Wonder Woman DC Movie: Adrianne Palicki

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman Movie Back on Track

Adrianne Palicki as Wonder Woman. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The news was buried at the end of Variety's Justice League story yesterday, where it was stated that Green Lantern scribe Michael Goldenberg "was hired to write Wonder Woman." It's not clear when this hiring took place, nor if it was a move made in concert with the hiring of Will Beall to write the new JLA script for the studio.

Variety also points out that two other Green Lantern writers, Marc Guggenheim and Michael Green, are working on The Flash for director Greg Berlanti (also a GL vet!). This isn't news, but the overall impression is that Warner Bros. is finally getting serious about the rest of their superheroes in the wake of The Avengers' success (and with The Dark Knight trilogy soon coming to an end). What's less clear is why they're relying so heavily on the team that helped to create Green Lantern, which obviously was not the success the studio had hoped for (though certainly a bulk of the blame for that film has been laid at director Martin Campbell's feet).

Anyhow, Warners and DC have been trying to get Wonder Woman onscreen for some time. There was that Joss Whedon/Joel Silver big-screen push several years back (which must sting for the studio in this post-Avengers world), and just last year a TV show from The Practice's David E. Kelley, starring Adrianne Palicki, made it to the pilot stage before getting dropped. Now, the princess' time may finally have come.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/06/wonder-woman-movie-back-on-track

Friday, May 27, 2011

Wonder Woman: Review of Wonder Woman pilot

Adrianne Palicki as Wonder Woman. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
As Wonder Woman/Diana Themyscira/Diana Prince, Adrianne Palicki was a revelation. I was already a big fan of hers from Friday Night Lights but here she takes center stage and pulls off what is an extremely difficult role. She’s tough, she’s charming, she’s sexy, she’s vulnerable, and she’s got a little bit of an angry edge to her when she’s Wonder Woman that adds just a dash of exciting unpredictability. This could have been a star making turn for Padlicki who certainly deserves one.

The Wonder Woman on this show is a badass who is not above choking dudes with her lasso (her favorite move) or throwing a piece of pipe through your throat if you won’t stop shooting at her. For a weekly television show, the action scenes were fairly well executed and at times quite thrilling. The whole final sequence where she storms Veronica Cale’s compound and decimates her ‘roided out super-soldier army is really fun to watch.

The first time we see Wonder Woman she is wearing the version of the costume that we’ve seen with the blue pants. The biggest surprise in the entire pilot? When she shows up to take on Veronica Cale’s goons for the final big action scene, she’s in the classic pants-less comic book costume. That costume only appeared briefly in the script where it hung in the back of her closet. There is a mention of a designer coming in to discuss a new costume so it would appear that this Wonder Woman has different costumes for different occasions. Whichever costume she's wearing they all really work on-screen.

A lot of time was spent in the script on Steve Trevor and the effect that their break-up had on Diana. That’s toned way, way down in the pilot. In fact, the famous sequence where she has a sleepover with her best friend and eats ice cream and talks about their breakup and then cries because she misses Steve is nowhere to be found. Yes, there are a few flashbacks to their break-up, and yes, Diana misses Steve, and yes, it has affected her, but how she deals with it is handled in a much more realistic way. Diana is obviously lonely and does not have any kind of personal life and that was clearly being set up as a subplot to run through the series.

The streamlining of the script really worked in the pilot’s favor. The story moved much quicker than it read. For example, in the script, Diana spent a long sequence testifying before the United States Congress about her vigilante activities, which allowed for long and droning speechifying on both sides. That would have been really boring on screen. In the pilot, that sequence is swapped out for a scene in which she has dinner with one sleazy congressman. The same information about the government being uneasy with Wonder Woman’s activities was conveyed in a much quicker, and more compelling, way.

http://ifanboy.com/articles/review-wonder-woman-pilot/