It’s official: Wonder Woman is a hit! Critics loved the iconic superheroine’s first major outing and audiences paid through the nose to see it. Although it won’t make nearly as much money as Batman vs Superman, it is unquestionably the biggest success of the DC Extended Universe to date: just as good as any of Marvel’s celebrated superhero debuts.
With as fantastic as the movie turned out in the end, it’s practically unthinkable the direction that it very nearly took prior to its big-screen debut. Although the movie is filled with instantly iconic scenes, the one that drew the most cheers from onlookers was nearly cut out in its entirety.
Midway through the movie, Diana and her team come to the European front. Between them and their destination is No Man’s Land: a massive tract of war-torn land that lay between opposing army trenches. Crossed by mortar rounds, barbed wire and grenades, any man foolhardy enough to step out into it will surely die.
But Diana, as she is quick to point out, is no man. She steps out despite her compatriots’ warnings and falls under immediate fire. She deflects the bullets with ease, quickly drawing more and more fire. When the enemy fixes multiple machine guns on her, she guards herself with her shield, continuing to press forward against the enemy.
Inspired by her implausible abilities and peerless bravery, the other soldiers storm the distracted enemy trenches and take the field. But still she presses on. She makes it to the embattled town caught tragically amidst the conflict, smashing through German soldiers before leaping into an enemy sniper’s nest, exploding it on contact.
Shockingly, though, Warner Bros. executives were hesitant to include the scene at all. Director Patty Jenkins had to fight the studio tooth and nail to include it in the final cut of the film, going so far as to storyboard the sequence herself as a proof-of-concept.
It turns out that like many who saw the movie, it’s Jenkins’ favorite scene in the movie. In a recent interview, she revealed that:
“It’s my favorite scene in the movie and it’s the most important scene in the movie. It’s also the scene that made the least sense to other people going in, which is why it’s a wonderful victory for me.
I think that in superhero movies, they fight other people, they fight villains. So when I started to really hunker in on the significance of No Man’s Land, there were a couple people who were deeply confused, wondering, like, ‘Well, what is she going to do? How many bullets can she fight?’ And I kept saying, ‘It’s not about that. This is a different scene than that. This is a scene about her becoming Wonder Woman.’”
I doubt that I’m alone in my relief that the scene did, ultimately, end up in the movie. Like Iron Man taking out a village full of terrorists or Captain America marching rescued POWs back to base, it represents the culmination of everything the movie was trying to accomplish. It shows not just Diana’s prowess in battle, but her bravery in the face of certain death and steadfast refusal to follows the dictates of man. Never mind Steve Trevor, Ares or Doctor Poison, this is what people who walk out of Wonder Woman will remember about it years later.
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