With all the 80’s neon noise Wonder Woman 84 was making throughout December, the full collective of us super nerds in all of our giddy childish girl power glory, not a single one of us even stopped to realize or remember that our Pixar friends over at Disney Plus ALSO had a movie coming out on Xmas Day!

Nor do we care! We do not hesitate or even bat an eye.

I spent Christmas Day zipping back and forth between nieces and nephew’s houses, delivering presents, taking pictures then re-delivering the other set of presents to the cousins’ house. And after hours of deliveries and opening gifts and eating everyone’s cookies like I was Santa himself – I went home and ate ham dinner with the parents and settled in to watch WW84 – just as I had promised myself! As I’m sure thousands of other fans just like me are hoping the biggest TV they have in their house is going to do some kind of justice to the sequel of the very best female starring super hero movie to date! (Whoo-hoo!) Set in my generation! (An even bigger rounder of applause!!) With a stellar cast. (THE CROWD GOES WILD!!!)

And an unnecessary long two and a half hours later, popcorn bowls are empty, many of us are smiling and nodding thoughtfully, some of us are puzzled and waiting for the credits to reveal something more than the gorgeous delightful appearance of Lynda Carter, still more of us have flat out crashed on couches and floors (though to be fair, it is Christmas, and that might be due to the fact that kids made you get up at 6am and not a testament to the movie), but a lot of us are angry texting and posting our feelings of sheer disappointment on Twitter and Facebook.

Not me of course. I’m in the first group. WW84 doesn’t live up to its predecessor of course. My god how could it? But it isn’t a bad movie by any means. In fact after a second watch I would even say its a good movie! Unfortunately it doesn’t really matter, because the very next night I flipped over to the Disney channel and watched the movie I should have been watching December 25th.

Its called Soul and it is literally sucking the life our dear Diana Prince!

Pixar hardly ever misses and Pete Doctor, the director of Inside Out along with Kemp Powers, playwright and director of up coming movie 1 Night in Miami reminds us enough of Inside Out while simultaneously creating a whole visually stunning world of its own. Soul is a gorgeous flowing blend of everything we have come to adore about Pixar. Absolutely stunning animation, detailed to the enth degree with a story that can suck you in, make you sob over the smallest detail and always leave you wishing there was more, Pixar movies seem to get better each year. Soul is no exception.

And so…poor poor Wonder Woman. Because what should have been our Black Panther of 2020 might be destined to be our Iron Man 2 instead.

And it won’t completely be the fault of the movie itself – though it certainly has its faults! The biggest being it doesn’t really seem to know what it wants to be! Knowing the movie could never re-claim 2017 status, I would have gone in the complete opposite direction with this film – ALL OUT 80’s FUN. Which is what I thought the plan was! 60 years or so after WWI, Wonder Woman must somewhat established at the this point in society right? But in the opening fight in the mall, none of the citizens knows who she is! Which I found infuriating. The movie could have spent that first long hour with a few more fun scenes of Diana saving some locals, stopping thieves etc. Friendly neighborhood Wonder Woman saving the day. Meanwhile The stone, the wishes, over the top Pedro Pascal, Steve Trevor’s return…all of that stays.

But perhaps cut back Kristen Wiig as Cheetah/Barbara a bit. Do we need to see the creation of her character through to the end? No! Keep her in the wings a little. Save a little for the 3rd movie – we already know there’s going to be one!

The bottom line is, WW84 was simultaneously too much and not enough at the same time. It’s not cohesive in every way that Soul and it leaves you a little empty and a lot disappointed. Which is too bad, because it isn’t that bad. I could literally watch Chris Pine and Gal Godot together again and again!

But I really need to go over to Disney Plus and watch Soul again instead…