di another day

Diana Prince returns in wonder woman 1984, the DC Comics follow-up that’s smashing sequel conventions. Total Film meets the filmmakers to find out why the superhero Amazon is heading to unexpected places… including the decade of excess.

- MATT MAYTUM

it’s January 2020, and Total Film is emerging from a screening room in a swish Los Angeles hotel in a bit of a daze. We’ve just been blasted with 20 minutes of unfinished but electrifying footage from Wonder Woman 1984, and the resulting sensation is not unlike swinging from a lightning bolt with the Lasso of Truth. Showcasing footage from key scenes throughout the film, there’s comedy and character-building and pulse-pounding action, including an epic contest in a Themiscyra flashback, and a truck chase in the Middle East that’d give Indiana Jones chills.

TF is still buzzing from the footage as we head upstairs to meet the woman behind it, director/producer/co-writer Patty Jenkins, who also helmed Wonder Woman’s World War 1-set solo adventure, which opened in 2017. Warm and welcoming, and dressed in era-appropriate black leather trousers and a white power-shouldered top, Jenkins is in a rare position for a blockbuster director: months ahead of release, the movie is as good as finished.