#Wonder Woman 1984 Ending Isn’t What Superhero Fans Expect, Director Explains Why

Filmmaker Patty Jenkins’ long-awaited superhero movie Wonder Woman 1984 has finally been released in many parts of the world. While reviews for the film have been generally positive, more than a few critics have said it lacks a certain amount of action that audiences have come to expect from superhero films. In an interview with NYT, Jenkins revealed that she deliberately chose to add less violence to the movie, particularly the climax, which takes the story down new and unexpected paths.

“I did a couple of things in this movie that everybody said we couldn’t do: Nobody dies, and she wins in the end with a conversation. To me, this was a Trojan horse: I wanted to tick off every box of what you’re looking for in a superhero movie, but actually what I’m hopefully pulling off is a subversion where instead you’re saying to this younger generation that sees these movies, ‘You have to find the hero within.’ [The lesson is] we could go bomb any country in the world, and it’s not going to stop the clock that’s coming at us in about 40 years. That’s exactly the point [of the film].”

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Patty Jenkins had previously revealed that the ending to 2017’s Wonder Woman had been changed by the studio to make it more action-packed, which is why Jenkins had to insist that the climax of Wonder Woman 1984 should stick to her personal, much less-violent vision. It will be interesting to see how major audiences react to the film’s approach to conflict resolution through words rather than fisticuffs.

While fans have had to wait for a very long time to see Wonder Woman 1984, it seems the final product is the one that Jenkins feels is the best version of the story she had wanted to tell, as she explained that if the film had been released last year as was once intended, it would have been a rushed version of what it is now.

“I never wanted [the film] to come out in the winter. I was fighting the studio because we were supposed to come out summer of 2020, and then they didn’t have a big movie for 2019. I was in the middle of making a limited series, and all of a sudden they announced that they had moved up the release date by seven months, which was going to give me way less time to make the movie than I had for “Wonder Woman.” I was saying, “You guys, why would you guarantee I can’t make as good of a film by making it too quick? So we argued about that all year, and I had to drop out of doing a whole limited series and only do the first two episodes, and just race to write an 80-page treatment at the same time as I’m trying to direct the show. We finally got lucky that it got moved back. It would have been a much worse movie if it had come out then.”

Directed and co-written by Patty Jenkins, Wonder Woman 1984 stars Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, and Natasha Rothwell. The film arrives in theaters and HBO Max on December 25, while debuting theatrically in international markets starting on December 16. This news comes from NYTimes.

Topics: Wonder Woman 2, Wonder Woman, HBO Max, Streaming