According to Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins, some of the suits at Warner Bros., the studio that made the film, wanted to cut the single best sequence from her world-beating smash hit.
In a recent interview with the site Fandango, Jenkins said that she had to fight hard to keep the sequence in which Diana, an Amazon cast into the world of us mere mortals, fights her way through No Man’s Land — the bombed-out area separating enemy trenches — during World War I, that she might restore a supply chain to a little town that’s starving to death. The sequence is thrilling and moving, and when I saw the film, people cheered at the mere sight of Diana striding into battle in Wonder Woman’s iconic costume. But it’s also easy to see why a studio might suggest cutting the sequence.
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.”
What’s interesting about this isn’t that Jenkins had to talk some of her bosses into signing off on the No Man’s Land sequence. It’s that the No Man’s Land sequence occurs right in the middle of Wonder Woman’s second act — and it’s one of the best second acts for a blockbuster in years. That bucks a troubling Hollywood trend, and I’m hopeful it contributes to the film’s success.
The death of the second act has been a problem in blockbuster filmmaking for too long
I wrote about the disappearing second act in 2016, when a long string of movies skipped from lengthy setup to a lengthy climax — without the middle section that most movies use for character development and plot complication. And the problem hasn’t gone away in 2017, with even more films that seem to think of the second act as suggested, not mandatory, especially movies that are setting up would-be major franchises. (Just two examples since I wrote that article: King Arthur and The Mummy.)
In that article, I wrote:
Without [a] second act, there’s no time for the story to build momentum, for the characters to actually define themselves as individuals, for conflicts to develop. Instead, a bunch of stuff just sort of happens, and that’s that. If the three-act structure is "Send your characters up a tree. Throw rocks at them. See if they climb down," then eliminating the second act destroys any chances of seeing how your characters react to new obstacles — and, thus, fails to reveal what makes them who they are.
This is not to say that the three-act structure is the be-all, end-all of screenwriting. But it is something we’re all familiar with, on an almost subconscious level, because it’s the way most stories told in the US are structured (especially those for children, which are often the first stories we encounter).
You can do interesting things by subverting the three-act structure, even in a blockbuster (Alien: Covenant is a good recent example of this, keeping its true protagonist hidden for much of the film), but that’s a much harder tightrope to walk with audiences, as Alien: Covenant’s rapidly sinking box office returns would suggest.
But second acts also tend to be the acts that are most reliant on character interaction, not spectacle, and Hollywood studios are convinced spectacle is what sells. It’s sort of easy to see the logic of cutting the No Man’s Land sequence, too — if it’s included, then the film risks stepping on the big fight in its climax (which is, as Peter Suderman points out for Vox, the film’s weakest action sequence). A trimmed-down second act that cuts out character momentum in favor of getting to the big fight more quickly is a good idea if all you care about is putting big, explosive effects onscreen.
But look again at how Jenkins defines the No Man’s Land sequence: “This is a scene about her becoming Wonder Woman.” Without it, the full weight of Diana’s ultimate choice to side with humanity against the film’s main villain wouldn’t be felt. (It’s barely felt as it is.) The No Man’s Land sequence works so well because it feels not just like Diana realizing who she can be, but realizing who everybody else can be as well. It’s the culmination of multiple character arcs, and it positions the story beautifully for where it goes next.
Wonder Woman’s second act shows just how much the filmmakers love their characters
Like many modern blockbusters, Wonder Woman could probably stand to lose a few minutes here and there. But I’m glad it’s a little overlong and bulky, because I know if it was trimmed, most of what would be lost would be the second-act character moments that make the movie work, in favor of the too-long battle sequence at the end of the film.
In that second act, though, Jenkins and screenwriter Allan Heinberg lavish attention on every single major character the film has, from Diana (of course) to the various members of the ad hoc team that accompanies her into battle.
A lot of films would make, say, Saïd Taghmaoui’s Sameer (or Sami) just another supporting player. Wonder Woman gives him a full character — including a desire to be an actor that was put on hold because he thought he’d never find acting work thanks to his ethnicity — and even a chance to “play a part” as he helps Diana infiltrate a big party.
On its face, that’s not completely necessary. But it’s also the most important thing the film could do. If Diana doesn’t feel like humanity is worth saving, thanks to her limited contact with it, then the end of the movie won’t work at all.
Indeed, so many of the best moments in Wonder Woman — everything from Diana first trying ice cream to the establishment of her team to the liberation of that village — take place in that second act. The third act might be a bit of a slog, and overly reliant on yet another bland battle between a superhero and a tremendous opposing force (after it seemingly head-fakes away from Diana learning that stopping war won’t be as easy as simply killing a god of war), but the film doesn’t run out of momentum because it’s done so much work to set up everybody with something to lose up onscreen.
It’s worth noting that the same applies to the summer’s other big success story, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2. Though that film’s second act isn’t as elegant as the one in Wonder Woman (thanks to some serious story sprawl), it neatly establishes everything the characters are fighting for, so that its big third act (which I do think is better than Wonder Woman’s climax) can resolve in a way that underlines how the characters have grown and changed over the course of the film.
This is, theoretically, not rocket science. We’ve been telling stories in three-act structure (or its close cousin, the five-act structure) for centuries now, and most of us know it down in our bones. When modern blockbusters forego it, they’re not just cheating viewers of a compelling story; they’re cheating themselves out of the kind of movie that goes from a mild success to a genuine sensation.
The idea that Wonder Woman’s focus on making sure all of its characters have little story arcs and get development throughout the film’s second act shouldn’t feel as refreshing as it does. But now that it’s out there, here’s hoping Hollywood realizes there’s a reason this movie works as well as it does.
Wonder Woman (and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, for that matter) are playing in theaters nationwide.