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Wonder Woman(NBC) *Spoilers!*

Jetfire said:
The truth is NBC sucks and I don't care how ridiculous the premise is for Wonder Woman...it will take a miracle for this show to make it past 10 eps. :borg:
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Agreed. Hollywood on the big screen has sucked the life out of the superhero genre so much that they put out that abortion of a film, The Green Lantern.

Despite Captain America's one week success I'm betting that the general public is starting to grow tired of the over saturation of superhero's that are out there today.

I just don't see how Wonder Woman will work as an ongoing series without becoming extremely campy and boring.
 
DarthTom said:
Despite Captain America's one week success I'm betting that the general public is starting to grow tired of the over saturation of superhero's that are out there today.
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I don't see much evidence of that. There have been four superhero films this year, and three of them did well, if not runaway successes (and one of those was the fifth movie in its series).

Superheroes have been consistently popular in comics and cartoons for decades. It's only recently that films were able to do them right, which accounts for the lag in them becoming regular attractions in the cinema.
 
CaptainCanada said:
DarthTom said:
Despite Captain America's one week success I'm betting that the general public is starting to grow tired of the over saturation of superhero's that are out there today.
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I don't see much evidence of that. There have been four superhero films this year, and three of them did well, if not runaway successes (and one of those was the fifth movie in its series).
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Quite right. Three good superhero movies out of four is a hell of an impressive record. Heck, pick any four movies at random out of any summer movie season and it'll be impressive if three of them are genuinely good.

Heck, Green Lantern wasn't even actively bad. It was a damn sight more coherent and entertaining than, say, Daredevil or Catwoman or Batman and Robin or X-Men Origins: Wolverine. If it had come out half a decade or so ago, it probably would've looked fairly good. It's just that its competition this year has been so consistently strong that it pales in comparison.

And I think part of the reason it's been such a strong season for superhero films is what I said in another thread recently: that superheroes aren't a single genre, but a character type that can be incorporated into many different genres. The four big superhero movies this year have been:

  • An interdimensional fantasy adventure with a mythological flavor and Shakespearean intrigue.
  • A period political/spy thriller revolving around the Cuban Missile Crisis.
  • An epic space opera.
  • A WWII adventure saga.

I'd call that four distinct genres, not one. There's a remarkable degree of diversity here. So what is there for people to get tired of?


davejames said:
It just seems so cheap and unseemly. Can you imagine Batman selling toys of himself to fund his operations?
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There was an episode of Lois and Clark where Superman agreed to license the use of his logo in merchandise and use the proceeds for charity.

And really, Batman already uses the profits earned by Wayne Enterprises to fund his operations. He's not above using capitalism as a means to his ends. And selling toys has got to be more wholesome than, say, selling weapons. I mean, what's wrong with toys? They make children happy, and what self-respecting superhero would be opposed to that?
 
CaptainCanada said:
I don't see much evidence of that. There have been four superhero films this year, and three of them did well, if not runaway successes (and one of those was the fifth movie in its series).

Superheroes have been consistently popular in comics and cartoons for decades. It's only recently that films were able to do them right, which accounts for the lag in them becoming regular attractions in the cinema.
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You very well could be right. Maybe I'm just growing tired of them.

The public laps up Dancing with the Stars and Idol year after year too - so much so IIRC Dancing is getting 2 hours of prime time this fall on ABC. :rolleyes:

I'd have to read the script for Wonder Woman but so many elements of WW's persona seem not only campy/corny but down right stupid.

As a child I could remember WW's invisible [the cartoon version] jet which of course showed her flying in the jet with the outlines. As an adult the entire concept of an 'indivisible jet' seems stupid - a stealth jet of course is another story.
 
Christopher said:
Heck, Green Lantern wasn't even actively bad. It was a damn sight more coherent and entertaining than, say, Daredevil or Catwoman or Batman and Robin or X-Men Origins: Wolverine. If it had come out half a decade or so ago, it probably would've looked fairly good. It's just that its competition this year has been so consistently strong that it pales in comparison.
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Agreed. If GL came out the same year as, say, Fantastic Four or Catwoman, I think fans would have been a LOT more forgiving of it's problems. And seen that it's actually a lot cooler and better-executed than people think.
 
DarthTom said:
CaptainCanada said:
I don't see much evidence of that. There have been four superhero films this year, and three of them did well, if not runaway successes (and one of those was the fifth movie in its series).

Superheroes have been consistently popular in comics and cartoons for decades. It's only recently that films were able to do them right, which accounts for the lag in them becoming regular attractions in the cinema.
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You very well could be right. Maybe I'm just growing tired of them.

The public laps up Dancing with the Stars and Idol year after year too - so much so IIRC Dancing is getting 2 hours of prime time this fall on ABC. :rolleyes:

I'd have to read the script for Wonder Woman but so many elements of WW's persona seem not only campy/corny but down right stupid.

As a child I could remember WW's invisible [the cartoon version] jet which of course showed her flying in the jet with the outlines. As an adult the entire concept of an 'indivisible jet' seems stupid - a stealth jet of course is another story.
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Idol and Dancing with the Stars are always 2 nights a week (Competition episode and Results show). And sometimes, one of those nights is longer than an hour
 
davejames said:
Christopher said:
Heck, Green Lantern wasn't even actively bad. It was a damn sight more coherent and entertaining than, say, Daredevil or Catwoman or Batman and Robin or X-Men Origins: Wolverine. If it had come out half a decade or so ago, it probably would've looked fairly good. It's just that its competition this year has been so consistently strong that it pales in comparison.
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Agreed. If GL came out the same year as, say, Fantastic Four or Catwoman, I think fans would have been a LOT more forgiving of it's problems. And seen that it's actually a lot cooler and better-executed than people think.
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That doesn't make the movie any better, it just means comic book movies have improved since the mid-00s.

Green Lantern wasn't bad, it was just aggressively mediocre.
 
Skywalker said:
Green Lantern wasn't bad, it was just aggressively mediocre.
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Yes, but the point is, it wasn't bad. With so many superhero movies this year, one of them had to be at the bottom of the list, and it just happened to be this one. (Although it is a shame that Warner Bros. doesn't seem able to get its superhero act together to the extent that Marvel Studios has.)

I think the main problem with GL was that it tried to cram too many concepts into one movie, so it lacked focus and depth. So while the problem with the Wonder Woman pilot (yes, I still remember what this thread is about) is that it didn't really grasp the true nature of the thing it was adapting, the problem here was that it was faithful in the wrong way, an overly fannish way that was more about paying homage to as much stuff from the comics as possible than about crafting a solid movie.
 
Mr. Adventure said:
JD said:
Yeah, I'm sorry but the whole selling toys and marketing herself thing goes against pretty much the entire superhero concept in my book.
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Even when using it to fund her Superhero operations?
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Thinking about it more, I did think of one plus. It would allow her to have more control over how she's presented to the public, it to me seems like something fairly important for a successful superhero.
 
An 8 minute sequence from the episode has leaked and is making the rounds. It's against the rules to say where and how to get it - but odds are it'll end up on the 'Tube before long. Just like that 30 second clip is now everywhere.

A few observations:

The attack on the warehouse (the one where the guard is killed) by Wonder Woman is clearly done out of revenge. Strike 2 against any suggestion Kelly understands the source material.

A (probably regular) character calls Diana "Di" which made me cringe a little.

Looks like Etta Candy's played by Jaye's friend from Wonderfalls, Tracie Thoms, which I didn't realize.

Elizabeth Hurley is HOT. I haven't seen her in years. Oh God, am I gonna have to start watching Gossip Girl now she's on it? :eek:

The standard "extreme closeup as the costume is put on" bit makes the costume look pretty cheap. That said, the clip is clearly missing SFX as you can see the wires, etc., so maybe they planned some extra digital bling to liven it up.

And here's the biggie - she doesn't just kill the guard. She also crushes two guys between two storage containers and breaks at least two necks with the lasso (which by the way looks like some CGI snake-like thing - WTF?). The fact she kills more than one is indicated by Hurley's character right after she impales the security guard - this addresses some folks who claim the two guys weren't crushed. I'm giving WW a pass on the human shield who gets shot as it's pretty clear THAT killing wasn't intentional.

The killing of the security guard is in the clip and it's frankly disturbing. Yes, he's shooting at her, but the way she takes him out - you wouldn't even see Nikita pull that shit. Frankly, I turned the clip off there and would probably have turned off the show. The guard was killed only so that Liz Hurley could say something snarky "Pity. I really liked that one."

But I think even beyond all that, what my biggest (yes even bigger than the killing) problem is with the clip? Wonder Woman comes off as an asshole and unlikeable. Even edit out the fight scene and you just don't like her. There's a bit where she turns to a guy whose back she just broke (OK probably not broke, but hey that's the prevailing trend with this version of WW) and says "How's it goin'" or something like that. And it just doesn't work. You can blame David Kelley for turning Wonder Woman into Fox from "Wanted" but the rest of it I'm afraid is owned by the casting.

Utterly clueless. Based on that 8 (well, 5 since I didn't make it through to 8) minutes I'm totally revising any opinion I might have had about the show being given the benefit of the doubt. I hope it stays buried.

The only thing that might make me revise my opinion is if they reveal the guard kill scene was going to be cut. And they were reshooting a bunch of the dialogue with Di ... er ... Diana.

Alex

PS. I did go back to watch a bit of the last few minutes. And it gets worse. Hurley's character, after pointing out that she has video footage of Wonder Woman "catastrophically" injuring and killing her guards (I'm not exaggerating the use of the word killing by the character), which she will give to the American criminal justice system, WW's reaction? She rolls her eyes. And then she picks Hurley's character up by the throat and probably in the original draft broke her neck, but in this version knocks her out so she can be arrested (and probably return as a big bad later). And, yup, as other reviews point out WW is given a get out of jail free card for bypassing warrants, using deadly force against inferior targets... Ugh.

If any thought police out there care, the clip isn't even staying on my hard drive.
 
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23skidoo said:
The only thing that might make me revise my opinion is if they reveal the guard kill scene was going to be cut. And they were reshooting a bunch of the dialogue with Di ... er ... Diana.
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The whole thing was so cheap and poorly done that I don't think any amount of reshooting could have fixed it.

I was never thought much of the writing on Smallville, but at least it pretended to be smart and sophisticated. And at least that show always looked really good.
 
Guy Gardener said:
Dude, the entire episode leaked two days ago.
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Fair enough, but it still isn't worth my time, and from what I've heard that 6 minutes or whatever constitute the best the episode had to offer.

Ironically although I was turned off by the murder of the guard, I did actually like the infamous "tits" scene. The language didn't bug me (heck, George Carlin didn't even want it included on his 7 Dirty Words list) and in fact it actually showed WW to be sensitive and basically Diana Prince-like. But what's shown in that scene really isn't reflected by what happens later in the episode. Last I looked the comic books didn't endow Diana with multiple personality disorder.

Someone in another forum made a good point; had the show been called The Huntress and feature that character, it might have worked, since The Huntress, unlike WW, does rack up a body count occasionally. Instead, the post went, WW ended up resembling Hit-Girl.

Alex
 
I saw the entire pilot. It was okay. The biggest problem for me was the more aggressive/violent Diana. Not exactly the "Ambassador of Peace" from the Perez. More like the Dark Princess of Vengence. I didnt mind the marketing angle. Booster Gold is a hero eho marketed himself. The FF licenses their images to the MU version of Marvel Comics.
 
She should have been arrested.

Diana wanders the streets beating people up.

I'm thinking about all those Boston Legal speeches Alan Shore used to make about how awful it is to live in America with Americans, especially Rich Americans who get whatever they want no matter how it screws over the little guy...

This Wonder Woman attempt is how Kelley thinks America would be like without people like Alan Shore rallying against entitled assholes, and it's possible that there isn't.
 
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