MUMBAI: Actress Gal Gadot says there were not many cinematic references as to how a female superhero should fight, as usually men are protagonists of films in the superhero genre.

The actress added that it was a lengthy process to find the right style of fighting, for her on-screen superhero avatar of Wonder Woman.

"For years (director) Patty (Jenkins) and I have been talking about finding the right fighting style for Wonder Woman, because usually when you go to superhero movies the protagonist is a man. And men fight like men. We all know how it looks, because you have WWA and WWF and all those things," Gadot said.

"For women, you have some examples as well, but you don't get to see so much, so it's not like it was completely clear, and Patty and I wanted to make sure that Wonder Woman looks and fights like Wonder Woman should," she added.

The actress continued: "So, before we even started prepping for the movie Patty and I went to see Cirque du Soleil, and we saw this piece where I was in tears, it was so beautiful and powerful. And Patty felt it was a great inspiration to how one woman should fight. So when we started prepping, we had this idea of how I needed to move and how should everything look."

"We had to build things that were essentially never built before because it was never done that way before. We had huge wire rigs that took months to build, but I think that what we managed to gain from it was a way for those fights to look so original and so powerful and at the same time so graceful and elegant," she added.

Gadot has reprised her role of Diana Prince and her superhero alter ego Wonder Woman in "Wonder Woman 1984", sequel to the Patty Jenkins-directed 2017 DC hit, "Wonder Woman".

The film also stars Robin Wright as Antiope and Connie Nielsen as Hippolyta. The Warner Bros. Pictures project released in India on December 24 in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.