Wonder Woman 1984 Cut a Gag From Chris Pine’s Indiana Jones-Style Action Scene

Returning Wonder Woman star Chris Pine reveals a deleted gag from Steve Trevor’s Indiana Jones-inspired action scene in Wonder Woman 1984. When Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) wishes to reunite with long-lost love Steve nearly 70 years after his death at the end of World War I, the magical Dreamstone eventually possessed by Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) revives Steve in 1984. It’s not long before the pair fly an invisible jet to Cairo, Egypt, in pursuit of the wish-granting and greedy Lord, who is under the protection of a convoy he’s stolen from oil tycoon Emir Said Bin Abydos (Amr Waked).

“I’ve said it about basically every hero I’ve ever played is that Harrison Ford’s reluctant hero is my touchstone for pretty much all of these types of guys,” Pine told CinemaBlend about the sequence modeled after Raiders of the Lost Ark. “The humanness of it, and the fact that he always feels like he doesn’t want to be there, but he has to be there. The fact that he’ll try his hardest but, you know, getting hit hurts. Punching hurts.”

“So to shoot in the desert with tanks and stuff, and to pretend that I’m Indiana Jones, is essentially my dream,” Pine added.

One bit cut from the sequence is described by Pine as “whack-a-mole,” a variation on the scene in the finished film:

“I had a whole bit, I think they cut it out, but I had a whole bit planned for fighting the guy on top of the thing. It was like whack-a-mole, and I’m hitting one guy, and his head pops out, then he disappears, I go look in, and he pulls me in,” Pine said. “I forget if it remained in the film, but I loved that. It’s always trying to find the comedy. Trevor thinks he’s one-upped someone, and then it’s, ‘Oh, no, he’s going to get his ass kicked somehow!’”

In a separate interview with JoBlo, director and co-writer Patty Jenkins revealed studio Warner Bros. wanted the 151-minute WW84 to pare down its first act by cutting one of two opening sequences. Both openings — a flashback set on Themyscira and a superhero scene set inside a mall — were ultimately included in the finished film that is now available to stream only on HBO Max.

Starring Gal Gadot, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Pine, Wonder Woman 1984 is now in theaters and streaming on HBO Max for 31 days.