Patty Jenkins was supposed to direct Thor: The Dark World, before she left over creative differences with Marvel, which ultimately freed her up to helm Wonder Woman for DC. The filmmaker is well-qualified to judge the differences between the two superhero franchises, then, and in a new interview she has defended the DCEU for taking a different path from the one set out by the MCU.
Jenkins returned to direct Wonder Woman 1984, which might be a sequel to 2017’s WW movie but stands apart from other DC pics like Joker or Birds of Prey. While speaking to Total Film, Jenkins praised DC for reflecting comic books themselves by making all their projects “radically different.”
“I love that about it,” the director said. “To me, that’s what superhero movies – period – always were. I think the exception to that was that Marvel had such success doing a shared universe. But that certainly shouldn’t be the status quo. I think you should look at comic books. There’s this huge variety of comic books, and their look and tone and world are radically different.”
She went on to say that even Marvel has been exploring tonally separate movies of late, with Jenkins believing that a balance between keeping things fresh and interconnected is the best way to go.
“And they don’t always inevitably join together. Sometimes they do, and that’s really fun, and that’s that thing. But a lot of times, they have their own run. I’m psyched that DC – and frankly, Marvel’s actually doing it a little bit more now, too, with some of the tone of Thor: Ragnarok, and Black Widow and Doctor Strange – they feel very different in tone.”
On the whole, it seems – unsurprisingly – that Jenkins is loyal to DC, with the director saying:
“But I love that about DC, and I’ve always thought that that’s a wonderful thing about DC – they were all so different,”
In its early days, the DCEU definitely tried to play the MCU at its own game, with every entry from Man of Steel to Justice League sharing many threads. However, that approach pretty much imploded with JL and since then, Warner Bros. has decided it’s better to make great, individual movies than to build up a muddled shared continuity. Things will only get more distinct in the next year or two as well, as a new Dark Knight is set to be introduced in the form of Robert Pattinson in The Batman.Â
Wonder Woman 1984Â would have been with us this June, but is currently scheduled to drop on August 14th, 2020. Fingers crossed it’ll be able to stick to that.
