Patty Jenkins Says When She First Joined WONDER WOMAN, WB Wouldn't Even Read Her Script
Despite recent reviews of the Wonder Woman sequel, it’s undeniable that director Patty Jenkins’ first Wonder Woman film was a great movie. It was visually stunning with a great story, and gave us a great introduction to the character of Diana Prince. But Jenkins says that her first film in the genre was marred by doubt, and the studio made her feel like a female stand-in for a director instead of empowering her, but she got the job done anyway.
In a recent interview with Marc Maron's WTF podcast, per The Playlist, Jenkins said that although she was in the director’s chair, “she felt as though she was merely there as a token female as opposed to being the creative who was responsible for bringing the film to life. She also expressed that the studio seemingly wanted the tone of the film to be much more gritty, mirroring the precedent set by films like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad.”
“They wanted to hire me like a beard; they wanted me to walk around on set as a woman, but it was their story and their vision. And my ideas? They didn’t even want to read my script. There was such mistrust of a different way of doing things and a different point of view. So that was definitely happening, even when I first joined Wonder Woman it was like, ‘Uhh, yeah, ok, but let’s do it this other way.’ But I was like, ‘Women don’t want to see that. Her being harsh and tough and cutting people’s heads off, that’s not what— I’m a Wonder Woman fan, that’s not what we’re looking for. Still, I could feel that shaky nervousness [on their part] of my point of view.”
She definitely dialed into what Wonder Woman represents and ended up making her a much more complex and nuanced character than I think we would have gotten if WB had gotten their way and busted out their dark and hardcore Wonder Woman that they originally envisioned. She went on to add:
“They were nervous that it wasn’t viable. They were all freaked out by all the female superhero films that had failed, the smaller ones that had failed, and also Christopher Nolan was making the Dark Knight thing, so I think they were just trying to figure out what they were doing with DC at that time.”
That makes sense, as DC hadn’t really had a great movie since The Dark Knight, and they’ve had some not so great movies since as well. It’s too bad that the Wonder Woman sequel didn’t hold up to the first film, but I hope to see Jenkins’ vision come back across in the third film.
Update: Patty Jenkins goes on to debunk these claims saying: