and says that he finally has everything he wants...and then Diana says: "I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to everyone else." Her speech has been broadcast across the world, and it's enough to get everyone who wished for something to realize what they've done and renounce their wishes, reversing the Dreamstone's effects. Even Max himself renounces his wishes when he realizes that it will be not him, but rather his son, who will pay the price for Max's own selfish wishing.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Barbara is last seen at the site of her battle with Diana, back to normal physically, but we never learn if she gets back to the museum, or how the experience has affected her.
• The White House: Maxwell Lord goes there to fulfill the President's wish, and get total autonomy as a result. Diana and Steve Trevor follow him there, leading to a fight with the guards. And Barbara also appears to ensure Diana doesn't get Maxwell.
• The Whole World Is Watching: Maxwell Lord's plan to grant the wish of every person in the world (thereby causing society to fall into complete chaos and bringing about The End of the World as We Know It) involves taking over a top-secret experimental satellite network being developed by the U.S. Government and simultaneously broadcasting himself on every television and radio across the planet. Though fortunately, this plan is foiled when Wonder Woman uses the same system and the Lasso of Truth to communicate to the world, convincing everyone to renounce their wishes and restoring everything to normal.
• Wishing for More Wishes: Maxwell Lord gets around the one-wish limit by wishing to become the Dreamstone, thereby ensuring his supply of wishes is only limited by the number of people he can get to wish on his behalf. Furthermore, it also allows him to choose what costs are paid by the wishers, so he profits on both ends of the scale.
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: The opening of the movie shows how Diana was trained to use her powers properly and honestly. Barbara shows what it is like when you have no such support.
• A Wizard Did It: The technology Lord uses to hijack all screens in the world is experimental, and even if it works as advertised it's not clear if it would really work to conduct wishes like he wants. He gets one of the techs to wish that it will work for him, and he's good to go.
• World-Healing Wave: After everyone renounces their wishes we get a montage of all the results disappearing and the world returning back to normal.
• Would Hurt a Child: One of the mall thieves takes a young girl hostage and threatens to drop her over the railing to the ground floor to get security to back off. His fellow thieves are appalled that he would do something like this and just like everybody else are shouting at him not to do it.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child:
  • When one of the mall thieves grabs a young girl as a hostage and threatens her to get security to back off, his fellow criminals are shocked and horrified that he would do something like that and shout at him to not hurt the kid instead of taking advantage of the situation to escape while security was distracted with the hostage situation.
  • While Maxwell's acquired security team has no problem trying to shoot and kill Diana during their confrontation on the road, they swerve around her when she falls onto the road holding the two young children she was trying to save.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: The President asks for 100 more nukes. By 1990 the United States had produced 70,000 nuclear weapons. An extra hundred nukes is an increase of roughly a fifth of one percent. Though he also wishes for them to be a lot closer to the Soviet border, which is what throws the Soviets into a panic.

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"Renounce your wish if you want to save this world."