The Significance Of Wonder Woman 1984's Amazon Olympics

Contains spoilers for Wonder Woman 1984

A year ago, we all assumed people would be packing into theaters to watch Wonder Woman 1984. Of course, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the film had to be pushed back — but instead of coming exclusively to theaters sometime next year, Warner Bros. decided to move forward with a hybrid release model, premiering the film in theaters and on HBO Max at the same time.

In a year that's been light on superhero action, WW84 offers a nice reprieve for fans itching to see the next installment within the DC Extended Universe. The movie takes place in the middle of the '80s, and sees Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) reunite with her long-lost love Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) thanks to a mysterious wish-granting object known as the Dreamstone. Together, the two team up to take down the villainous duo of Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), a power-hungry businessman, and Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), Diana's colleague whose initial wish only causes her to want more.

While the film predominantly takes place in its titular year, the opening scene of Wonder Woman 1984 flashes back to a young Diana's time on Themyscira, where she's competing in the Amazon Olympics. She's younger than the rest of the competitors, but Diana proves at an early age she has the potential for greatness. It's a good prologue that sets up the themes in the rest of the film, and director Patty Jenkins even spoke about the significance of this sequence earlier in the year. 

In Wonder Woman 1984, the titular superheroine has been living in the regular world for decades. It's a stark contrast to the first film, the first act of which was set entirely in Themyscira and showed what Diana's life was like before she came into contact with the world of man. Jenkins wanted to offer another glimpse into this unique world by offering an action-packed set piece taking place on the Amazonian island at the start of Wonder Woman 1984.

Earlier in 2020, Jenkins sat down with Empire to talk about the sequence and what went into designing the Amazon Olympics. 

"What I love about the Amazon Olympics is everything that we got to really celebrate in the first movie. Here are these people who are incredibly powerful and capable, but different in how they approach things. If you've been training for hundreds of years because of an impending invasion, you're going to be constantly working on all these skill sets," she explained. "So, to me, every year, they would have these Olympics to see who's doing the best on horses or swimming the fastest, and seeing new tricks people have figured out."

The scene also shows how Diana was destined for greatness at a young age. While she didn't win the Amazon Olympics, she's taught an important lesson by Antiope (Robin Wright) and her mother Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) that no hero can pretend to be something they're not — is a relatable lesson for all of the major characters in the film.

Wonder Woman 1984 offers the superhero spectacle audiences have been looking for this year, and you can watch it in theaters and on HBO Max now. With Wonder Woman 3 already confirmed with Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins returning, it's never too soon to start speculating what we could see in the future for this franchise.