It’s clear, now having watched both 2017’s “Wonder Woman” and the just-released sequel, “Wonder Woman 1984,” the two films are very different. Whether that difference is good or bad is up to you, but there’s no denying that director Patty Jenkins has crafted a second ‘Wonder Woman’ film that shares very little in common with the original. Well, stylistically, it does have one major similarity—the opening scene. And apparently, if Warner Bros. had its way, that might not have been.
“Wonder Woman 1984,” much like the original 2017 feature, starts with a flashback during the superhero’s time on her native island of Themyscira, the home of the Amazonians. In the original film, the scene introduced audiences to the world that Wonder Woman is from, and in the sequel, it serves as a reminder of that heritage, while also laying out the themes of the 1980s-set story.
But in a new interview with JoBlo, Jenkins explained that WB wasn’t on board with the idea of revisiting Themyscira. In fact, the studio wanted the film to just jump into the opening scene setting the stage in a 1980s mall, showing Diana Prince saving the day. Jenkins, on the other hand, thought it was critical to open back at the home of the Amazons.
“It was not always written in. It was the success of the first film, but it was also something else,” explained Jenkins. “I wouldn’t of jammed it in there because of the success of the film, because it actually made the movie too long. We have two openings in our movie and we would talk about it with the studio all the time and they would say, you’ve got to cut the mall and the Eighties, or you’ve got to cut the Amazon. I was like, we can’t, we can’t cut either.”
She continued, “The reason that I ended up realizing that you need the Amazon is because I suddenly, you do that thing where you’re like, wait, you have to remember all the people that haven’t seen the first ‘Wonder Woman’ who watch this on a plane. And suddenly it’s like, oh, it’s super hard to understand who Diana is and what’s going on without touching base there. I love the fact that you hear all of the ‘being a great hero takes your whole life,’ you know? So there was this wisdom there that they were trying to tell her which is not about being the strongest or the fastest, it’s about these complex observations you have to make during life in order to become a true hero. I love that she doesn’t understand that until that final speech.”
As mentioned, “Wonder Woman 1984” is a very different film than its predecessor, but it appears that the sequel is doing pretty damn well during its release over the weekend. Well, that is over at HBO Max, where the film was released for free along with a paid subscription to the streaming service. According to THR, WarnerMedia says that half of all paid subscribers have watched ‘WW84’ during the weekend. Of course, as always, take streaming stats with a grain of salt, as we can only take the word of the studio and have no way of verifying.
That said, over at the box office, where the film opened domestically and played out its second weekend overseas, the results are…well, not so wonderful. Domestically, the film earned $16.7 million during its opening weekend. Of course, this is well below the opening of the first film, but then again, with the feature being available for free on streaming (combined with the pandemic scaring people away from theaters), this low number was to be expected. But perhaps even more surprising is the fact that ‘WW84’ is doing so poorly in China, for the second weekend in a row.
Previously, we reported about how the film opened to about half of what the original did in China, which is surprising because the Middle Kingdom has seen its theater business boom post-pandemic, with local films doing record business. But not “Wonder Woman 1984.” In its second full weekend, “Wonder Woman 1984” dropped 92% from its already-low opening weekend to end with a dismal $1.5 million at the Chinese box office. That means, in 10 days, ‘WW84’ has only earned $23.9 million, which is still below the $38 million debut of the original film in 2017 and not even near “Wonder Woman’s” cumulative $90.5 million.
All that to say, the numbers were always going to be skewed for “Wonder Woman 1984,” but where we are seeing box office totals, the receipts are pretty scary, particularly if you were hoping for theaters to rebound with superhero films.
In other Jenkins news, the filmmaker recently posted on Twitter that she’s interested in other superheroes if she has the shot at tackling another franchise. And two of them would have her go to Marvel.