Patty Jenkins knew that Thor 2 was destined to fail. The director was originally attached to helm the movie that would go on to become Thor: The Dark World and she did not want to be held responsible for the movie’s shortcomings. She ended up talking to Marvel Studios and leaving, which is when they brought in Game of Thrones director Alan Taylor to take over for her. The 2013 movie is not a favorite amongst Marvel Cinematic Universe fans, to put it lightly.
In a new interview, Patty Jenkins discussed making Wonder Woman 1984 and the struggles that came along with it. She also touched on her brief time at Marvel Studios when they were developing Thor: The Dark World in 2011. Jenkins has talked about her brief time with Marvel in the past, but this seems to be the most in-depth that she has gone. You can read what the director had to say about Thor 2 below.
“Word got out that I wanted to do a superhero film and to Marvel’s credit – on a movie that didn’t require a woman at all – they hired me. So, I’ve always been super grateful to them even though it didn’t work out. They wanted to do a story that I thought was not going to succeed, and I knew it couldn’t be me. It couldn’t be me that had that happen. If they hired any guy to do it, it wouldn’t be a big deal, but I knew in my heart that I could not make a good movie out of the story they wanted to do.”
As for getting into the superhero genre, Patty Jenkins knew for a long time that she had something to contribute. “I wanted in,” she recalled. “I wanted to do a big superhero film after Monster (2003). And I started saying that right away after Monster.” However, Jenkins wasn’t being asked about comic book movies after that. “People were confused… I got every ‘woman’ film, any story about women. And I was like, ‘I want to make movies about women but I don’t want to make movies about being a woman, that’s so boring. I want to make movies about women doing all kinds of things.”
After setting her sights on doing a superhero movie, Patty Jenkins gravitated towards Warner Bros. and Wonder Woman in 2004. With that being said, it wasn’t an easy road. According to Jenkins, the studio “didn’t know what to do with Wonder Woman,” and they “were freaked out by previous female superhero films that failed.” From there, she went to Marvel Studios and went through the Thor 2 experience, which ultimately brought her back to Warner Bros. a handful of years later.
Patty Jenkins also gave high praise to Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie during the interview. “I was profoundly rocked by that movie, and then the release when he goes on to be a superhero,” she said. “I always had an appreciation for the – not for all tentpoles – for the certain archetypal, massive movie that can affect an audience in that way. It has loomed large in my subconscious.” Donner recently returned the compliments by publicly praising Jenkins’ Wonder Woman for having “the same feeling of emotion” as his 1978 Superman movie. You can head over to Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast to hear the entire interview with Patty Jenkins.