‘ONE MAN’S HEAVEN’
Pine indulges in Wonder Woman gig
It was me and beautiful, strong women. I had the time of my life. I was on vacation in Italy making a film with Amazonian warriors.
LOS ANGELES Star Trek’s Chris Pine earned the best reviews of his career last year playing a West Texas bank robber in the Oscarnominated indie film Hell or High Water.
Still, big studio films are on his to-do list. Another bold Star Trek adventure, portraying Captain Kirk, is in his future. More immediately, the 36-year-old plays Wonder Woman’s sidekick in the superheroine movie.
In the Patty Jenkins-directed origins flick, Pine’s First World War U.S. spy Steve Trevor meets Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman when Trevor crash-lands near her isolated Amazonian island. After Wonder Woman decides she must stop the evil war, Trevor leads her back to London and then the front line.
The movie is a mix of specialeffects action and comedy. The relationship between the two is key, as well. In fact, their banter has a nostalgic quality to it.
The script was written by Allan Heinberg, who wrote the Wonder Woman comic for DC from 2006 to 2007.
He made sure the fabric of Wonder Woman’s mythology was woven into the story. And director Jenkins, a fan since she was a kid, added some classic film references to the interplay.
“Even before there was a script, Patty (Jenkins) was like, ‘I want to make a screwball comedy meets Casablanca,” says Pine at an L.A. warehouse decorated with all things Wonder Woman. “She said it would make for an epic comedy love story in the guise of a superhero film, and that really intrigued me.”
Helping the cause was the immediate connection between Gadot and Pine on the sound stage sets near London and at an island off of the Italian Amalfi coast.
“Gal has a warmth and a curiosity that’s very true, very childlike,” Pine says. “When she smiles, it makes me giggle, because there’s a purity to it.”
He believes the personality blend defines a Wonder Woman for old fans and new millennials.
“That softness and beauty and strength to me is the critical combination, and Gal has it in spades, and she doesn’t have to try all that hard to do it,” Pine says.
“So my job was very easy. I got to come to work, fall in love with her, make her laugh as much as I could, flirt and act like a jackass. I had a lot of fun.”
Indeed, Pine might’ve been the only actor smiling during the shoot. As Amazonian warriors, the 100 or so actresses in the cast had to work out often and endure gruelling battle sequences daily.
“What did I do there?” Pine says. “Not a damned thing. All the women had to train. They had a lot of choreography and I simply didn’t. I just showed up, would run a lot and shoot guns.”
When the going got tough, the actor says he would call on his stuntman.
“It was me and beautiful, strong women,” he says. “I had the time of my life. I was on vacation in Italy making a film with Amazonian warriors. One man’s hell — one man’s heaven.”
A more demanding job for Pine awaits him in Scotland. He will reunite with his Hell or High Water director David Mackenzie in August.
“I’m going to do a film with David about the first king of Scotland called Outlaw King, which is about Robert the Bruce,” Pine says. “I’m sure that will not be a comedy.”