Many of the DCEU films have a glaring habit of falling on their faces in the final act. You have a pretty good film going and then, when it’s time for the big showdown, everything turns into a sloppy CGI mess against a bland supervillain. Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman in 2017 didn’t escape this curse, either, despite being a great film overall that launched a sequel opening later this week. But according to Jenkins, the conclusion she had come up with was not what we saw on the big screen.
Wonder Woman‘s final act saw Diana engaged in a messy, noisy brawl with Ares, a villain none us were given a reason to care about and will likely never see again. Speaking with IGN, Jenkins said she had something entirely different in mind, but Warner Bros. stepped in…
“The original end of the first movie was also smaller, but the studio made me change it at the last minute,” said Jenkins. “So that’s always been a little bit of a bummer that that’s the one thing people talk about because I agreed. And I told the studio we didn’t have time to do it, but it was what it was. I ended up loving it, but that was not the original ending of the movie.”
I’m not sure she truly “loved” what Warner Bros. asked her to do, but this will keep people from thinking she has a beef with the studio just days before Wonder Woman 1984 opens.
This is hardly the first time we’ve heard about Warner Bros. meddling with a director’s vision, to movie’s detriment. David Ayer has often complained that his original cut of Suicide Squad was much different tonally, while Birds of Prey director Cathy Yan said much the same.
It does look as if things have changed and directors given more creative freedom, and that has led to the DCEU being in a better place than it has ever been.
