You may be looking at the title of this article and saying to yourself, “yeah… but what does that really mean?” Truth be told part of it was my self-indulgent way of pretending to be clever by using the double entendre about the long-awaited screen return of Diana Prince, courtesy of the amazing duo of director Patty Jenkins and star Gal Gadot.
But the other part of said entendre is truly to acknowledge the truth about how challenging this year has been, and that after all we’ve been through, we deserve the treat and comfort of a celluloid (or digital) superhero spectacle at a time like this — particularly in the most appropriate form of Wonder Woman; a hero who embodies love, compassion, and understanding. And by bringing Wonder Woman 1984 to theaters and into our homes on December 25, so we can enjoy the continuing adventures of Princess Diana of Themyscira, that’s exactly what Jenkins and Gadot have done.
We had the great honor of participating in a conversation with these two powerful filmmakers recently to discuss their upcoming Christmas present to us, and what it means to them (as well as us fans). Here’s what they had to say:
“I’m so excited,” Gadot started. “The movie has been ready for a year. And today is the first time we’re talking to people who are not crew and cast who have seen the movie. I can’t wait to talk to you guys about it!”
The pair were asked about bringing Themyscira back in this film, why the sequences in both films resonate so much with fans, and whether there is potential to do a full movie set in the Amazonian realm.
“Yeah I have a whole Amazon movie I’m trying to get made,” Jenkins replied. “But right now everything is so up in the air, I don’t know if it will happen, but there’s an entire Amazon movie that I think could be done after Diana leaves. Those are such great characters. You can’t really do another Wonder Woman while she’s there because she leaves after she discovers her power and we saw that… I do know certain things about why people responded to it so much. I do hear people saying that they felt like they’ve never seen it before… I wasn’t thinking about that while I made it. And I’m friends with so many badass women that it was like ‘sure! of course there’s a ton of badass women! let’s do it!’ And so when people were saying they haven’t seen it reflected before, I was like, ‘Oh yeah! I guess that’s true. I guess you haven’t ever seen a female battle sequence before.’ But I wasn’t thinking about it at the time. It was something I wasn’t planning on putting in the second movie. And then I was like ‘whoa! it’ll be weird not to have them,’ but then I realized why we had to have them in the second movie. When I realized lots and lots of people may see the second movie but [have not seen] the first movie. If you haven’t seen the first movie, and you don’t understand who she is and that she comes from a mythical land, you’d be very confused about what was happening. So I ended up finding a perfect reason, and there’s a lesson [Diana] has to learn that she still hasn’t learned, as is true for all of us.”
“I think it’s the context as well,” Gadot added. “I think it’s heavenly, and it looks so otherworldly… but it’s also the context of everything. I think that’s what makes it so profound and strong.”
Gal was then asked about how challenging the stuntwork was this time around.
“The challenging part was mostly the physical part,” Gadot stated. “We shoot for almost eight months, 5-6 days a week. It’s very intensive. Working on set is just delightful… But the hardest parts were how demanding the shoots were and how physical it was. Because it was very important for Patty that we do a minimal amount of CGI… most of [the action scenes] was real people doing it for real. So for obvious reasons it took longer to shoot and it’s very tiring on your body. But then you see the result and I was so satisfied with it. Because you can tell the difference between the CGI action and the real action. So that was the hardest part. Because other than that Wonder Woman feels like a second home for me.”
Jenkins was then asked about the choice to reuse some of the Batman V Superman score in the film.
“It’s funny, when you’re working with the same composer, we temped that in, and the pasting of it was cut so perfectly to it,” Jenkins began. “So Hans and his guys kept writing different things. And it got to the point where Hans said, ‘why are we doing this? This is from the DC Universe. This is a song that existed in their movies. Why would it not come back? If it’s in the same universe why aren’t we just using the same song’… It’s such a beautiful track, it’s from the same composer, it’s from the same world. So why wouldn’t we just use it? And it stuck.”
Gadot was also asked about the lasso work in the film, and given the irony of co-star Pedro Pascal’s previous lasso-snapping role from Kingsman: The Golden Circle, whether or not they had a lasso-off on set.
“No!” Gadot laughed. “But now we should totally do it! I’d never thought about that!”
To conclude our time with them, when asked about how the film and the character of Diana really embodying the spirit of love and compassion as a whole hits during times like 2020, Gadot had this to say. “Who knew? This is something Patty and I were discussing. We shot the movie in completely different times — back in 2018. And now watching the movie just makes things feel more relevant than ever.”
And I think we can all agree, Jenkins and Gadot could not have delivered the movie at a more appropriate time. Wonder Woman is the hero the world needs right now. And this Christmas, at long last, she’s coming to bring joy and wonder back to us all.
Wonder Woman 1984 hits theaters and HBO Max on Christmas Day, December 25, 2020!
