Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice introduced Diana Prince, though it was 2017's Wonder Woman that explained the hero's origin story and upbringing on Themyscira alongside her fellow Amazons.
The warrior women would return in Justice League, and were later seen in again in Wonder Woman 1984's flashback scenes. A spinoff project of some sort is also in development for the Amazons, so there will be plenty of future opportunities to get to know them and the inner workings of their island.
We know Zack Snyder hoped Wonder Woman might focus on the Crimean War, but director Patty Jenkins changed the setting to World War I. Now, it's come to light that the filmmaker also scrapped another big idea for her film (which wasn't necessarily Snyder's and, based on these comments, may have come from the studio) as Hippolyta actress Connie Nielsen describes the director having to push for feminist themes...while refusing to make a mass rape part of the Amazons' origin.
"She was very clear about what the Amazons were supposed to be. And I think that there had originally been some idea that the Amazons had been deeply traumatized by some kind of horrible event that involved mass rape," the actress reveals. "And Patty just said, ‘Hm, no. No, no, we’re not gonna put that on those Amazons. We don’t want to start out seeing them as victims, and why would we? Let’s just get rid of that part and make sure that these are heroes in their own terms. They’ve not been part of the victims of history. They are these unbelievably courageous women and we’re not gonna saddle them with a trauma from the outset. We’re going to have them be received by people on the basis of who they are. What is their culture? Why are they so fierce? What does it mean to live on an island where there are no guys?’"
"It made so much sense, you know?" Nielsen adds. "You needed them to have a very uncomplicated background in order to be able to just accept them as the heroes that they are."
It should go without saying that Jenkins made the right decision for Wonder Woman, because while we know men turned on and betrayed the Amazons, a mass rape of some sort just sounds completely unnecessary.
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