Set Visit: We talk Wonder Woman 1984 w/Gal Gadot, Chris Pine & Patty Jenkins

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Make sure to check out DC FanDome's WW84 Panel this weekend for a new trailer drop!

Back in 2017 both Gal Gadot and Chris Pine won audiences over in WONDER WOMAN and although that film saw the apparent death of Pine's Steve Trevor, his character is somehow back for WONDER WOMAN 1984. The how and why of his return is still a bit of a mystery (although you can probably make a good guestimate at this point) and Pine tap-danced around his return when we interviewed him on the set of the film. Both he and Gal were in the midst of filming a lengthy action scene that takes place in The White House, taking out secret service agents, when they took a break to chat. Gadot, in full Wonder Woman costume, is most certainly a sight to see. Tall, beautiful and with that regal, innocent charm of hers, Gadot took a seat and answered our questions with humor and ease. Pine was also in costume, rocking a 1984 get-up saddled with a fanny pack and was introspective and thoughtful in his responses, which should help shed some light on their perspective while filming the sequel.

GAL GADOT and CHRIS PINE

QUESTION: Chris, we were all joking yesterday that we were just going to start today off by being like, 'What are you doing here? But then we got a little tease of how Steve fits into the story. What does he think of the '80s in this movie?

CHRIS PINE: Oh, well the first film is obviously very much Diana being a fish out of water, and then this one is fun for the audience and it's a total switch of that dynamic. So he's way less of the jaded realist in the war, the war pro that he is in the first one, and this one is just kind of, you know, boy transfixed by the wonderment of this incredible, incredible era of sophistication.

QUESTION: And now it's Diana who's been jaded by, like all of her friends have died, her love has died.

GAL GADOT: We've kind of reversed our roles.

QUESTION: When we meet her in this movie, [where is she at? I can't make this out]?

GAL GADOT: I think she's very happy to be here and I think she's very, she's quite lonely. She's not maybe… She's engaging with people, but she doesn't have any close relationships because it's either she's going to hurt them, at some point she'll have to disappear, or she's going to get hurt because they'll die and she won't. And I think she accepted [that] as fact. She, you know, at her core, her calling is to be here and to help mankind to do good. And that's exactly what she's doing. But she's still missing, you know, the one who was the love of her life. She never got to really explore the relationship. And that's it. But she's happy. She's very happy.

QUESTION: How has the relationship between your two characters changed now that you [Gal Gadot] know what it's like to live without him? What is the dynamic between you two this time around?

GAL GADOT: You know, he's not who he used to be, she's a little different…no, it's fantastic and it's great and it's very romantic and it comes from, you know, it plays from a different place because Steve was her first love and the first man she ever fell in love with. And she was very young when she met him and he kind of opened her eyes and discovered the world for her. In a way, literally with romance and with the world itself. Now their relationship is much more mature and there's been so many longings and you know, it's true that you know what you had only after you lose it. I'm so tired now I can barely speak English. Yeah, that's it.

QUESTION: Patty mentioned that you guys had all sort of come up with the basic idea for the story for this movie and that Steve would be coming back. She didn't tell us how, but she said that that was part of the original—during the first movie. You guys came up with that. So I was wondering if you could talk about…

GAL GADOT: You know it's funny, we shot Wonder Woman and we were already fantasizing on the next one. The three of us work really well together and truly love each other. And even on this one, we're already talking about our next journey together and what's the next movie we're going to do together just because we really, we have great chemistry and we enjoy working together.

QUESTION:How did you decide this was the right way to bring Steve back?

CHRIS PINE: I mean, right way? You can decide whether it's the right way or not. I love Patty and I love Gal and that I'm working on this film. I think it's romantic and old-fashioned in the best way and simple in the best way and doesn't reinvent the wheel in the best way. It's just a great, good old fashioned storytelling. So, right? I have no idea, but I know that anytime Patty pitches something with me, she can pitch me anything. She's the single best pitcher of ideas I've ever come across in the history of pitching.

QUESTION: Gal you have a new adversary in this film with Cheetah and you also have a new costume. Can you talk about those two things?

GAL GADOT: I have an incredible costume that is new and was obviously inspired by that one of the versions in the comic books. What was the first half of the question?

QUESTION: And we have Cheetah.

GAL GADOT: And we have Cheetah, who's my favorite villain. Working with Kristen Wiig is such an amazing experience. She's funny and she's sensitive. She plays the character… It's a villain that you love. You understand where she's coming from. She's plays her in such an interesting, charming way. She just, like, gets you and I really enjoying working with her. She's amazing.

QUESTION: What's Diana and Barbara's relationship like in the beginning of their friendship?

GAL GADOT: I think they're both lonely, and Diana sees Barbara's insecurity and it touches her. And also Diana kind of sees things that she misses in her life, in Barbara–her humor, her light [inaudible], these type of things and she really makes her feel good when she's next to her. And Barbara sees other things in Diana that she doesn't have necessarily and they kind of really attract together and they can be amazing best friends. But then life happens and I can't tell you what, but she [Cheetah] turns 180 degrees and she's incredible.

QUESTION: How does Steve feel about world that he gave his life for as a soldier? He fought and saw the worst in humanity and now here he is in 1984 and this world is the best and the worst of humanity.

CHRIS PINE: That's a really good question. I should probably start thinking about it.

GAL GADOT: I don't know how much time you have.

CHRIS PINE: I think–seriously a good question, I'm going to meditate on that. I would say this: in kind of, in the disparity in terms of the character of evil in this is this really unchecked greed, unchecked want, and unchecked desire and the need to feed that unfillable hole. The last one [the first Wonder Woman] was more kind of characteristic of there's like an inherent flaw in the human that's some like maybe just characteristically evil in one thing, misery and entropy and death and all that. But this is like very specifically greed and like you can make your own kind of correlations between what's happening today, but I think a very apropos concept to investigate now in the 80s being kind of that, you know, one of the high points of Reaganomics, you know, all that stuff.

QUESTION: On the flip side of that, like in the first movie, Diana saw the world in black and white and saw more as a person or God that she could just defeat. And now greed is sort of like this big abstract concept. How does she go about trying to defeat that as a concept? If she even tries to?

GAL GADOT: I don't know if she really try at the beginning instead I think she tries to defeat the greed. She still thinks that, you know, mankind should be able to help themselves and she can't educate them to do good. She can only inspire them. But I think that she's also in a place in her life where she gets involved with the world when there's emergencies. Greed is not necessarily an emergency. So she's not there to educate. She's there to inspire, but you know, she has her own things that she's–I can say that she's greedy, you know, about them or for them, however you say that. But I think that there's things that she would want to have as well, you know, so it's not that she suffers from the same problem, because she's not but…

PATTY JENKINS

Director Patty Jenkins made waves with her 2003 debut MONSTER and it took fourteen years before she was back behind the camera for another feature with WONDER WOMAN. Jenkins proved that she had plenty of gas left in the tank and was up to the task of bringing Diana's story to life. Now, she's back for the sequel and was feisty, strong and in good spirits on set, ready to tackle our questions, no matter how geeky or redundant. Jenkins obviously has a focused vision for this sequel and she shared what she could, while keeping some details close to the chest. There's plenty to chew on and plenty to speculate on, but Jenkins most definitely knows what she's cooking up.

QUESTION: So Patty, it could have gone any way in terms of a sequel. You could've done it directly after Justice League. I mean, a certain kind of time period. Tell us about 1984. Why 1984?

PATTY JENKINS: There are two things. First of all, I'm a fan of lots of different genres of superhero films, but for her in particular, she just became Wonder Woman in the first movie, so I kind of want a much more solo movie, and as soon as you go current day, you really have to deal with all the other heroes. So I was like, ‘We need a movie about Wonder Woman, now on this world.’ So that was the leading thing is I was like, ‘We got to see Wonder Woman before we ever get into all the other guys at the same time.’ But also really, I loved about the first movie where you could talk about current day, but use the metaphor of another time to detach it from everybody getting particular about the details. And I thought that was so cool about 1917, 1918 where you could say, yes, ‘We're talking about war, mankind at more mechanization of war, the way we make our choices,’ without anybody getting literal and without having to make up a war with much less weight.

I think the same thing is true about the ‘80s. We're talking about mankind at their worst, most excessive and their greatest, most grand and opulent, and, artistically did some incredible creative things. And so instead of getting into the nitty gritty of right now and who's to blame and what's happening, it's a way for us to talk about that. Like, this is basically the success of Western civilization. This is the success of modern mankind's way of living and what was it like to put Wonder Woman at the core of that? That was what I was psyched about and the story just started to unfold really lending itself to [that]. Look it's a very different version of the ‘80s, but I grew up watching Wonder Woman, loving Wonder Woman, so there's also something so American ‘70s and ‘80s about Wonder Woman too that this is our own version of it, but I love being a part of it.

QUESTION: On the time period, obviously kind of fits with the Cold War, how will that affect the film or tie into the story?

PATTY JENKINS: It ties in in a big way. Interestingly, here we are again; like suddenly I never thought we'd be so full circle again that we're talking about the same people on the same… So I think the way that the world was at a modern standoff happening then is very evocative to what's happening now. But yeah, it definitely figures in, but everything is very balanced on each other. So when one thing goes astray, what does it do to everything else, et cetera, et cetera.

QUESTION: Can you talk about the origins of Cheetah's powers in this movie, where they come from and the feature on any specific comic, New 52, or anything like that.

PATTY JENKINS: There're so many different versions of it and I like them all. I won't talk about — I'll leave that for seeing the movie, how it happens in this movie. But really the same way I kind of approached the first movie where I was like, ‘What's the core of Wonder Woman that we're all fans of and how do I honor that?’ That's what I feel like I cared about with Cheetah. So instead of saying I'm going to take Liam's [Sharpe] version of it or any one person's version of it, I really looked at all of the different incarnations of Cheetah and said, so what's the core of Cheetah? Who is Cheetah in the world and what does she stand for and how do we [tell that]. The story and Cheetah's storyline really evolved together quite naturally from the beginning.

QUESTION: When she finally does do the transformation at the end, how… the first movie is very grounded still, so how do you ground that since it is sort of larger than life?

PATTY JENKINS: First of all, it's all part of the story, but second of all, it's not unlike in the first movie how just because something supernatural has been going on, you're teased into it and then you realize that it's taking place at a greater level. It's kind of like that. There is definitely magical stuff going on in our movie, so it's not like the first thing that you've seen in the film.

QUESTION: With Cheetah, we know there's pretty clear comic origins. With this president of Black Gold, can you tell us anything about his motives in the movie? If there's anything that inspires him that comic readers might be familiar with?

PATTY JENKINS: I mean, I think that he's the epitome of mankind at their greatest success in business of that era, and oftentimes now. It's like sort of like, ‘What happens when somebody is making a ton of money and how excusable are they and what can they do and what can they get away with?’ I think it's like that's very much what he symbolizes, both politics and Wall Street and corporations.

QUESTION: Cool. I really loved the costume, the all gold Wonder Woman costume she has.

PATTY JENKINS: Oh good. I was so excited about that. I love that costume in the lore and I was like, ‘We've got to do it.’

QUESTION: It was so cool. I was just curious if you could talk about your decision to bring that in and how it's used. Because I know that some of the wings are practical and might have to be effects in the end.

PATTY JENKINS: Oh my God, it's super complicated. So I love that costume and always have. We could have changed the original costume and I thought it was so funny that the press sort of ran away… There was some leaked rumor that we had a new costume — you guys now know that we do — but then they thought that the more colorful Wonder Woman costume was it. And it was all this debate about like, ‘Well it's not that different.’ I was like, "First of all, I never even said that we were doing that."

It's rumor upon rumor upon murmur. But yeah, I felt like it would be super exciting to have a new costume. That's a costume that I love so much. I was so excited to see. Also because Wonder Woman's timeline is so horned in between different movies, it felt weird to suddenly give her a new Wonder Woman costume, and then she puts it back on and [in] BvS she puts on the old and it's even more… It just didn't quite make sense. So this was a fun way that actually is intrinsic to the storyline that she needs a different style of armor to fight Cheetah because Cheetah can get you on all of your limbs. So it was something that came very naturally of like, ‘How are you going to get into it with Cheetah and how is that fight going to go?’ And so it just becomes a part of the early storyline that that's figured out.

QUESTION: Looks really cool.

PATTY JENKINS: Awesome. Good. I hope so. Oh yeah, and it's articulated wings. It's a whole real costume with articulated wings. You're not going to have a practical fight in the entire suit, but actually, we are building the entire suit, so it'll be worn at different times.

QUESTION: When Kristen was brought in to play the role, was her background… I mean, she obviously has really strong dramatic chops but, was her background in physical comedy, something that you thought about in terms of the overlapping combat and the action ?

PATTY JENKINS: Definitely. Definitely. So, one of my favorite versions of Cheetah often is that she's starts out as friends with Diana. And so when I think about how great, how much I loved having Etta Candy in last time, and I love having humor, I like having a humorous balance. Anybody who's jealous of you and wants to be like you, why not make that a great, fun, charming, interesting character? And even if what we're talking about is an excess of our times, I kind of am interested in telling a grounded story of how you become, how you want to be like somebody else. And so she became a great version because she has both.

QUESTION: We're all wondering how Steve comes back, obviously. I understand we can't talk about that, but can you talk about the, the decision to bring him back and why?

PATTY JENKINS: So this entire story came to me probably midway — not the whole thing, not in great detail — but the shape of this came to me, I'd say, midway through shooting the first movie. It was not born from, ‘Oh shit, that was so great. We have to get Steve back.’ It's actually all of the story is one story that fits hand in hand. It was something that I loved the two of them together. I think they're super great and so it is really nice to have them back together. But also just this whole story, the way that it built… I obviously can't tell you. But, the truth is it's a secret, but it doesn't even matter that it's a secret. You'd still have to see the movie to really understand it.

QUESTION: We know that one of the big themes in this movie is this idea of what you ultimately desire and then what happens when that happens. So can you talk about how that still relates to the Diana and Steve storyline and sort of revisiting them together?

PATTY JENKINS: It certainly reverberates across every single storyline. It's not exactly how that all happens, but it's like the theme of the movie is about excess and want, so it's certainly that theme is being played out with every character.

QUESTION: Something I liked is the Amazons are having a celebration where we seen them, they end up fighting, they end up they’re at war. Was that a deliberate decision to show them like as they are in a celebration rather than [at war].

PATTY JENKINS: Yeah. In the first movie, the one thing I was — and it killed me because we originally were going to do the Amazon Olympics, which is how in the lore historically Diana always got there, and it didn't quite fit in the storyline because it just didn't fit in. The way that we did it, I believed in much more for our story, but it was always something I wanted to do. But also that was their only war was with man's world and they're not going to fight each other. So this was this great way to say, ‘Oh, there's a lesson I really want to learn from the Amazons this time and what did we miss last time? And how can we see something totally different?’ Them in the Olympics, I'm loving. It's so completely different. And the work we're doing with Cirque de Solei and stuff, it's like, ‘How did they get to be those people who could have that battle on the beach?’ Well, this incredible practice, which when they go to an Olympic Games against each other — they don't call it the Olympic Games — but when they go to the games against each other, it's an entirely different kind of sporting event than we've ever seen.

QUESTION: So you said that you came up with kind of the idea for this movie a little bit during the first one. I’m curious then, as deep into production as you are now, have you kind of thought of anything for another step in the franchise? Do you have a trilogy [planned’?

PATTY JENKINS: Sadly, yes. Because I'm like, ‘Guys, I'm retiring after this movie and so — goddamn it.

And every time I think, yeah. I mean, I even think where the second movie came from was me as a fan of her and as a fan of superhero films, craving what I haven't gotten, which is, I wanted to see Wonder Woman out in the fucking world, not finding herself. Like, fucking Wonder Woman! And so there's one more thing I'm craving, which is true to her theme, which is true to everything that she stands for, that I'm like, ooh, there's one more chapter of Wonder Woman that we don't quite get. It doesn't quite make sense for this movie. It didn't for the last either.

QUESTION: Is it set 2005?.

PATTY JENKINS: I don't know where it'll be. [processes Brandon’s comment, reacts, this is a joke:] Yeah, yeah. Exactly. It's set in the ‘90s!

QUESTION: Going back to the President of Black Gold a little bit, we saw a lot of kind of provocative concept stuff or inspiration shots including photos of Trump who seems like he was a big influence on the character. Can you talk about that at all, maybe how Pedro incorporated that?

PATTY JENKINS: He’s one of them. I mean honestly the funny thing is like, he [Trump] is [an influence], but I'm not trying to make [a point]. Even we have the president in this movie and I've gone out of my way not to make it look like Ronald Reagan. I don't want to get political, it's not about political. Actually, a huge influence of this movie was also Madoff. And so what I was looking at was, those young Madoff story [sic] fascinates me, because I'm like, ‘How do you end up being Bernie Madoff?’ And when you really start tracking that story, it's like, it all started out in a way that made sense and he was paying it off and then doing this and then paying it off again. And then, it's just like you just become an evil dude when you don't even realize that it's happening. So, yes, Trump's definitely one of the people that we looked at, but it's any of those kind of mavericks of business success that was big in the ‘80s [whp] went on to be major players in our world in potentially questionable in other ways. Yeah, I don't have an agenda to have a political message to send to the world, but I think that the world all needs the same political message. Everybody, needs to look at themselves right now and our politics, our belief system of excess and stuff.

QUESTION: We've seen set pic of Wonder Woman in DC, kind of running down a street. Seen ones too where it looks like she's sitting in some type of craft maybe where she's… Is this where we're going to see the invisible jet, finally?

PATTY JENKINS: So if you look at that shot. No, it's that… It's… It's when she lifted her feet up because it was… Anyway.

QUESTION: I’m sure she just had to land.

PATTY JENKINS: Yeah, no it was, it's funny. I'll tell you guys and I'd prefer you not talk about it until later, but the truth is she would take out half of that street if she was in a jet on the ground, she would kill basically everyone on the street. But that was the funny thing and I was looking at it and I was like, Oh my God.’ So that's not what's happening there.

QUESTION: So the invisible jet is not in this movie?

PATTY JENKINS: Can't discuss. Yeah. Can't discuss anything that is or is not. Yeah. People are so interested in it. I would not say yes or no either way. I've been asked that question so many times. I said the same thing in the first movie.

QUESTION: So how would you approach the invisible jet then if you ever did?

PATTY JENKINS: How would I? I don't know. I don't know. Have to be done in a whole new way. I think that the invisible jet is one of those things that is so funny because every single thing that any of these superheroes have is so silly in theory, and then when we talk about it, we talk about it as if nothing is going to be done to update it. So the only thing I'll say is, I've always said about the invisible jet, I'll do it when I can do it in a way that's super cool. It's got to be something different than her flying through the sky in an invisible jet, which is fine on page. Not great in modern [film].

WONDER WOMAN 1984 is set to debut on October 2, 2020.