Pedro Pascal wears a Rolex Datejust

I keep coming back to how carefully Maxwell Lord is dressed to fail. Patty Jenkins set Wonder Woman 1984 in the Reagan boom on purpose, all gold chains and power suits and televised prosperity, and she hands Pedro Pascal an oil man going broke who sells that dream for a living. Lord runs infomercials promising desperate people they can have everything if they only wish hard enough. Gal Gadot's Diana, Chris Pine's Steve Trevor, and Kristen Wiig's Barbara Minerva all get pulled into his real plan, an ancient stone that grants any wish and quietly takes something back for each one. Pascal plays him pathetic first and dangerous second, and that order is the whole performance.

So what does a man like that wear? An all-gold Rolex Datejust, a gold case on a gold Jubilee bracelet under a fluted bezel, the loudest watch in the room worn by the one man who can least afford it. Costume designer Lindy Hemming kept it on his wrist scene after scene, through every change of outfit. The Datejust came by that confidence honestly. Rolex launched it in 1945 for the company's 40th birthday, the first self-winding wrist chronometer to show the date in a window at three o'clock. On Maxwell Lord it reads as pure 1984, a guarantee of wealth strapped to a man who has none.