Wonder Woman was a groundbreaking film in many ways: it was the first major superhero movie with a woman in the lead role, and it introduced an entire civilization of powerful, advanced women warriors in the Amazons and their hidden kingdom on Themyscira—what Nielsen describes as an “insane, cool, gorgeous universe” that she loved being a part of.
“I loved that island, those costumes, those characters, the values that those Amazons represented,” she says now. “It was fantastic. I built that character off real historical and anthropology books on the Amazons, there’s now real DNA evidence that these Amazons really did exist, that there really were famous female warriors, and we now know that burial mounds were where those warriors were buried. They just assumed it was a man because of who the person was buried with. And now they realize, oh, no, DNA analysis shows they were women.”
There is in fact increasing evidence that the Amazonian warriors of ancient Greek legend, which partially inspired the original Wonder Woman comics, may have been based on real nomadic tribes of fighting women who wandered Russia, central Asia, and Eastern Europe some 2,500 years ago. With that in mind, Nielsen rues the fact that the captivating fictional world that Jenkins, Gadot, she, and others brought to vivid life—while giving the superhero genre a long-overdue gender shake-up—is not likely to reemerge on the big screen anytime soon.
“It’s a pity,” Nielsen laments. “I really hope that they change their minds, and that they realize this is crazy. This is a billion dollars that is lying on the table. Not claiming those fans and making them happy is something I just don’t really understand at all.”
Look for more of our conversation with Connie Nielsen, as well as Ridley Scott and Fred Hechinger about Gladiator II in the next issue of Den of Geek Magazine, which releases next week. Gladiator II, meanwhile, opens on Nov. 22.