FRESH PRINCE

DC’s warrior goddess returns in Wonder Woman 1984, a sequel that gives her new friends, new foes, new threads, and a whole new decade to contend with. But just how will Diana Prince cope with the era of excess and decadence? Total Film meets director Patty Jenkins and stars Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig and Pedro Pascal to find out.

- MATT MAYTUM

All the world has been waiting for a Wonder Woman sequel since the long-overdue 2017 film smashed expectations. That wait has been extended a couple of times, first by a release-date shift that saw the film moved from November ’19 to June 2020, giving director Patty Jenkins valuable additional post-production time, and then when the Covid-19 pandemic pushed the opening back to a planned August debut.

''It’s such a bummer because of course, I wish it came out in the fall, in retrospect of everything that’s happened in that way,” smiles Jenkins when Total Film catches up with her in May. “But the truth is, for us to come out in the fall was going to put us on a much tighter schedule than we had on Wonder Woman. And I was able to do so much more, and better work, in December and January in the film, because we had the extra time. Having the right amount of time to finish a film makes a massive difference to everything. It’s still worth it to me. I’m still happier to have the film we have.”

The real-time between the first film and its sequel is nothing compared to the time elapsed in the film world. Save for present-day bookends, Wonder Woman was set during WW1, in 1918. If the backdrop of the Great War helped to distinguish the film from more generic superhero fare, Wonder Woman 1984 is set in an equally distinctive, albeit diametrically opposed era. We’ll meet Diana Prince again in the decade where greed was good, fashion was gaudy and neon was everywhere. Expect big action, big hair, larger-than-life villains, and Hans Zimmer’s electric cello riff cranked up to 11.