It’s no secret that director Patty Jenkins had to fight tooth and nail to realize her vision for the first DCEU Wonder Woman movie. Oone of the most attractive ideas Wonder Woman 1984speech from is that while Jenkins’ first foray into Themysciran’s heroism was a resounding success, never relaxed enough to step back and let her do her thing properly.
With Wonder Woman being an integral part of the DC Comics brand identity, it’s easy to see why the studio may have been as precious as it was with the IP when Jenkins was first brought into the tumultuous production of the film, when she was first offered to direct a Wonder Woman movie in 2007. Jenkins initially refused Warner – and So signed up, left due to creative differences in 2011—just to re-direct the project years later, after she left what became Thor: The Dark World. But during a recent conversation at Marc Maron’s WTF podcast (by Indiewire), Jenkins went into detail about how she felt intensely marginalized after being tapped into Wonder Woman– so much so that for Jenkins, it looked like the studio just wanted her around for optics.
“They wanted to hire me like a beard,” said Jenkins. “They wanted me to walk the set as a woman, but it was their story and vision. And my ideas? They didn’t even want to read my script. “
According to Jenkins, a fundamental difference in perspectives was the root of the problem that manifested itself as Warner Bros. did not have faith in Jenkins’ point of view as a Wonder Woman fan. Where Jenkins wanted his film to explore the ideals and values that Wonder Woman incarnates, she felt that the studio was more interested in dissecting the success of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films in an attempt to recreate it with Princess Themysciran.
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“Even when I entered Wonder Woman it was like, ‘Uhh, yeah, OK, but let’s do it another way,’ ”explained Jenkins. “But I thought, ‘Women don’t want to see this. She being tough and tough and cutting off people’s heads … I’m a Wonder Woman fan, that’s not what we’re looking for. ‘Still, I could feel that tremulous nervousness [on their part] from my point of view. “
Of course, there are always multiple sides to each story, and with so many different scripts and creative teams that have been attached to what would become Wonder Woman, it is certain that there will be other memories like for what happened. Given how drastically different in terms of overall tightness Wonder Woman 1984 ended up being compared to its predecessor, it’s interesting to consider what kind of conversations we had behind closed doors in the months leading up to its launch—and what kind of conversations Jenkins and Warner Bros. may have in the near future.
Wonder Woman 1984 is currently in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.
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