Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins explains her approach to Diana Prince's (Gal Gadot) action scenes. Warner Bros. and the DC Extended Universe have a lot riding on Jenkins’ Wonder Woman. It is the first female-led film in the DCEU and the first starring vehicle for Gadot, who stole scenes as a non-title character in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. Jenkins’ film is also hoping to get 2017 off to a good start for the DCEU, which looks to improve upon the commercially successful but critically polarizing Batman V Superman and Suicide Squad.

Wonder Woman producers also took a risk handing the directing reins to Jenkins, who had success with smaller-scale productions like 2003’s Monster and TV series like The Killing but lacks experience directing big-budget action films. It remains to be seen how Wonder Woman’s action scenes will play out on the big screen, but the trailers have shown promise. And based on Jenkins’ own words, the director is taking a unique approach to telling as compelling a story as possible.

DC Entertainment released a new interview with Jenkins on their YouTube channel, which you can watch in the above video. In the interview, the director shares insight into how she approached the action scenes in Wonder Woman. The film will tell the tale of Amazon princess Diana Prince and her encounters with war and bloodshed during World War I, which compel her to try to make a difference in the global conflict. Jenkins felt that the battles of WWI needed to be driven less by pure spectacle and more by the direct effects that the horrors of war have on the title character.

Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman

Here’s what she had to say when asked about Wonder Woman’s “100 percent character-driven” action scenes:

"Really, every action sequence is from her point-of-view and for her story, so there was no point in the movie that we ever stepped out and were like, ‘Look at this extravaganza!’ … She witnesses a battle on a beach that rocks her world and changes her understanding of what warfare is. And then she comes to man’s world and she sees a war that everyone says is impenetrable and nothing can be done about it, and she says ‘What am I going to do about it? … It makes it like everything else I’ve ever done, because you’re just saying, ‘Here’s my character, here’s the journey that they’re on, how do I want to experience that and how do you do it?’"

Jenkins’ work with Charlize Theron in her Academy Award-winning performance in Monster shows that the director has the ability to tell compelling character-driven stories. Her approach to Wonder Woman’s action sequences has the potential to be a refreshing change for the DCEU, which has often focused more on the “extravaganza” that she references in the interview. The film is projected for a strong opening weekend and could be the DCEU's first big critical success if Jenkins' vision is fully realized.

Wonder Woman’s character-driven action scenes have the potential to be more rewarding and emotionally resonant than what’s been offered in the DCEU so far. Batman V Superman and Suicide Squad made plenty of money, but their muddled plot lines and overstuffed, underdeveloped characters made them less memorable than they could have been in the eyes of many moviegoers. Jenkins’ work in Wonder Woman has a chance to reverse that course.

Next: Wonder Woman’s Real Enemy is… DC Movie Bias?

Source: DC Entertainment

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