Wonder Woman 1984 may be only three and a half weeks into production, with 20 more weeks to go, but there was no way director Patty Jenkins would show up to Comic-Con with Gal Gadot and Chris Pine and not have something to show.
Or was it just Gadot along for the ride? “I am actually not really here right now—I’m just an aura of emotional support for my friends,” Pine joked at the panel, alluding to the mystery behind Steve Trevor seemingly returning from the dead 607 years later and looking the same age. Jenkins would only say, “It’s a very important part” of our movie.
But she did have a scene cut together, and in its bright colors, settings, and light tone, it actually recalled the Lynda Carter TV series more than just a little bit, though of course it’s still the movie Wonder Woman you know and love.
It begins with Wonder Woman (whose costume colors look brighter this time) leaping into the upper level of a shopping mall. A young girl with glasses stares at her in admiration, but Diana’s eyes are on a couple of bad guys with guns (and very ’80s bad guy-style hair and outfits). She grabs the little girl, corkscrew planchas through the air to become a human shield against there bullets, puts the girl in the lasso and flings her across the mall, where she slides right into a giant teddy bear and laughs. Diana then ropes the bad guys’ hands, crushes their guns with her fingers, and still holding her end of the lasso, jumps over the balcony, pulling then villains towards the railing. (Will they get pulled over the edge? Will she let go and leave them tied? We don’t see that part.) There’s a hard cut to the Wonder Woman 1984 logo, and a quick shot of her running down a busy city street.
“Eras are important,” said Jenkins, noting that 1917 was in some ways the beginning of modernity. The year 1984, on the other hand, “really was mankind at its best and worst” and the idea is “to see Wonder Woman at a time that’s pretty much us at our most extreme. Everything we were doing right then, we thought would go on forever.” This includes not just the great music and movies, but the scariness of the Cold War as well.
Wonder Woman, says Gal Gadot, “is the extreme version of her strong opinionated mother who is also very warm and loving. All of my girlfriends are all very strong and smart and independent and soft and funny, and I believe that’s the way we are.”
Jenkins adds, “She is us more than most superheroes,” noting that people of all kinds can find in themselves a Wonder Woman of sorts. “Loving and good and kind and warm, yet powerful without question… That’s what I care about.”
We’ll have to wait to see Cheetah, it seems, or figure out why and how Pine is back, but the actor did let drop the tidbit that his dad’s best friend was Lyle Waggoner, the original live-action Steve Trevor, who similarly transitioned through different eras when the TV show self-rebooted.
Are you ready to go back to the ’80s with Wonder Woman? Tell us in comments!
Images: Warner Bros.
