If the trailer for Wonder Woman has left you punching the air every time you go to the movies, take heart. Last week Refinery29 joined other outlets in London for a sneak peek of select scenes from the film — due out this year, though no official date has been announced — alongside its director, Patty Jenkins. Our verdict? It looks good. Like, round up your friends and plan a group cinema outing good.
We won't spoil too much of Wonder Woman's (as played by Israeli actress Gal Gadot) first standalone foray into cinema, but here's a little lowdown: Expect fireworks and sexy banter with male lead Chris Pine (playing dreamy WWI fighter pilot Steve Trevor); nefarious villains General Ludendorff (Danny Huston) and Dr. Maru (Elena Anaya) who play around with poisons; and a bad-ass No Man's Land battle scene that will give fans goosebumps, and not just the ones who grew up rocking Wonder Woman Underoos.
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As a woman, it's hard to not come away from it all buzzing with girl power vibes. Seeing a female superhero being brought to life by a female director feels like a victory, but Jenkins — who rose to fame with 2003's Monster, which earned Charlize Theron a Best Actress Oscar — is quick to emphasize that Wonder Woman is a "universal" superhero, not simply a feminist one.
"I went into it not making a movie about a woman at all," she told Refinery29 during the London visit. "I’m making a movie about Wonder Woman — who I love, who to me is one of the great superheroes — so I just treat her like a universal character and that’s what I think is the next step, when we can start doing that more and more and when studios have the confidence to do that more and more.”
Jenkins, who said she was raised by a "very feminist" single mother, said that, ideally, Hollywood will ease up on its tendency to pigeon-hole films about women.
"We can just start making universal movies about other kinds of people and not have it be an issue," she said. "Just say, ‘Yeah, this is a universal movie about a person wanting to be a hero, this one happens to be a woman.’"
Jenkins herself grew up idolizing the male leads in films like Star Wars and Superman, and wants Wonder Woman to have that same effect; she's a superhero that everyone should root for. And who better to make that happen than a woman whose high school nickname was — yep — Wonder Woman?
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"[The Wonder Woman TV show] hit big when I was about seven years old, eight years old, so [for] those of us who loved superheroes and [were] on the playground, that’s who you got to be," she shared. "Also, I loved that she was so beautiful and hot. For me, your aspiration is like, ‘Oh, I’m going to play with the boys but in my head I look like Lynda Carter.’
"When you go back, my nickname was Wonder Woman in high school... just because I tripped spectacularly, and it was for the wrong reasons," she added. "Still, it’s like the Wonder Woman theme was consistent."
We'll say.