Entertainment Weekly - ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY The Ultimate Guide to Wonder Woman

Diana is a normal woman with very high values, but she is a woman. She can be sensitive. She is smart and independent and emotional. She can be confused. She can lose her confidence. She can have confidence. She is everything

GAL GADOT

Wonder Woman

Rise of the Amazon

Gal Gadot embarks on her first solo adventure as the ultimate female superhero. Inside the making of an epic. BY NICOLE SPERLING

Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) in full battle attire, draws the God Killer sword.

GAL GADOT MAY NOT ACTUALLY BE WONDER Woman, but there were days on the set of Warner Bros. newest superhero film when she certainly came close. Take, for example, November of last year, when the then-31-year-old Israeli actress, five months pregnant with her second child, returned to Studios Leavesden outside London to finish some reshoots. Her baby bump was no longer inconspicuous, so costumers cut an ample triangle from the front of her suit, replacing it with a bright green cloth that would allow the special-effects department to alter her figure in postproduction. Then she got to work, running and performing some elaborate fight choreography for director Patty Jenkins. On close-up I looked very much like Wonder Woman, Gadot says. On wide shots I looked very funny, like Wonder Woman pregnant with Kermit the Frog.

Wonder Woman has waited decades for her close-up, and now that shes finally headlining her own feature, due June 2, expectations are sky-high. Jenkinss Amazon epic comes more than seven decades after psychologist William Moulton Marston breathed life into the character in 1941 and after stalled attempts by filmmakers such as The Matrix producer Joel Silver and The Avengers director Joss Whedon to bring Wonder Womans dense mythology to the screen. Just weeks before completing the film, Jenkins, 45, says shes confident fans of the worlds leading female superhero will be pleased.

The truth is, I feel very good, knock on wood, says Jenkins, who directed Charlize Theron to an Oscar-winning performance in 2003s Monster. Everything so far is still aiming toward the movie I wanted to make. And thats an absolute miracle.

Miracles in filmmaking dont come easy, but it helps when the godsor in this case, goddessesare on your side. Wonder Woman opens on the paradise of Themyscira, where Princess Diana (Gadot) has grown up peacefully among a tribe of Amazon warriors ruled by her mother, Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen). After American spy Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) crash-lands near the island, Diana learns that the world is embroiled in conflict, and she becomes convinced that Ares, the god of war, is responsible. Eager to use her growing powers to help free humanity from his evil grip, she travels to the Land of ManLondon, 1918leaving her family behind to fulfill her quest and become Wonder Woman.

The story and the setting were conceived by Wonder Woman screenwriter Allan Heinberg and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League director Zack Snyderwho cast Gadot as Diana for his 2016 blockbuster. Their approach married a coming-of-age story with a classic fish-out-of-water tale, with a young woman breaking free from the shackles of her childhood to find her place in the world.

In the comic books there is not a lot of time spent on Wonder Womans psychology. What is it she wants and what drives her? says Heinberg, a TV veteran whose credits include such series as Greys Anatomy and The O.C . A lot of the [previous] treatments have been from the outside looking in.

Adds Jenkins of the characters journey: She starts more naive than most of us, but she ends more mature than most of us. By the end of this movie she understands that its not going to be at all what you think it is to be a hero, and what it is to be loving and kind is going to be more complicated.

Jenkins had been dreaming of making a Wonder Woman movie for most of her adult life, and she was thrilled to find an eager creative ally in Gadot. Dianas goodness, purity and godlike abilities make her a challenging character to tackleGadot and Jenkins wanted to do everything possible to give her a rich inner life so she would seem more accessible onscreen than shes often portrayed in the comics.

When I started talking about the character, it was all about how can we make her someone that people relate to, Gadot says. If shes only going to be strong and amazing, thats boring. But she goes through the same challenges we go through. She wants to feel like she belongs. She wants to be like everyone else. She wants to be appreciated. She wants to help. She wants to be loved.

Perhaps, but finding a love interest good enough for Wonder Woman was no easy feat. The incarnation of Steve Trevor had to be sufficiently smart, skilled and, of course, handsomeand he also needed to have a strikingly modern attitude for the era. Steve Trevor is the perfect fantasy for any modern woman, Jenkins says. I want to be strong and powerful and all those things, but I want a really hot boyfriend who thinks thats great and has a sense of humor about the whole thing.

To emphasize the playful side of Diana and Steves rapport, Jenkins gave Gadot and Pine plenty of opportunity to improvise. In one scene, the two leave Themyscira by boat, and banter ensues, all of which the actors ad-libbed. Pine loved it, especially given Gadots surprisingly strong improv game. She has to be the straight woman; thats the harder part, Pine says. Shes delivering lines like I was brought to life by Zeus, that is just so ridiculous. And she has to say it with a straight face, with a certain amount of innocence and earnestness. I get to react like any human being would to hearing something as ridiculous as that. So I had it easy.

Pine had kind words for Jenkins too. Shes one of the most adept actors directors Ive ever worked with, he says. Patient and joyful. Thats a rarity for anybody in the business today.

Crafting a compelling villain who would be a worthy adversary for Wonder Woman also proved challenging. Danny Huston appears as German General Erich Ludendorff, a rogue officer who might be even more sinister than he seems, while Elena Anaya plays his right-hand woman, Maru, better known as Doctor Poison, whos perfecting a poison gas designed to perpetuate the war. [Erich] believes war is good for mankind, says DC Films copresident and Wonder Woman executive producer Geoff Johns. In his mind, its how mankind achieves a better purpose.

Jenkins admits that she initially had doubts about the World War I setting, but she soon came around to its merits. Its the first mechanized war, and its the first time civilization as we know it is finding its roots. Even the way that it was unclear who was in the right in WWI is a really interesting parallel to this time, Jenkins says. So you have the benefit of reality and the freedom to make a pop version of something people dont really know that much about.

No matter the time period, no matter the villain, no matter the love story, a heros journey starts and ends with the heroand Wonder Woman is one for the ages. After donning her tiara and bracelets for three consecutive movies (she will next appear in Justice League, opening Nov. 17), Gadot says shes begun to feel like Wonder Woman has become part of her. I had an identity crisis [after filming ended], she says, laughing. I didnt know if I was me or Diana.

At the end of the day, Gadot continues, she is an outsider. No matter how many people she saves, no matter how much she tries to belong, shes different. Shes abnormal, and she knows it.