As fans continue to watch the recently released sequel Wonder Woman 1984 on HBO Max and in theaters, director Patty Jenkins is still not happy with the ending to her original superhero film and the studio interference from Warner Bros. Pictures. While Jenkins has spoken at length about her displeasure while working on Wonder Woman โ and has even signed on to direct a third film in the franchise โ she has now given more details on WTF With Marc Maron. The podcast hosted by the Joker actor has had no trouble criticizing the sillier aspects of superhero and comic book movies, so it’s interesting to see him discuss these gripes with Jenkins.
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During her interview on the podcast, Jenkins went into detail on the requests made by WB and one of her biggest issues revolves around Ares‘ appearance, played by actor David Thewlis. Maron, speaking about the ending, told her, “The effects worked for me, I was happy about it. The light show was good.”
Jenkins responded, “Good, I’m glad. That was the only thing that the studio forced my hand on, that it was not supposed to be. It was supposed to be, like… He never turns into Ares. The whole point of the movie was that you get there to the big monster and he’s just standing there looking at you and says ‘I didn’t do anything’. And then the studio kept saying ‘Ok we’ll let you do that and then we’ll see’ and then I could feel it creeping up and at the last minute they were like ‘You know what, we want Ares to show up’ and I was like ‘Goddammit, we don’t have time to do that now’, ‘Nope, you gotta do it’. And so it pisses me off now, because sometimes I’ll read the reviews and the only thing that unanimously gets some shit about was those end pyrotechnics. That, like, ‘DC always does this.’ And the truth was it was them, the studio did make me do that, and it wasn’t right. But that’s ok.”
Jenkins admits that she later came to terms and loved what they did for the movie’s end, but just that they didn’t have enough time to make it look as good as it did.
There are concept art pieces floating around with Thewlis in his regular garb, not armored up as Ares, fighting Wonder Woman at the end of the film. Because he was the God of War, he didn’t need the armor.
Fans can see Jenkins’ vision of the sequel now with Wonder Woman 1984 playing in theaters and on HBO Max.