Wonder Woman 1984

I wonder, woman. The woman in question, writer-director Patty Jenkins, has me pondering whether or not she has purposely presented a particularly female cinematic maneuver here, by wanting to have her dramatic cake and eat it, too. The villains in this flick--the now-ubiquitous Kristen Wiig and the heretofore unknown to me Pedro Pascal--aren't really all that villainous; they're just desperate and/or misunderstood. Despite that handicap, they still wind up putting the world in mortal danger anyway. Thank goodness--or a ton of box office for previous outings, take your pick--that Gal Gadot's charisma is here to save the day, the world, and the movie. Without her influence, and some nicely audacious action sequences, this would be a middling at best effort; with her, the film merits a tempered see-it recommendation. Her co-stars do decent if not outstanding work: Wiig is just about good enough as the rival woman, while Pascal is effective as the would-be deluded world-wrecker. Chris Pine is just sort of there, though maybe he shouldn't be; he's not offensive, just not much of a contributor. Put it all together and it's enough (barely) to hold the franchise over till the next inevitable outing, and for now that's probably good enough.