Gadot says Diana’s backstory in BVS was not the right decision

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Audiences cheered for Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman this year when she got her own solo movie, but she was also given praise in for her intro in the otherwise lambasted BATMAN V. SUPERMAN. Though she kicked all the ass and delivered the smirk to end all smirks in the final battle, her character didn’t jump into the fray right away, which according to Gadot was not the right character choice.

While speaking at a press event for JUSTICE LEAGUE in China recently (via io9), Gadot spoke about how they didn’t quite get Diana’s backstory in BVS, and then it all came together once they started on WONDER WOMAN. As they learned more about her, they realized her arc in BVS of being a Diana who has hidden away from mankind was quite out of character:

None of us knew exactly, exactly, the back story of Wonder Woman. And once they decided to shoot the solo movie for Wonder Woman and we started to dig in to understand the core of this character, we realized that, actually, there is no way that Wonder Woman would ever give up on mankind.

The reason why she left the island was because she wanted to make their lives better and safer—they are her calling. So, I’m giving you a very honest answer, but it was—sometimes in a creative process, you establish something that is not necessarily the right decision, but then you can always correct it and change it. So Wonder Woman will always be there, as far as she’s concerned, for mankind.

Diana is a mysterious figure for most of the movie who shows up when Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) is going about his business in trying to figure out what Lex Luthor is up to. Wayne can’t seem to peg her, but if she had been defending mankind through the ages (as the final scene in WW indicates), you would think Wayne would have figured that out. As well, there is a scene in BVS that sees Diana walking through a lobby, and sees on the news the beginning of what is soon to be utter chaos at the hands of Doomsday, but chooses to continue with her plans to pack her bags and head for the airport. She of course later gets off the plane, so she can help Batman and Superman, but as the hero she is she would never continue about her own business in the first place, and would’ve sprung into action the moment she saw shit hitting the fan.

As we saw in WOMAN, Diana always does what needs to be done even if it means running across No Man’s Land, so she’s right in saying what she did in BVS was not the right call. Why Snyder felt the need to throw in that angle is a mystery. Maybe he wanted to make her emotions more complex, but the problem is Diana’s motivations aren’t really supposed to be complex. At least they nailed the character in her solo movie and have her doing what she does best in JUSTICE LEAGUE. Maybe she was just going through her emo phase in BVS.

Wonder Woman returns in JUSTICE LEAGUE arrives November 17.