Wonder Woman (2011) aka Pants to be Darkened

[Maximara]

Have you ever wanted to see a version of Wonder Woman with a public identity and operating a mega cooperation ala Tony Stark?

Have you every wanted to see a version of Wonder Woman having a moral compass somewhere between the 1939 Batman or Superman and the Punisher who operates in a world similar to that of the Marvin and Wendy Superfriends?

Have you every wanted to see a version of Wonder Woman who for some insane reason is trying to juggle three separate identities (Wonder Woman, Diana of Themyscira, and Diana Prince)?

Boy do we have the pilot for you!

To be fair some of the Silver age stories (especially those stated as being "imaginary" - don't bother that joke has been done to death) had versions of the characters who moral compass was just as messed up.

I can't outdo the reviewer for this particular example so I will give choice quotes:

"Have you ever wished you could see a grieving Man of Steel pushed to the limits of his sanity, having a make-out session with a robot, trolling beauty contests for Lois lookalikes and tricking a woman into marrying him under the pretense of being someone else? If so, then Superman #215 (Apr 1969) has the story you've been looking for."

Let's not forget he "watches Brainiac and Luthor kill two people and because he really, really doesn't like the victims, turns a blind eye while they haul off the bodies (and even says, "Thanks")"

"This is the kind of story that makes you want to take a shower. Things get creepy fast and stay that way to the very last panel, where Superman gloats, "That's what she thinks!" It's a sordid, ugly mess."

And you thought Wonder Woman was a mess in this pilot...oh boy you haven't seen anything yet.

[Redem]

Well that pilot got even worst with the movie that clearly frame Wonder Woman benevolence and protection of other has her main virtues

[FaxModem1]

Having actually seen the pilot, you can tell what they were going for, but utterly failed at. They wanted to show a Diana who came to man's world, and it has permanently affected her, making her into a much more violent and unstable person. Presumably the arc was going to be that she slowly realized just how much of a monster she was becoming. But I think that got lost somewhere between initial conception and filming.

And yeah, the movie makes the pilot look a 100 times worse.

[Redem]

Having actually seen the pilot, you can tell what they were going for, but utterly failed at. They wanted to show a Diana who came to man's world, and it has permanently affected her, making her into a much more violent and unstable person. Presumably the arc was going to be that she slowly realized just how much of a monster she was becoming. But I think that got lost somewhere between initial conception and filming.

That sound like an interesting idea, I havn't seen the pilot, where they actual hint she was gonna become benevolent with time?

[Maximara]

Having actually seen the pilot, you can tell what they were going for, but utterly failed at. They wanted to show a Diana who came to man's world, and it has permanently affected her, making her into a much more violent and unstable person. Presumably the arc was going to be that she slowly realized just how much of a monster she was becoming. But I think that got lost somewhere between initial conception and filming.

And yeah, the movie makes the pilot look a 100 times worse.

As sfdebris states the pilot Wonder Woman is effectively a Mary Sue with the moral compass of the modern era in what is effectively a Silver Age world. With her being viewed in that light how was she ever going to realize "how much of a monster she was becoming"?

In fact, there was a story where a bunch of grey men who that somehow brought the Golden Age Superman (which is not the Earth-Two Superman) to New Earth. Turned out he was way too brutal even by modern standards and was returned to the non existence he was formed from.

The comics had something nearly as bad: the Mod Wonder Woman. That 26 issue disaster got a nod in the 1997 JLA #8 and #9 where the a variant of the white costume showed up.

[FaxModem1]

Having actually seen the pilot, you can tell what they were going for, but utterly failed at. They wanted to show a Diana who came to man's world, and it has permanently affected her, making her into a much more violent and unstable person. Presumably the arc was going to be that she slowly realized just how much of a monster she was becoming. But I think that got lost somewhere between initial conception and filming.

That sound like an interesting idea, I havn't seen the pilot, where they actual hint she was gonna become benevolent with time?

Her talk with the senator and the flashbacks with Steve brings up her exile a little bit. And I remember reading that there was also unfilmed scenes where she was on Themyscirya, showing who she was before Man's world, but those were never filmed due to costs. They were trying to go for her being alone and facing great odds, still not fitting in to our civilization after being here a while. But they still gave her a company of followers and admirers. As is, Wonder Woman is a total nut rampaging through LA, and almost everyone loves her for it. As Chuck said, it feels like several ideas were crammed together, and this garbage is the result.

[Killerbee256]

Did anyone else who saw John Wick see Adrianne Palicki's character as psychotic wonder woman? It made the scene near the end were the Continental staff "dispose" of her rather pleasing, I must say.

[CareerKnight]

Having actually seen the pilot, you can tell what they were going for, but utterly failed at. They wanted to show a Diana who came to man's world, and it has permanently affected her, making her into a much more violent and unstable person. Presumably the arc was going to be that she slowly realized just how much of a monster she was becoming. But I think that got lost somewhere between initial conception and filming.

And yeah, the movie makes the pilot look a 100 times worse.

If that was the original idea it had long since been buried under other, often conflicting, ideas by the time they got to the pilot. If this had somehow become a series and they eventually did this idea it would have come off less as "we planned it all along" and more like "we made a horrible mistake".

[rickgriffin]

I just went through the Pilot again, this time thinking, "Exactly what would they need to change to make this Pilot credible and in line with the original vision" and there's WAY too many problems standing in the way

-Assuming you have "dark" Wonder Woman going through a transformation and she will become better by the end of, perhaps, a story arc, you have a fundamental issue: you risk making two completely separate series between this initial and this latter story arc. I'm not saying it can't be done, but that is some serious whiplash you've got to manage built right in, especially when you would need writers who have to consider how to reconcile Wonder Woman between dark and light periods so she doesn't come across as suddenly two different people.

-There is, at best, a LITTLE acknowledgement that what Wonder Woman is doing in this dark period is wrong. The major issue is that most of the criticism comes from people coded either villains or obstacles, which creates the veneer of Obviously Wrong. Batman stories do similarly. The main difference is that with Batman, this usually comes after a period of Batman showing he doesn't kill, and not otherwise getting in the way of the law--none of which Wonder Woman does.

-But even in Batman they usually know how to make the supporting characters feel about him. Some people, ESPECIALLY PEOPLE BATMAN PROTECTS, will be like "he's a menace to society, we have to stop him" and they're shown up ONLY WHEN their interference in Batman's business causes more problems than it solves. This basically does not happen anywhere in the Wonder Woman pilot; people against Wonder Woman are minor obstacles or are villains. People for Wonder Woman are everyone else. You might be able to tweak this in a follow-up episode, except

-There is a REASON Batman has a secret identity even beyond protecting a family. When you work outside the law you kinda need to keep your identity a secret so the law doesn't find you. This means the whole public-face megarich business woman aspect of Wonder Woman would have to be SCRAPPED (Which is an issue because Diana having a public face is one of the few things that really makes her DIFFERENT from Superman and Batman, but of course, working with your identity in the open would necessitate, y'know, taking full responsibility for your actions, which we're trying to avoid)

So EITHER the whole dark Wonder Woman thing needs to be dropped (necessitating a total rewrite of the script and setting), the whole public identity megarich businesswoman thing needs to be dropped so she can actually work in secret (necessitating a total rewrite of the script and setting), or, even if you keep that part and make Wonder Woman open and proud about what she's doing, you need to actually go all-in to make the setting dark enough to fit her actions which would require 24-style super threatening villains and obviously corrupt or incompetent government (necessitating a total rewrite of the script and setting) so, yeah, no matter which way you slice it there's not really much you can salvage from THIS pilot even if you wanted to.

[Antiboyscout]

How about a more fundamental problem? We are never given justification for her darkness. We need to see her turn. This is the problem with starting a story in the middle. We don't have an origin and we don't have motivation. If the character does something questionable then it's all on them. This feeds into another problem SF pointed out. No matter how awful a thing the character does in universe it its seen as ok or justified.