Not everything in life is worth waiting up till 3am for. But this one was. On late Monday night-early Tuesday morning, the cast and crew of Wonder Woman 1984 — the big, potential summer blockbuster of 2020 which has now been pushed to a Christmas date at movie theatres — congregated for a virtual press conference to talk about their film.

Director Patty Jenkins — who not only delivered a humongous hit with the first film, Wonder Woman in 2017, but broke many a gender-limiting ceiling with it — now returns with the sequel, with the statuesque Gal Gadot once again bringing alive Diana Prince/Wonder Woman. Accompanying Patty and Gal at the global media interaction was producer Charles Roven, Chris Pine who returns (or does he?) as Steve Trevor and Kristen Wiig and Pedro Pascal who play the film’s antagonists. t2 tuned in for the prelude of what promises to be a big draw in cinemas come December 24.

THE BIRTH AND THE JOURNEY

For Patty Jenkins, it was the experience that came with making Wonder Woman three years ago that spurred her on to think of a second film. “As we were finishing it, or maybe a little earlier than that, I found myself thinking, ‘Wow! It’s been such a great ride’. One would think it would be exhausting to make such a huge film, but I was raring to go, and also frustrated with some of the things that I didn’t get to do in Wonder Woman. We spent the entire first film creating Wonder Woman... she’s only Wonder Woman in the last scene of the movie. I found myself really craving to make a film on Wonder Woman. And then I started reflecting on what was going on in our world, and what Wonder Woman would want to say to the world, and the story came out of that,” smiled the

film-maker.

For Patty, Wonder Woman 1984 aka WW84 presented an opportunity to explore what the superhero meant to her and the values she wanted her to embody. “The first film was the birth of Wonder Woman. She is someone who tries to teach whoever she encounters how to be their better selves. I wanted to get into Diana’s whole relationship with humanity, and this film explores that dynamic. And she has her own struggles in her journey to do the right thing, which is so universal. Being a hero is not easy. And I was interested in exploring what that feels like,” she added.

DIANA PRINCE TO WONDER WOMAN

For Gal Gadot, who captured the imagination of movie lovers worldwide when she first swooped in as Wonder Woman, playing the part has been an opportunity to not only inspire young girls globally, but also herself. “When I was growing up, I wasn’t lucky enough to see Wonder Woman-type of characters. When I watched the opening sequence of WW84, I got so emotional and for the first time, I didn’t think of myself as Gal the actress or Gal the woman, I saw myself as Gal the eight-year-old watching another eight-year-old doing something outer-worldly and being so good at it. I then realised the power of these movies. I am a big believer of you see it, you think you can be it and then you become it. I see how these strong female characters on screen affect my daughters, but also boys and men, it’s so powerful and I feel very grateful that I have the opportunity to be a part of it,” said the Israeli actor.

In WW84, the audience will get to see Diana Prince in the 1980s, an era that Patty and her team have successfully and effectively created on screen. Gadot revealed that in this film, we will get to see Diana as “lonely, she’s lost all her team members, she doesn’t want to engage and make new friends because then they will realise that she doesn’t age, and then they are going to die and she has to let go again. So in this film, she isolates herself from the world and her goal is to help and better mankind, and to be there for them and guide them and try to do good”.

FINDING THEIR FEET

Steve Trevor died in the first film, and yet we get to see Chris Pine in the trailer of WW84. Now how did that happen? The actor isn’t telling, but he did reveal that plonking Steve in the middle of the ’80s meant that the roles were now reversed and that he was seeing the world through Diana’s eyes in this film. “For me, it was interesting to explore the idea of the man playing the proverbial fish out of water, something that is usually faced by the woman. We played with those tropes in the first film and brought them back in this one, and it was a lot of fun. It was a bit harder than I expected it to be... the greatest challenge for an actor is to behave like a child in a new world, pretending to see everything for the first time. Everything became a moment for excitement and exploration,” smiled the rakishly handsome Holly man.

Kristen Wiig and Pedro Pascal are the new entrants into the Wonder Woman universe. While Kristen, who hasn’t really attempted a part like this before, plays the geeky Barbara who metamorphoses into the antagonist Cheetah, Pascal — who we know both from Game of Thrones and Narcos — slips into the part of greedy businessman Maxwell Lord. “The scariest thing about this experience was that I got to play something that’s a lot closer to me than anything that I have done before. The kind of roles that I have mostly done is about brooding with a moustache on, but in this movie, I just had to be out there. I had to use a lot of myself to do what Patty wanted,” laughed Pascal.

Kristen agreed that the experience was “scary” for her, but also fun and rewarding. “We didn’t want Barbara to be the nerdy girl turned villain... we wanted to explore what makes her so lonely and so invisible, and what does she really, really want. The wardrobe and costumes definitely helped, but I had never done anything like this before. It was very scary, and I could visualise what I didn’t want it to be more than what I did want it to be,” said the Bridesmaids actor.

Come December 24, will audiences worldwide get to experience the same high that came with the first film? Team WW84 promises that, and more. “Before the first film, the last time Wonder Woman was viewed by a sizeable audience was back when it was a TV show. I think this has been the exact right time, the exact right moment in the culture of the world for somebody who was courageous and strong, but also empathetic, truthful and loving. What’s there not to embrace in that?” summed up producer Charles Roven.

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