Bronson director Nicolas Winding Refn Explains His Wonder Woman Movie

June 15th 2010, 4:51pm

When it comes the subject of a director for Wonder Woman comes up, I don’t automatically think of Nicolas Winding Refn (BRONSON) to be the one to take it on.

Oddly enough, there has been buzz with Refn’s name attached to possibly direct the film. The potential helmer spoke with Movieline about his own ideas on how he would make Wonder Woman. BRONSON was amazing, along with Tom Hardy’s performance in it. I’d be up for giving Refn the chance.

Here’s some of the interview. To read it in its entirety, head on over here. He started off by saying this, “I would love to make one of those big, Hollywood, $200 million extravaganzas. But at the same time, I am also very content in my situation. I get to make the films I want to make, and I don’t have the ego of world dominance that some have.”

ML: I was pretty excited when I heard your name attached to something like Wonder Woman.

NWR: “Wonder Woman, I really want to make. That, I’m hoping, will be my $200 million extravaganza — if I even get close to it. That’s why I say, “Well, let me go make DRIVE [a thriller shooting soon with Ryan Gosling]. Let me start the ball rolling within the system.”

ML: I found this awesome comment on your IMDB page: “If you do wonder woman, don´t make her violent, like that cartoon, that i would never show my children. Wonder woman cut the head of an enemy in it…not so good to look at…” How would you respond to that?

NWR: “I would say I could never do that, because I have kids myself who would go watch Wonder Woman. But one of the things I encounter is that a lot of people have more opinions about me than have actually seen my films.”

ML: Does that bother you?

NWR: [Pause] “No, it’s fine. As long as I get to make what I make. I’m not really concerned about that. Certainly when I was younger I was vocal about things, and I didn’t mind sharing my opinion, and not always for the best reasons. Now that I’ve gotten a bit older and more relaxed, I’m a bit more at ease with things. Sometimes it annoys me that people have this idea that I make violent films. I don’t consider my films particularly violent compared to other films — films like The A-Team, where I don’t know how many people die in two hours. I think that my films can be very violating, so they can seem much more violent than they are. But it’s a different thing: Being violated is different than seeing violence.”

ML: Yet when you have something like a Wonder Woman movie, which is based on a brand, it’s pretty in-your-face. There’s nothing especially subliminal about it.

NWR: “At the same time there is, because the real origin of Wonder Woman is: What if women were more powerful than men? What would the world be like? That’s a subliminal theme.”

ML: But knowing what we know about Hollywood, is that the only way you’d make that movie?

NWR: “No, it’s not the only way, but I think that would be a starting point for looking at it. You need a great, extravagant, marketable action film — and everything that comes with it. But I think that when Christopher Nolan did the Batman movies, I think he very cleverly went back to the source material and took themes that had maybe not been exercised. And he was able to make very good and successful films with them. So I think the audience is very much out there. It’s just how you do it. And I think that some of the films that have worked over the years have worked for different reasons than people sometimes think they do. And where Wonder Woman on one hand is a great female character who can be included in many great fight scenes, she doesn’t have great villains against her. OK, so you create some. She doesn’t have a Joker or those classic Batman kinds of guys. But she does have her whole world that she comes from, which is fascinating. The whole idea of a woman who is basically more powerful than any man — and who will always be that, and comes from a society of women who are more powerful than men — is an interesting theme that I think can be very contemporary.”

Remember when she was being eyed for casting?