Is Wonder Woman A Hero for Our Time?
Wonder Woman squared her shoulders, stared across a war-torn desolation, then began to sprint, holding her shield high against a rain of bullets coming from German guns.
“Yes! Go, Gal!” shrieked Patty Jenkins, director of the new “Wonder Woman.” The temperature was just above freezing on a February morning last year in Leavesden, England, and Gal Gadot, clad in Wonder Woman’s leather bustier, brief skirt and knee- high boots, had just finished one of the many takes of her heroic dash.
“The cold, ugh, that was the hardest thing about shooting the movie,” Ms. Gadot said in early March. She was eight months pregnant (she has since given birth to her second daughter). She chatted about the role that might turn her into a household name.
The film, which is being released worldwide in June, will be the first superhero movie in over a decade to feature a woman as its title character, and the first time a female director will be in charge of such a film. And it will also be the first time that Wonder Woman — a seminal character dating from 1941 in the DC Comics universe — will be the star of a feature film. Male characters from the same stable, on the other hand, are consistently rebooted.
Though the track record for female-led superhero movies is mixed — “Catwoman” bombed in 2004, but “Elektra” did O.K. the next year — the stubborn perception remains that fans don’t turn out for these films.
Ms. Gadot, who made her first appearance as Wonder Woman in “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” represents a gamble for the studio. But Doug Creutz, a media analyst at Cowen and Company, said that because Wonder Woman was such a well-known character, audiences wouldn’t necessarily care about a big-name actor in the role.
“In some ways, I think there is an advantage to casting someone unknown; when it’s Ben Affleck playing Batman, it’s hard not to look at that and see Ben Affleck,” he said.
Ms. Gadot, who is from a town near Tel Aviv, said she had never aspired to be an actress when growing up. After finishing high school, she was persuaded to enter the Miss Israel contest; to her shock, she won, and subsequently spent a few months modeling before her two years of mandatory service in the Israeli Army.
After leaving the military, she started law school. “A casting director saw my card at my modeling agency and wanted me to test for a Bond girl,” she said, adding, “I literally went to keep my agent happy.”
She didn’t get the part, but it awoke an interest in acting. Several months later she was cast in an Israeli television series, then landed a role in the “Fast and Furious” franchise.
Ms. Gadot said: “I got to a point, just before ‘Wonder Woman,’ when I had so many almosts — great audition, great camera tests, but always the runner-up — that I was ready to give up and go back to law school.” Her husband persuaded her to hang on, and she got a call to audition for a role that turned out to be Wonder Woman in “Batman v Superman.”
The path to a Wonder Woman feature film has been a long one. “I had been talking to them about ‘Wonder Woman’ for 10 years,” Ms. Jenkins said. “They were interested, but they had a certain idea of what they wanted to do, and didn’t feel I was the right director. Then, I think they realized that they did want to go in my direction.”
That direction, Ms. Jenkins said, was “a very straightforward origin story.”
To that end, “Wonder Woman” is faithful, she said, to the original comics. Diana Prince, born on the island of Themyscira, is trained as an Amazon warrior, and first sees a man when an American pilot, Steve Trevor (played by Chris Pine) crash- lands on the island and tells of a world at war. After the island is attacked, Diana decides to go with Steve to try to stop the war.
William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman’s creator, posited Diana as an alternative to aggressive male superheroes. She is a protector of the beautiful and good, as well as endowed with superpowers, magical weapons and great strength. The comic-book drawings also convey sexual allure, with Diana in cleavage-baring bustiers and high heels that can seem at odds with the feminist message the character is said to embody.
“I think as a feminist, you should be able to wear whatever you like!” Ms. Gadot said. “In any case, there is such a misunderstanding of the concept. Feminism is about equality and choice and freedom. And the writers, Patty and myself all figured that the best way to show that is to show Diana as having no awareness of social roles. She has no gender boundaries. To her, everyone is equal.”