By Chantel Delulio
Lifestyle Editor
A couple of weeks ago a first draft of the upcoming David E. Kelly helmed “Wonder Woman” pilot leaked onto the Internet.
To say that its contents make every Julia Roberts romantic comedy ever look like “Die Hard” is an understatement.
Granted, a lot can change in the time between when a first draft is submitted and when the pilot would actually air. However, the shear magnitude of misfires is rather alarming.
The details of the script reportedly include (but are no means limited to) Diana goofily singing along to the radio while driving, getting inordinately hung up about her ex-boyfriend, eating ice cream in her pajamas with her “BFF,” and (perhaps worst of all) the utterance of the phrase, “You go girl.”
All that’s missing is one dancing baby and you’re well on your way to something more closely resembling an Ally McBeal reboot than a Wonder Woman adaptation.
This Wonder Woman also has not one but two secret identities. One of those identities is a high-powered CEO who everyone knows to be the counterpart to her superhero persona. Which worked fine for the Iron Man movie. That is, until the sequel came out.
It is entirely possible that perhaps this so-called leaked script is a phony or even a red herring. But, at press time, there had been no statement denouncing its authenticity. And even if it was fake, what does it say about Kelly that most people had no difficulty taking this at face value? He’s perfectly capable of writing something this cringe inducing.
Perhaps one of the most indicative aspects that David E. Kelly is probably not the right man to helm a Wonder Woman show are the music cues. The choice in unironically including “One Way or Another,” “Bad Romance” and “All the Single Ladies” act as red alerts that this script was written by a middle-aged man completely out of touch with how a woman in her 30s actually acts.
Not that a middle-aged man couldn’t do a Wonder Woman show justice. For the longest time Joss Whedon was in the process of developing a Wonder Woman feature film but the project fell apart due to “creative differences.”
Whedon is famous for the television shows “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Firefly,” and “Dollhouse.” There are plenty of arguments to be made against Whedon, but he remains a self-proclaimed feminist who wouldn’t be caught dead writing a scene wherein Wonder Woman eats ice cream in her pajamas while bemoaning the complexity of the male gender.
Indeed, Kelly is only at his best when he’s dealing with well-established genres. Legal and medical shows when it comes with easily identifiable constructs to work with.
Kelly doesn’t have a good track record when it comes to being out of his depth. Whether it was the short-lived “Wedding Bells” or the misguided Americanization of “Life on Mars” he’s proven that what he really needs to do is stick to lawyers and doctors.
Maybe Kelly was going for the camp factor. It makes sense since the character lends itself to a certain degree of camp. The only problem with that is that it was already done with the 1970s show that maintains its status as a beloved cult classic.
Just imagine if the same thing had been done with, say, Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” films. What if instead of the gritty Gotham inspired by The Long Halloween arch in the comics there was instead a rehashing of the Adam West series?
Okay, so maybe that would have been awesome in its way but it’s safe to say few fans of “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight” would be up for that kind of trade–off.