Wonder Woman Swings Into The '80s

Director Patty Jenkins on setting Diana Prince loose in the era of excess

- Helen O'hara

“I want Wonder Woman to be the James Bond of the superhero world,” says Patty Jenkins of the sequel to her 2017 hit. “I set out to make a grand, massive tentpole, à la the 1980s.” Not just in the style of the ’80s either, but set in 1984 — with all the colour and brash confidence of that era.

After helping bring an end to World War I but losing the love of her life, Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor, we rejoin Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman more than 60 years on. But for director Patty Jenkins, this was always the right time to return to Diana’s story and always the story to tell.

“This story came to me very clearly while we were making the first film,” says Jenkins. “There were two things that I cared about. The first was separating it from the first movie. I didn’t want to say, ‘Here’s more of the same.’ One of my favourite things about comic books is you can take these incredible characters and experience such different stories through them, even though they stay essentially the same.”