Wonder Woman touched me!Hey, don’t judge. I'm lucky enough to be able to say that my job has afforded me the chance to visit a fair share of movie sets over the years, and one thing I’ve learned about superhero movies in particular is that, more often than not, you don’t get to see the actors in full super-costume mode when you're there. But back in February of 2016 while on the set of Warner Bros. and the DCEU’s Wonder Woman, I got to meet Gal Gadot while she was dressed in her full Amazonian regalia. And… she touched my shoulder when she said hello! (O.K., maybe you had to be there to fully appreciate it…)

Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman

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2. Diana Is a

3. The Gods Exist in the DCEU

Ares, the God of War, as seen in the comics

4. But That Doesn’t Mean Gods Can’t Die…

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Steve Trevor's team

6. Steve Trevor’s Team

7. Wonder Woman’s Greatest Weapon Is Compassion

I was visiting Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden, outside London with a group of reporters to check out the Patty Jenkins-directed film, the first major female-led superhero movie of the modern era. The shooting we saw that day mostly consisted of Gadot climbing out of a trench on a greenscreen set and walking towards the camera (on a treadmill) as she deflected unseen bullets with her wrist gauntlets. It was pretty cool, but we also learned quite a bit about the film during our visit, so let’s break down some of the most intriguing bits. Here are 15 things we learned on the set of Wonder Woman.Remember that really old photo of Wonder Woman, a.k.a. Princess Diana, from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice? You know, the one with Chris Pine and some other soldier type dudes? Well, Wonder Woman begins in the present day with Diana working at the Louvre in Paris, where she receives a package from Bruce Wayne -- a glass-plate photograph from 100 years earlier. That photo. This triggers a flashback to Diana’s origin story, which makes up the bulk of the film.Wonder Woman isn’t Wonder Woman when we first meet her in the flashback. And she’s definitely got a long way to go before she becomes the super-heroine of BvS, according to Gadot. “Well, the character is different,” she told us during a break from shooting. “The character that I played in BvS was more realistic and more mature and more of a woman. A mature woman. This one, this is the coming of age of Diana. It's her story. She starts as a very naive girl -- naive, positive, happy, seeking-for-good girl. But in BvS she's been through a lot. She's already understood what the complexity of human beings [are]. And she’s just more mature in BvS.”When Diana is still just a girl in the film, her mother reads her the origin story of the Amazons from a time before time existed. Zeus, the god of all gods, decides to create mankind, but his son Ares is jealous of Zeus’ relationship with man. And so Ares brings war to man, and starts killing his fellow gods. Zeus asks the goddess Aphrodite for help, and she creates the Amazon warrior race, whose mission is to restore peace and love to humankind. But Ares’ reign of terror would persist on Earth, and eventually the Amazons would retreat to the island of Themyscira. Certainly, this opens up the world of DC films even more than it already had been with the previously confirmed existence of aliens and Atlanteans. Indeed, we can say that Wonder Woman is the daughter of Zeus in the film as well. ( Read more about Ares here. In the DC comics there's a sword called the God Killer -- which is typically associated with Deathstroke actually -- and it’s this weapon that Diana steals from her own people before heading out to Man’s World with Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor. Why she steals it remains something of a mystery, as is the true nature of the God Killer, but it definitely involves Ares himself, who of course is an age-old foe of Wonder Woman’s in the comics and is expected to show up in the film too as the true villain pulling the strings behind the scenes.Perhaps not surprisingly, Diana is very well schooled. In fact, it sounds like she has several lifetimes worth of knowledge. “She knows hundreds of languages starting here,” says Gadot. “She's well-educated. She knows how to speak every language that you can think of. In this one she has a heavier Themyscira accent. In BvS it's lighter, but it's still there.”The guys in that old photo from World War I are Steve Trevor’s crew. Pine’s version of Trevor is a spy, and along with Diana his team is something of a motley group who, of course, each has special skills. Sameer (Saïd Taghmaoui) is a flirtatious, charming master of disguise, Chief (Eugene Brave Rock) is an opportunist who trades with both sides and knows how to get people across the front lines, Charlie (Ewen Bremner) is a heavy drinking sharpshooter who’s already had a tour of duty and has post-traumatic stress. Wonder Woman isn’t terribly impressed by these guys initially, and neither are they too happy about this girl joining their ranks… at first, anyway.As powerful as Diana is, the filmmakers see Wonder Woman’s greatest strength as her compassion. She’s motivated by peace in this film, and they see her as a champion of equality, justice, truth, hope, and love. Certainly, the darker feel of the DCEU movies to date have not exactly strived to convey those qualities with their characters, so perhaps Wonder Woman will signal a change in tone for this shared universe.