‘Wonder Woman 1984’ is taking the franchise forward 66-years and giving us a Princess Diana who is now used to living among humankind. We’ve been learning a lot about the film and thanks to director Patty Jenkins taking questions at a roundtable interview at CCXP in Brazil, we’ve learned why she picked the era and employed the special effects she did for the film. One fun fact is that the 1980s was actually decided upon for thematic reasons.
As Jenkins explained:
“I think I’m super excited to finally get people to have a look at what we’ve been doing because there are two things I really care about. First of all, the message of this movie is something that I deeply believe in and came to us while we were even working on the first movie. I knew exactly what I wanted it to be. But then the thing that excites me the most is we literally set out to do something that I may never get to do again, which is to say, let’s not make a movie that’s ‘funny haha, the 80s,’ let’s make a grand tentpole like they made in the 80s, so it’s as if you—I want it to feel like you’re seeing a movie in the 80s.”
In staying in the style of shooting a film from the ’80s, they tried to not go CGI heavy on the movie and instead rely on practical effects. This choice will likely go over extremely well with fans of old school movie making:
“We did almost all of our stunts and our fights practically. We flew to locations all over the world. We have some of the most extensive, incredible wire work that nobody’s ever done before because no one has ever tried. Wire work has come such a long way, but people aren’t doing fights that way anymore. We got Cirque de Soleil to come and work with us. What I loved was instead of shooting in a stage and doing this greenscreen thing, and then you’re hoping for the best in the end, we literally flew all over the world and shot these incredible things, which was a nightmare for [Gal Gadot].”
I’m a little sick of the overuse of CGI in superhero films these days, so this idea is an exciting one! It’ll be fun seeing Gal Gadot actually on location throughout the film and not being CGI’d. Of course, filming in this manner did create some interesting challenges:
“We shut down Penn Ave. in Washington DC, which was just for itself was incredible. And then we had wires and rigs for kilometers, for miles, so I can run the same speed that Usain Bolt ran in the Olympics… But it was a lot of work, and we’ve tried to make it our own [with] new and fresh things that were never done before. That was really, really challenging for us in many different ways.”
To be honest, I’m almost more excited for the home release over the cinematic one to see the featurettes that will come to show how the movie was shot.
Are you looking forward to ‘Wonder Woman 1984’? What are your thoughts on the extensive use of practical effects? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Head back to the ’80s as Wonder Woman’s next big-screen adventure finds her facing two all-new foes: Max Lord and The Cheetah. You can check out ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ at your local theater on June 5th, 2020.
Source: Collider
