Wonder Woman is the first superhero film directed by a woman. Director Patty Jenkins talks about gender inequality in Hollywood and how to shoot female warriors without a sexual context.
Psychologies: Did you speak to Linda Carter before you started filming? after all, she is the first to play the role of Wonder Woman in the 70s series, and she has become a cult figure for many.
Patti Jenkins: Linda was the first person I called when the project started. I didn’t want to do an alternate version of Wonder Woman or a new Wonder Woman, she was the Wonder Woman I liked and she was the reason I liked the Amazon Diana story itself. She and the comics — I don’t even know who or what I liked in the first place, for me they went hand in hand — Wonder Woman and Linda, who played her role on television.
What made Wonder Woman special to me was that she was strong and smart, yet kind and warm, beautiful and approachable. Her character has been popular for so many years precisely because she did for girls what Superman once did for boys — she was who we wanted to be! I remember, even on the playground, I imagined myself as Wonder Woman, I felt so strong that I could fight back the hooligans on my own. It was an amazing feeling.
She can give birth to children and perform stunts at the same time!
Wonder Woman to me is different from other superheroes in her intentions. She’s here to make people better, which is a pretty idealistic view, and yet she’s not here to fight, to fight crime — yes, she does it all to protect humanity, but she believes in love first and foremost. and truth, into beauty, and at the same time it is incredibly strong. That’s why I called Linda.
Who better than Linda Carter herself to give us advice on how to preserve the legacy of a character that she herself, in many ways, built? She gave us a lot of advice, but here’s what I remember. She asked me to tell Gal that she never played Wonder Woman, she only played Diane. And this is very important, Diana is a character, albeit with a wonderful set of qualities, but this is your role, and you solve problems with the powers that are given to her.
Gal Gadot lived up to your expectations?
She even surpassed them. I’m even annoyed by the fact that I can’t find enough flattering words for her. Yes, she works hard, yes, she can give birth to children and perform stunts at the same time!
This is more than enough! And what was it like creating a whole army of Amazon women?
The training was very intense and sometimes tough, it was a challenge to the physical form of my actresses. What is worth riding, training with heavy weights. They studied martial arts, ate 2000-3000 kcal per day — they needed to gain weight quickly! But they all supported each other so much — this is not what you will see in a men’s rocking chair, but I sometimes saw my Amazons walking around the site and leaning on a cane — they either had a backache, or their knees hurt!
It’s one thing to make a movie, it’s another thing to be the first woman to direct a multi-million dollar blockbuster. Have you felt this burden of responsibility? After all, in fact, you have to change the rules of the game of the huge film industry …
Yes, I would not say, I did not even have time to think about it, to be honest. This is the film that I have wanted to make for a very long time. All my previous work led me to this picture.
I felt a load of responsibility and pressure, but more from the point of view that the film about Wonder Woman in itself is very important, because she has so many fans. I set myself the goal of exceeding all expectations and hopes associated with this picture. I think that this pressure from the day I signed up for this project until the last week has not changed.
I set myself the goal of exceeding all expectations and hopes associated with this picture.
All I thought about was that I want to make a film and make sure that what I’m doing is the best I can do. All the time I thought: did I give it my all or can I do even better? And just the last couple of weeks I thought: have I finished work on this film? And just now, boom, I’m suddenly in this world where they ask me what it’s like to be a female director, what it’s like to lead a project with a multi-million dollar budget, what’s it like to make a film where the main role is a woman? To be honest, I’ve only just started thinking about it.
This is perhaps the rare film when scenes with female warriors are filmed without a sexual context, while a rare male director succeeds …
It’s funny that you noticed, often male directors please themselves, and it’s pretty funny. And you know what’s funny — I also enjoy the fact that my actors look incredibly attractive (laughs). I wasn’t going to turn everything upside down and make a movie where the characters are deliberately unattractive.
Often male directors delight themselves, and this is quite funny.
I think it’s very important that the audience can relate to the characters so that they have a sense of respect. I sometimes wished that someone would record our conversations when we talked about Wonder Woman’s breasts, because it was a conversation in the series: “Let’s google the pictures, you see, this is the real shape of the breast, natural! No, these are torpedoes, but this is beautiful, ”and so on.
There is so much talk in Hollywood about how few female directors there are compared to male directors, what do you think? Why is this happening?
It’s funny that these conversations take place. There are a lot of strong and powerful women in Hollywood, so I still haven’t figured out what’s the matter — there are women at the head of film studios, and among producers, and among screenwriters.
The only thing that came to my mind was that there was a phenomenon after the release of Jaws, after the first weekend, the idea arose that blockbusters and their popularity depended on teenage boys. This is the only thing, because it seems to me that I have always been very supported and encouraged, I cannot say that I was not supported. But if the movie industry is ultimately interested in attention from teenage boys, who will they go to to get it?
70% of the global box office these days are women
To a former teenage boy who might be the director of this film, and here comes another problem with the film industry, they are aiming for a very small audience, and it is falling apart in our time. If I’m not mistaken, 70% of the world’s box office these days are women. So I think it ends up being a combination of the two.
Why are women paid less and is it true? Is Gal Gadot getting paid less than Chris Pine?
Salaries are never equal. There is a special system: actors are paid based on their previous earnings. It all depends on the box office of the film, on when and how they signed the contract. If you start to understand this, you will be surprised by many things. However, I agree, it’s a big problem when we find out that the people whose game we like so much and whom we have loved for many years, that their work is paid less, it’s surprising. For example, Jennifer Lawrence is the biggest star in the world, and her work is not paid properly.
You have been involved with the Wonder Woman project for many years. Why is the movie coming out right now?
Honestly, I don’t know and I don’t think that there is an objective reason why everything turned out this way, there was no conspiracy theory here. I remember that I wanted to make a film, but they said there would be no picture, then they sent me the script and said: there will be a film, but I got pregnant and could not make it. I don’t know why they didn’t make a movie then.
What does it take to get more women in action films?
You need success, commercial success to begin with. The studio system is, unfortunately, too slow and unwieldy to keep up with the changes. So channels like Netflix and Amazon started to do well. It is generally difficult for large corporations to change quickly.
It always surprises me that we can experience reality in any way we like, but commercial success transforms people. Only then do they understand that they are forced to change, open their eyes and realize that the world is no longer the same. And, fortunately, this process is already underway.
Of course, I have a lot of personal reasons to succeed, to collect a large box office. But somewhere in the depths of my soul there is another me — the one who did not manage to make this film, which everyone told that nothing would come of it, that no one would want to watch such a movie. I just hoped that I could prove to these people that they were wrong, that I would show them something they had never seen. I was glad when that happened with The Hunger Games and Insurgent. I am happy every time a film like this attracts a new, unexpected audience. This proves how wrong such predictions are.
After the premiere of the film, Gal Gadot will become a world-class star, you are not the first day in this business, what advice did you give or give her?
The only thing I said to Gal Gadot is that you don’t have to be Wonder Woman every day, seven days a week. You can be yourself. I’m a little worried about her future, just don’t think anything bad. There is no negative connotation here. She is a beautiful woman and she is so good as Wonder Woman. She and I are going to go to Disneyland with our kids this summer. At some point, I thought we couldn’t.
The only thing I said to Gal Gadot is that you don’t have to be Wonder Woman every day, seven days a week. You can be yourself
Moms looking at her might think that their kids would think that this woman could be a better parent than they are — so it might be a strange «journey» through life for her. But at the same time, I think few people are more ready for this than she is, she is so human, so beautiful, so natural. I think she will always remember that she is first and foremost an ordinary person. And I don’t think that she will suddenly have a star disease.
Speaking of Wonder Woman’s love interest: what was it like finding a man, creating a character who could be her partner?
When you’re looking for an earthy superhero partner, you’re always looking for someone amazing and dynamic. Like Margot Kidder, who played Superman’s girlfriend. Someone funny, interesting. What did I like about Steve’s character? He is a pilot. I grew up in a family of pilots. This is what I myself love, I have my own romance with the sky!
We were all kids playing with airplanes and we all wanted to save the world, but it didn’t work out. Instead we do what we can
We talked to Chris Pine all the time about how we were all kids playing with airplanes and we all wanted to save the world, but it didn’t work out. Instead, we do what we can, and suddenly this woman appears on the horizon, who manages to save the world, to his surprise. So maybe then, in fact, we are all capable of saving the world? Or at least change it. I think our society is fed up with the idea that compromises are inevitable.
In Western cinema, it is not often that the action takes place in the First World War. Were there any challenges or benefits for you while working on this topic?
That was great! The difficulty was that the comics are rather primitive, pop-like depict this or that era. Usually just a few strokes are used.
If we have the 1940s, the Second World War — and we all know enough about the Second World War — then several clichés immediately come into play, and immediately everyone understands what time it is.
I personally proceeded from the fact that I am well versed in the history of the First World War. What we wanted to avoid was turning our film into a BBC documentary where everything looks so authentic that it’s clear to the viewer: «Yeah, this is a historical movie.»
In addition, the film features both the fantasy world and the entourage of London. Our approach was something like this: 10% is pure pop, the rest is an unexpected amount of realism in the frame. But when we get to the war itself, that’s where the madness is. World War I was a real nightmare and a really great war. We decided to convey the atmosphere through authentic costumes, but not go into the historical details of the actual events themselves.
When they make films about superheroes in World War II, they don’t show concentration camps — the viewer is simply not able to bear it. It’s the same here — we didn’t want to literally show that up to a hundred thousand people could die in a day, but at the same time, the viewer can feel it. I was at first stunned by the difficulty of the task at hand, but then I was glad, wildly glad that we had set the action in the First World War.
Your father was a military pilot…
Yes, and he went through it all. He became a pilot because of World War II. He wanted to change things for the better. He ended up bombing villages in Vietnam. He even wrote a book about it. He graduated from the military academy with an «excellent» in order to eventually become what he became. He didn’t understand, «How could I be a villain? I thought I was one of the good guys…”
There is cowardice in it when the generals send young men to die.
Yes, absolutely! What I really love about superhero movies is that they can be a metaphor. We used the gods in the story to tell the story of the heroine we all know. We know who superheroes are, we know what they are fighting for, but our world is in crisis! How can we just sit and watch? Okay, if you’re a kid, it might be fun to watch, but we’re asking the question: what kind of hero do you want to be in this world? The gods, looking at us humans, would be shocked. But this is who we are now, what our world is like now.
Therefore, it was very important for us to tell the story of a girl who wants to be a hero and show what it really means to be a hero. To make us realize that no superpower can save our world, this is a story about ourselves. This is the main moral of the film for me. We all need to rethink our views on heroism and bravery.
There are many different heroic characters in the picture — they are all heroes. Steve sacrifices himself for something greater, he teaches us a lesson that by all means we must believe and hope. And Diana understands that no supernatural power can save us. Our own decisions matter. We still need to make a hundred films about it.