Unaired Pilots: # 2:
Wonder Woman 2011:
Possibly The Worst Thing I Have Ever Watched
And I've Seen Homeboys In Space... twice.
Superheroes are pretty much in demand right now, between big budget films, critically acclaimed cartoons, and in some cases tv shows that break out of the mold of only comic book fans will watch, or even movies and programs that dare to create their own super-powered beings out doing good and evil. But I'd like to talk about the television aspect for a moment if I could, now I know, in recent years, the idea of a a superhero vs. supervillain type tv show hasn't exactly worked out well, Heroes fell flat by the end of its run, and by the time No Ordinary Family finally started to get going and became good, it was too late to recover from its major stumbles out of the starting gate, and well, The Cape was horrible from the get go, it seemed that really the only who actually did any good and could break the horrible mold, as much as I hate to admit it, was Smallville, a fact that delights my friend Sally to no end. So with Superman's show coming to an end and Batman being the only DC Comics character able to make it on the big screen, it seems logical that someone would want to try and bring the last of DC Comic's "Big Three" back to popular culture's eye, and in that logic, is where the recent attempt at bringing Wonder Woman to television, which thankfully failed. Now after checking around and finally finding a copy of this pilot that wasn't ment to see the light of day, and watching it, I can tell you that its more then likely a good thing this didn't make it to television. But I'll get into that after I explain the plot.
Next, as we see Wonder Woman flying in her high tech jet toward what we assume is her base of operations, we here the narrative of a current affairs talk show, where the host gives us abit of a background on this version of Wonder Woman, she is Diana Themyscira, the head of a multi-billion dollar company called Themyscira Industries, which I guess among other things, makes a Wonder Woman doll, you know, for the chiggin, more on the doll later. As Diana's walking in off the roof more of the news program plays, you have cameos by O.J Simpson Lawyer Allen Dershiwitz, fat ass windbag Doctor Phil, and whatever the hell Nancy Grace is, these were odd choices because all Phil does is talk about how her outfit makes her look too sexy and objectified and we're all left wondering if Nancy Grace is here taping this, who's out there sensationalizing every police case where a little white girl that goes missing? This is also where we meet Diana's assistants, Henry Jones and Etta Candy. Henry is kind of bitchy and always on about business and "the image" of the company, and Etta, though named to sound like one, is not a stripper at a nudie bar in the ghetto where all the other dancers are named after drinks or cars. At the end of the scene introducing them and showing Wonder Woman is a high profile figure of note, you see Diana dressed in street clothing and putting on glasses while doing her hair up, Henry asks her what she's doing, she says "I'm going home.." he says "But this is your home, you mean that apartment you keep under the Diana Prince identity?" she says yes, then he goes on about how acting as she does can cause multiple personalities, and she says she needs the ID to hide and "feel normal", she then goes to said apartment, and eats some chips while petting her cat and watching sad movies, and telling her cat she has to get around to making herself a facebook page, oh she also as flashbacks of her leaving where ever she was before, I'm assuming Washington DC, to "do some good" in Los Angeles, which also includes leaving her boyfriend Steve Trevor, there really isn't anything that would imply or explain why she picked LA, nor is there any real implication they care about each other.
The next day there is a big press conference where Wonder Woman explains to the world that the man she caught the night before was a super enhanced being who was treated with a drug that is almost completely untraceable and gives you enhanced powers, she also explains it was given to the man by a woman named Veronica Cale, who is the CEO of a giant pharmaceutical company, which she claims is also responsible for the deaths of several inner city athletes with promising careers ahead of them, stating that it almost killed Willis Parks, the black kid from the opening of the episode. After this Diana is whisked off to a meeting where she and her board of directors all sit around and discuss the business that is Wonder Woman, leading to a very awkward and stupidly placed rant by Diana about how Wonder Woman is, and this is a direct quote, "More then just tits and ass..". If this wasn't enough annoying, we're next whipped away to Diana sitting in her office as Etta comes in and tells her that the woman she exposed earlier in the day, Veronica Cale, as arrived to speak with her, concerning her earlier accusations. Which leads to the most uncomfortable and completely overt attempted at building sexual tension between two possibly bisexual super attractive females ever on american television. No, I'm not kidding, the press work even lists Veronica Cale as bisexual in the first sentence of the overview, and i am not exaggerating, the two of them are alone in Diana's office, both of them are wearing dresses they had to be poured into or painted on them cuz they're so tight and form fitting, and the dialog is so overt and blatantly attempting to build sexual tension between the two of them that its almost off-putting to the point you know had it gone to series, they'd have used this to garner a ratings stunt out of it somehow, like when Claire kissed that girl that used to be on The Nanny on Heroes for no real reason and then they just forgot about it. And there is a short pointless scene where a Senator who is in the pocket of Veronica Cale tries to find out what Diana's up too, he says they're sending an investigator to check into her and her methods, she laughs it off.
From here, Diana goes to talk to the guy she caught the night before, and after being told she couldn't see him, she says, and i quote directly here, "do you like my outfit? you know, my outfit opens alot of doors for me.." in what is possibly the sleaziest moment in the entire episode. Before this goes anywhere farther, Ed Indelicato comes up and tells the officer to leave, him and Diana have a brief arguement and then he leaves her alone with the guy for 5 minutes. In that 5 minutes she breaks his fingers and arm and he tells her were all the biological drug testing is happening, and where anyone that is harmed by the drugs is kept. She then hops in her weird little jet and flies off, after telling Ed where she's going. After a scene of her flying about where you see the inside of the jet, Ed calls Diana on her cellphone, and tells her that if she breaks into the location, that makes it a crime scene, and anything found while they're investigating the break in can be used legally as evidence. Which i guess makes sense in the land of people who don't understand the law. This also leads to the most screwed up thing of all time, the climatic fight scene, ok well not so much climatic so much as slightly better then those boring 30 second rogue angel fights in that Ghost Rider movie no one but me watched, which reminds me, you all need to remember, I watched that film for all of you so it would save your souls.
Anyway, you cut to the warehouse, where Veronica has instructed her muscular henchman to stop Wonder Woman at all costs, I shall call her henchman "GunShow" because he's constantly posing while showing off his muscles, seriously, no one wants you to take them to the gun show, thats why you got fired from that GNC supplement shop in the sad mall. So Gunshow agrees, and says him and his "men" will handle her. Next thing you see is Gunshow and his men talking about how there is only one wonder woman and she can't beat all 20 of them, honestly, I'm kind of amazed they weren't seacresting out at this point, when you suddenly hear a banging on the near by gate, then another bang, and a third bang, at which point the gate rolls up, and standing there, in the classic wonder woman outfit for some reason thats unknown to us, is Wonder Woman, the look on her face means she's either gonna get gangbanged or she's about to beat the shit out of Gunshow and his wash outs from the WWE, honestly at this this point in the horrible story I was kinda hoping it would be the gangbang to save me from some of this horseshit, but I was wrong, I was horrible wrong, she fights them, with almost effortless ease, which makes me wonder, she can dispense 20 guys with a punch and a kick and afew cracks of the lasso, but it takes her three tries to break a gate open? Not even Heroes at its worst was this bad with power consistency! After beating Gunshow and all his cartoon pals, Wonder Woman walks down a hallway where she finds an armed guard, he fires at her, and she, in classic wonder woman styley, deflects the bullets off her bracelets, after he empties his clip which she deflects, she then picks up a near by lead pipe and THROWS IT THROUGH HIS MOTHERFUCKING THROAT and half way through the door behind him, he hits it so hard it knocks it off the hinges. She walks over him and finds Veronica standing there, they have a short fist fight/rough lesbian sex foreplay moment, which ends with Veronica lifted off her feet against a wall, then thrown to the floor as Diana walks past here and finds where the drugs she's been on about all episode are being tested on men, and sees the ones that all it did was disfigure and mutate. At this point Ed walks in and says they've got everyone in custody and they're shutting the operation down. After this you see Veronica being taken to jail on television, then you find out the "inspector" the senator mentioned earlier was the guy Diana left to come to LA, you know, because they needed one more obvious plot issue to deal with.
End, fade to credits.
Now that I've given you all the blow by blow, lets get down to the nitty gritty dirt band of all, shall we? First off, let me state, this pilot, and the final draft of the pilot's script that hit the internet afew months ago, are NOT the same, either this was an original version of the pilot and then they ordered it remade, which happens more times then you think, recent cases where the US remake of the british series Life On Mars, which had a massively bad original pilot, and a redo was ordered, plus many cases of unaired pilots of shows that have never seen the light of day. The reason I say this about the pilot is simply, that alot of what the script we were all told is the final script from shooting, isn't in this pilot. The running "joke" about suing Katy Perry for dressing as Wonder Woman in a video with out permission, as well as the "I kissed a girl" jokes about Diana and Veronica, are missing, the script had lots of cues for songs to be used, none of which were in this, almost all of the pop culture references are gone completely, the script also had swearing which would be bleeped out here in the states, but let air outside the country, but all there was as far as adult language goes is you hear "tits" twice and "ass" once, but nothing else comes close to harsh language. And this might be a nitpicky thing, but, the opening chase scene isn't what it is written as either, in the script Wonder Woman is running down Hollywood Blvd, and she's running into people dressed as everyone from Buzz Lightyear and SpongeBob Squarepants as well as pretty much every known marvel and dc superhero you can think of, the last of which being a very well endowed prostitute dressed as her, which would lead to the outburst in the meeting about the looks of the Wonder Woman doll that happens afterwards, also the script implied it would run add free, but there are are clearly add breaks in this.
Now that aside, lets focus on whats wrong with this actual pilot instead of pointing out whats missing, and well, whats wrong is, well most of the pilot infact. Sigh, lets see, where to start... First off, the outfit itself, I understand its a television show not a movie, and the budget won't be exactly the same, but the outfit looks literally like it was taken off the rack at a costume shop that has an adults only section, I'm serious, also its too tight, now I'm as much a fan of checking out hot women in skimpy things as the next upstanding gentleman who is wise to the ways of the world, but honestly seeing Adrianne Palicki's breasts muffin top the outfit because its so small on her, it starts to become abit distracting and takes you completely out of the show at times because its so overtly obvious you find yourself hating it whenever you see it, also though the boots look like your standard issue red and gold hooker boots, the pants Wonder Woman wears for all but the final fight scene, seriously look like a pair of stretch pants taken right off the post July 4th clearance rack at Walmart, and the trademark lasso thats always on her side looks like someone cut the end off of a golden glitter jump rope that someone got at a dollar store at the last minute.Seriously, I'm not exaggerating or nitpicking, the outfit really is bad enough to spend a whole paragraph on.
Other things that are wrong is, ofcourse the script itself, it lacks any real feel of structure and is devoid of most attempts at telling a story, in a remotely proper way, and it fails to make us really see any of the stories its trying to string together, the scene with Steve Trevor told in flashback completely misses even giving him a name, and really makes no sense at all other then to tell you Diana lived somewhere else then moved to LA "to use her powers for good", you have no idea where they are, who Steve is until his name is mentioned near the end of the pilot, you also don't have a clue why she feels her powers would be best used in LA instead of say, Washington DC or New York City or one of DC's many fictional cities of note Metropolis, Gotham City, Keystone City, Coast City, ect, you're just expected to believe she just felt the best place for her to use her powers, was the city of angels for no real reason other then to just go there. Plus, there is no actual reference to the fast she's an amazon princess, there is a joke about amazons, but thats it, no reference in the very little we're told of her of her coming to the "world of man" or anything, its just, like she somehow forgot who she is, and the writer completely forgot to tell us this fact, seriously, its kind of annoying once you get down into it. My other massive issues is, Wonder Woman has no concept of the the law, and how justice works, in the real world you can't hold a press conference to say someone is doing something illegal and then expect everyone to trust your word on that simply because you're you, we call that "slander" here in the states, and its against the law, hell its even against Branigan's Law. She also has no issue torturing people, you know, because thats what heroes do, oh wait, I'm from the world that makes sense, where anti-heroes like Cable, Wolverine, Punisher, Lobo, Batman and the like all torture to get information, but heroes like Superman and Captain America and the like do not torture, Wonder Woman doesn't torture, she uses her magic lasso, which when tied around a person will make them tell the truth, I guess someone in the writing department forgot its for more then snapping a motherfucker's neck like a matchstick, but the thing that bugs me most of all, even far beyond the implication that Diana's secretly bisexual and is secretly attracted to Veronica Cale, who again, the synopsis points out in the first line about her, is very bisexual, and even farther beyond the fact they try to make Wonder Woman a mix of Batman and Iron Man, or the whole has three identities thing, above all of that, what gets me the most is how effortlessly, and willingly, Diana kills. Seriously there was no reason for her to toss a pipe through the throat of a security guard who was out of bullets for his gun, just because you're a door guard at a super secret super evil research building, does not make you guilty of being involved with what goes on there, she seriously murdered a possibly innocent person, and no one bothered to even call her out on it. It was seriously mindblowing.
So the big question, is it really worth it? No. It falls into the same category as the unaired pilots for the american versions of shows like Red Dwarf, The Vicker of Dilbey, Absolutely Fabulous, Little Mosque On The Prairie, and countless others that just should be relegated to things people who are only in the know and get a kick out of such things keep and show their friends, and should never ever be shown the light of day. But if you wanna have a good laugh, or wanna see Elizabeth Hurley as a purely evil super hot and super bisexual criminal as she flirts with Adrianne Palicki in a way too tight pleather top from Victoria's Secret or see that believe it or not, the crap that does make the air, isn't always as bad as the crap that doesn't make on the air, then by all means search it out and see if maybe you can find it, and then be amazed at the horror show that follows. Or just avoid it and run like the wind, your choice.
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BC
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