The Wonder Woman pilot is all over the internets if you know where to look for it (on any torrent site, really… not that I condone that sort of behaviour, of course), and I watched it last night. It was kind of a mess. Now, pilots are rarely very polished… there was some incomplete CGI, a lot of uneven sound, and what I have to assume was a filler score. But apart from all of that, it was still a pretty bad show.
As a pilot, it was poorly constructed. It wasn’t really an introduction to Wonder Woman, apart from a few clunky exposition scenes. Her Amazon heritage wasn’t really explained, and we never saw Paradise Island/Themyscira or learned how she got to America. On top of having little to no background on the character, Wonder Woman herself was really confusing. She’s Wonder Woman, the superhero, and Diana Themyscira, the head of the company that funds her superheroic adventures. The Diana Themyscira identity isn’t a secret… everyone knows she’s Wonder Woman. BUT she’s also Diana Prince, a normal girl with an apartment and a cat named Sylvester, a third, secret identity so she can get away from it all. All these identities seemed rather unnecessary.
Apart from the confusing main character, the storyline of the show was pretty weak and unexciting. An evil pharmaceutical company, headed by Veronica Cale, is selling supplements that are killing its users. Wonder Woman already knows who’s behind it (there’s no investigation action at all) so she calls out Veronica Cale publicly and beats the location of Cale’s secret lab out of a dude. Then she swoops into the facility, takes down a bunch of goons, Cale gets arrested, and that’s it. There’s some stuff about a possible Justice Department investigation of Wonder Woman, but that doesn’t turn into anything but an appearance by Steve Trevor. It was hardly a compelling villain or a particularly interesting evil plot.
The execution was also lacking. The story stumbled along, hampered by silly tangents and explanatory scenes that felt shoehorned in. The dialogue was weak, and poorly delivered by most of the cast. Nearly all of the characters were one-note… Cary Elwes was the exasperated CEO, Tracie Thoms was the calm and efficient Etta (I actually liked her), and Elizabeth Hurley was the blatantly evil villain. I didn’t much care for Adrianne Palicki as Wonder Woman (and her other two identities… from now on, unless I specify one of the other two identities, let’s assume that by “Wonder Woman” I mean all three identities), but I think it’s less because of Palicki herself and more because the character was so severe. And therein lies my biggest problem with the pilot:
I didn’t like Wonder Woman. At all. She was kind of a jerk and a terrible person.
If I had a nickel for every time Wonder Woman smiled in the pilot, I wouldn’t have enough change to use a payphone. Wonder Woman was perpetually displeased with everything. She was either angry or frustrated or annoyed or bothered or depressed or some combination therein. She just wasn’t a pleasant character. I LOVE Wonder Woman, but I very quickly lost my sympathy for the character. Everything felt like a battle… she was super combative with everyone, even her allies. Plus, she was obviously engaging in criminal activity.
In the course of the pilot, Wonder Woman tortured a guy for information (instead of just using her lasso… wouldn’t that have been easier??!!), references were made to her using illegal wiretaps, and then she KILLED a guy by throwing a pipe through his throat. First off, Wonder Woman doesn’t do stuff like that. And second, that’s SUPER illegal. Throughout the show, there were several supposedly villainous characters who were trying to investigate Wonder Woman and Themyscira Industries for various crimes, and I found myself on their side. They were totally right… you can’t go around torturing and killing people!! And Wonder Woman was completely blasé about it. She expressed no regrets whatsoever for her torturing or killing. That’s not how superheroes roll.
Apart from the murdering, Wonder Woman just wasn’t a happy person. In a comicly bad scene about a buxom Wonder Woman doll, she expresses that the expectation of being perfect all the time weighs on her heavily. Then, at home as Diana Prince, she is clearly depressed as she watches The Notebook and misses Steve Trevor. The pilot ends with Diana watching a news program where the anchorwoman is saying that if she could be Wonder Woman just for a day then she’d be happy, but Diana just stares forlornly at the screen, sad and alone. Apparently, being Wonder Woman isn’t as awesome as you might think. It’s not a particularly heroic or inspiring note to end the program on… it was a real downer.
Of course, the source of all this angst and loneliness is Steve Trevor. When he shows up later in the episode and Wonder Woman learns that he is now married, her disappointment is palpable. Through flashbacks, we learn that she left Steve to become a superhero, but she still pines for him like crazy and spends her nights alone thinking about him. In the scene where she gets upset at her CEO about the top-heavy doll, he basically says “So this is really about Steve, isn’t it?”. And it is. It was like 1950s Wonder Woman all over again.
So overall, it was definitely a structurally bad pilot, but the real problem was the unlikeability of Wonder Woman. She is an angry, violent, mopey character, and not at all the Wonder Woman we’re used to from the comics and other shows. Her methods are terrible, her character is poorly defined, and in the end you either are upset with or feel bad for her. Or both (I was 80-20 for upset/feeling bad). I really don’t think they could have salvaged this into a decent series without an epic overhaul.
Here are some quick, closing thoughts… first the bad:
- You named the black character Willis? Really?
- Then you didn’t even say “What you talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?”!!!
- Also, no one says “ghettoes” anymore, David E. Kelley.
- Willis is one of the people affected by Cale’s evil pharmaceuticals, and Diana promises his mother vengeance. Not justice… vengeance.
- I don’t get why Wonder Woman needs a corporation (that seems to get its money just from dolls) to fund her superheroing… are the Amazons not chipping in anything?
- The jet wasn’t invisible… come on!!
- Wonder Woman wouldn’t name her cat Sylvester.
- There were some amusing guest star talking heads… Nancy Grace and Jeffrey Toobin were pro-Wonder Woman, but Dr. Phil had some concerns.
- Does Jeffrey Toobin get a lot of these gigs? He seems like a random choice.
- The goons she beats up looked totally silly. It was like they all just came from the gym or something.
- The fight with Elizabeth Hurley wasn’t even a fight.
- Parts of the costume worked, others didn’t. The pants/shorts and boots were fine, and the bracelets looked decent. The tiara looked pretty bad most of the time, and the top was just sort of ridiculous… there was a hilarious scene shortly after Wonder Woman rails against how the doll objectifies her where her top is BARELY holding her in. It’s so bad.
- The show seemed a lot different than what I’d heard about the pilot script… a lot of scenes I expected weren’t there, and wasn’t it supposed to be two hours?
- OH MAN people need to stop using the “I can’t be with you because you’d be targeted by my enemies” excuse for not dating people. It’s played out.
And now the good… there actually is some!!
- I liked how they used the lasso. Most of the CGI wasn’t finished, but Wonder Woman was really swift and efficient with it and it looked kind of cool.
- There was one scene where the lasso was just a yellow line… it was a really darkly lit scene, and reminded me of Sin City.
- She deflected bullets!! And it looked pretty good. She then impaled a dude with a pipe, but the bullet deflecting before that was fun.
- The fight scenes in general were decent, apart from the murdering.
- Richard Gilmore!!! Edward Herrmann played a senator who was fixing to investigate Wonder Woman. I was jazzed not because of this senator character, but because The Gilmore Girls is an awesome show.
- I still like the show’s logo.
- There must be something else I liked…
- Nope. That’s all I got.
TIM HANLEY 
Why is this tagged with Cary Grant?
Because I meant Cary Elwes, and clicked the wrong name when I was writing it in… I have a Cary Grant tag from my Philadelphia Story post 🙂 It’s fixed now.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. To be honest, I was expecting MUCH worse. But that doesn’t mean it was good!
Some concepts were great. The ONLY character whose acting and characterization were GREAT was Veronica Cale. Kudos to Elizabeth Hurley. Now, another thing — quite sad that V.C. was hotter and had a greater presence than DIANA! Um, she’s WONDER WOMAN because people are supposed to be in awe of her by her beauty and stature. Oh well.
The corporation idea was lame. But some of the concepts — selling dolls, etc., not so horrible. I mean, why not have a P.R. firm like that of Myndi Mayer do that kind of work.
Why not give Diana a REAL purpose in Man’s World. OK, she is fighting crime. But she needs a corporation to “fund” her efforts? Poppycock! Have her instead be the head of an international charitable organization for world peace, the perfect platform from which to spread her ideals.
But no.
How does this TV-Diana get to know humanity by sitting around with Powergirl’s cat eating ice cream watching “The Notebook” while wearing glasses.
Ho hum….
Luckily we were spared any more of their “brilliant” ideas.
Weird because Geekfurious.com has a review that makes a ton of the same points…are you twins?
This review does not give proper credit where it is due and this pilot was MUCH better than you give it credit. WW owns a corporation so she can fund her crime fighting. So to have a lab to do the blood work. to wire tap, her planes, her costume and gadgets — all of that is purchased by the profit of her corporation. To take a character like this and to insert her into our world in 2011 is no easy feat and I think Kelley did a good job of doing that. We now have a 24/7 news cycle and the use of the media continually commenting on WW’s actions and how that would affect her emotionally was great. The use of legal issues in relationship to both the police and WW’s actions made sense. The supporting cast was wonderful and created a nice home base for WW. The dynamic between WW, Etta and Cary Elwes character was wonderful and I think would of provided some great moments had this gone to series. Angling WW this way would have allowed a lot of story opportunities for future episodes and seasons. I really hope another network will look at this and pick it up. Most reviews online were not written by people that would even be the target audience for this type of show. The fact that their voices are what has now filled people’s thoughts is truly unfortunate. Between the Smallville audience and Buffy lovers this should would easily find a more than sizable audience to sustain itself — especially at the CW level of needing only a 2-5 ratings point to hang on!! This WW kicked ass and really had a warriors mentality. She really looked the part and the way they made her tower over everyone she shared the screen with was a very cool and subtle effect. My only gripes where her torturing the bald dude when she has a lasso that forces people to tell the truth and in the scene with the jerk senator when he threaned her and cited his age as being greater than hers – it was a missed opportunity for her to school him on how she is his senior by many centuries! So if you have not yet seen it – find it online – it is very easy – and watch for yourself. If you like it post — we need to make a petition to get this on the air. if we can have tons of these awful crime procedurals we can certainly get at least one superhero show!!
While I found the pilot corny, poorly constructed, and far too violent, I’m glad you dug it, Curtis. You’re actually the first person I’ve come across who enjoyed it!! I had high hopes for the series, but the pilot just didn’t work for me.
Tim — I think it showed a good enough amount of promise to at least take it to series. I mean considering some of these horrid sci-fi/supernatural leaning shows that make it to series and are so bad on every level I feel at least this WW has enough areas going for it. As well as others with just a little touch ups that will help bring it around to being a really strong show. I mean come on Charmed lasted like what 7-8 seasons!! Talk about cheesy and corny!! At least this WW has good fighting and if they give Liz Hurley a bit more to do I think she could be a great long term villian. She really chewed up her scenes in a fun way.
You definitely make a good point about Charmed… how that show survived so long I have no idea!! And Elizabeth Hurley could have been a fun, totally evil villain. She wasn’t given much to do in the pilot. But ultimately, I think the show needed way more than little touch-ups. The triple identity was just bizarre and unnecessary, all of the romance stuff made her look sort of pathetic (Wonder Woman does not sit at home all sad and lonely watching The Notebook), and she was far too violent. I found the character way off, and too much in the extremes. She was killing and torturing people instead of subduing them humanely and lassoing them, and she was sitting at home all mopey instead of bucking up and doing something productive. They just didn’t seem to understand Wonder Woman, and I think that would have made for a bad series. But again, I’m quite glad you liked it!! It’s nice to hear that someone got something out of it.
I agree with you on the torturing and killing aspect. I thought it was unnecessary as for the torturing she has a lasso that is provided to do exactly what she needed in that situation and she just as easily could have disarmed the guard instead of killing him. Although compared to how lame the fight scenes were in the Lynda Carter version I did enjoy having her really kick ass. : ) I also really liked how much Kelley attempted to make her more relatable on an emotional level with the Diana Prince scenes. I do think that could of been saved for a later episode and not the pilot due to it bringing it down when it could of had more of a bang – but I don’t think that was a weak spot. I think he was just trying to show where his direction was headed and that tone would of been a strong point as a series but for a pilot of an action show the pace could of been quicker without adding that in so soon. I think having that angle as a part of his show would have provided a lot of Bones style tension in the future. I have to say I think he tried to model it to a degree off of the Buffy group dynamic with the corporate set-up and her team there. I had read so much online prior to watching the pilot and I went in truly prepared to just hate it and be laughing my ass off at how strange and off it was as I had even watched those 3 clips that had made it online one was part of the “tits’ scene and then willis in the hospital when she visits and the third was most of the big fight scene. I was excited by the fight scene footage and confused by the other two clips. Then when I watched the full pilot and saw them in the context of the show I actually liked both scenes and while the Willis scene was a bit campy it did make for a nice loving WW moment. I think her overall anger you have talked about was not a tunr off for me. I thought it was logical as a reaction to this strange world she is in and her frustration with how warped this country is rapidly becoming due to the non-stop media cycle we all live in. Manners and ethical people are disappearing, most people would prefer to interact with others electronically than in person, so many people are desperate to be famous — not famous for being a great actress, singer, musician, etc but just famous to be famous! The sense of entitlement many people carry is alarming. In her position I would have a terrible distaste for a lot of it and I think that was more the angle that she was coming from and how BS the system is when you know someone is doing something horribly illegal but with all the red tape you can’t get to them and they get to keep doing what they are doing. The sheer volume of bad shows on the air these days is crazy and I guess after seeing it I am just surprised it didn’t get picked up as I see so many shows of much lower quality surviving. Anyhow thanks for chatting with me about it — so out of curiousity what shows do you regularly watch?
See, I don’t really think we need such a relatable Wonder Woman… especially one that seems so depressed. To me, relationship woes are something that would kind of roll off her. She’s Wonder Woman, and she’s got stuff to do 🙂
I like the idea of a group dynamic, and I really dug Etta, but I just wasn’t into the whole corporate set-up. I don’t know if it was just too far removed from the comics or what, but Wonder Woman as the head of a corporation just felt weird to me.
I agree that Wonder Woman would be rather frustrated by our world and have a distaste for a lot of it. But to me, she seemed passionate about things in the wrong way… like rather than go about things in a calm, thought out manner, she sort of lashed out and got super upset and ended up killing a bunch of dudes.
I like comedies like Community and Louie, but for drama shows I’m into stuff like Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Fringe, and Doctor Who. My favourite show last year was Terriers, but no one watched it and it got cancelled 🙂 I don’t much go for a lot of the crime/doctor shows that take up a lot of the network schedules. What shows do you like?
I think if you removed the more human emotional side they would be removing a layer of the show that heps people connect and care about the character. I think it is nice to see this strong, capable and powerful woman and to also see the flip side of that and see the smaller moments of her life. I think had the 70’s version been better with giving Diana more of a personal life they would of been able to go more than 3 seasons. I think the scene with Steve at the end had some punch to it. Her emotional reaction to him being married played very real I thought and I think that sense of longing she has for him was very relatable and well played.
I have not read a Wonder Woman comic in at least 10 years so I understand that Kelley took many liberties with the story and setting but I am not one of those purists that has issue with that. I firmly believe that to make it your own and give it tone you are after the writer has to make some changes and I know you disagree but I think he made mostly smart choices. I think he set himsefl up for a number of story threads to come out of the pilot that would have provided some fun themes to play with in later episodes.
I understand what you are saying about her approaching situations in a more calm and controlled manner and I truly think that is a failure on the part of the script. When we come into the story she has been living this life in LA for a few years and so she is already kind of set in her ways I guess and already at that point of frustration with society and its inner-workings and I think we viewers don’t get to see how she arrives at that emotional place just that she is there. I can definitely see where that could be a turn off. While I do find her emotion completely logical for what she is dealing with I do think an expanded episodes with more flashbacks to set that stage would have been a huge benefit to clarifying that tone. Sadly I don’t think we will ever get to see more — which I know you are thrilled for! haha : )
I love TV but don’t have a lot I love to watch right now. I love Fringe, Bones, Project Runway, SYTYCD, True Blood, 30 Rock, and Parks & Rec. Most of my favorite shows I have lost over the years and not found great replacements. I find I end up watching a lot of reality crap lately. I need some better scripted shows. I have started watching Dexter and Weeds on Netflix and love them.
I am with you in theory that it would be nice to see the smaller moments of Wonder Woman’s life… it’s just that the moments we saw struck me as cliched and so not Wonder Woman. That scene with Steve at the end may have been my least favourite in the whole pilot 🙂 Partly because that dude is a terrible Steve, and partly because depressed, lovelorn Wonder Woman just doesn’t work for me.
I’m all for making changes to superheroes to suit the medium, but yeah, I didn’t think Kelley made smart ones.
Yeah… I could see an episode like the pilot, with the anger and frustration, later on in the season, once these frustrations have been established. I think it was a bad angle to go with right out of the gate, though.
I’ve been watching a lot of older seasons of scripted shows lately too… particularly dramas. I don’t watch a ton of current dramas now. Plus I’ve had a bad few years where the shows I love most each year get cancelled… Pushing Daisies, Better Off Ted, and Terriers have all been casualties of my affections… I’m almost scared to get excited about any new shows this season!!
I hear you — I loved Pushing Daisies and Better Off Ted as well. Plus losing Lost, Battlestar, Buffy, Angel, Sex and the City — all my faves are gone and I truly don’t seem to find new ones that really excite me. I was hoping for more from Alphas so we’ll see there. I heard got things about Terriers and by the time I was coming around to watching it they had canceled it.
So are you excited for the DC relaunch? I lived for comics in my teens and have gotten away from them as I have gotten older but between all my WW obsessing with the pilot I am going to start up a subscription to the new WW book. Since you are far more the expert here — do you think it will be worth it?
Yeah, a lot of great shows ended their runs lately!! And lots of shows that weren’t particularly great but that I watched every week, like ER, are all gone now too. Hopefully this season will bring some new things… there are a few shows I’m excited about.
I’m semi-excited for the DC relaunch… there are a few series I think look awesome, but a lot that don’t. Wonder Woman, though, looks fantastic… they’ve paired up one of the best writers in the business with one of the best artists, and it’s literally my Wonder Woman dream team. Have you seen the art previews I’ve been posting here? I think it’s going to be amazing. I know I love Wonder Woman like crazy so I might seem biased, but it looks like it’s going to be the best book in the relaunch. You should definitely check it out.
I just went and looked at the art you posted — wow it looks awesome!! I love the way she is drawn there!! Well the relaunch for her sounds great then — I can’t wait to read what they do with her. So is anyone’s origin drastically changing or is this just a lame marketing ploy to try and gain new business? I have read so very little about it.
Yeah, Cliff Chiang is pretty amazing… I am CRAZY jazzed he’s on Wonder Woman. There are a few drastic changes… they’re redoing Superman and seem to be changing a lot. He and Lois aren’t married, for example. Morrison is telling a sort of origin story for Superman in Action Comics… it seems a little unnecessary to me. The Bat-books and Green Lantern stuff are staying mostly the same, apart from some new costumes and Barbara back as Batgirl. For the lesser known characters, it remains to be seen how much they’ve changed. The buzzword DC seems to be using a lot is a “soft” reboot, ie. they’re keeping a lot the same, but changing a bunch of things here and there.
Arriving a bit late to the party, because I only recently saw the pilot. I actually didn’t mind the “lonely superhero” aspect at the end, and I actually got the point of the action figure scene (it helps to recognize that the room was filled with genuine WW merchandise), and I think the hypocrisy of WW railing against the sexualizing of her character and then going off to fight baddies in a swimsuit was intentional. But the whole thing was spoiled, once again, by the killing, both in the combat with the thugs, and the guard who got the pipe treatment. Yes, WW kills (Max Lord, anyone?) but the way it was treated here shows how the writers simply did not understand the character. I had a similar problem with the DCU animated film of a couple years back that also had WW killing men unnecessarily. Unfortunately the only way I think for a live action WW film or movie to work is to somehow either clone or de-age Lynda Carter, and that doesn’t seem likely anytime soon.
There was nothing Wonder Woman about that pilot, and not enough substance to actually redeem it.
The pilot COMPLETELY missed the character of Wonder Woman. She is the embodiment of Truth in fact multiple times she has become the goddess of truth and righteousness. Her entire mission is to bring justice(and originally love) to the world. This mock Wonder Woman was a criminal, and the legal aspects of the show had glaring plot holes. She should have been arrested at the end of the episode for assault and murder. She is not a soldier, and not a cop. She acted illegally with disregard for the results of her actions. The true Wonder Woman can be depicted as harsh of coarse, she was a warrior and despite her compassion she will always be a warrior. A Wondie who struggles to find balance between the warrior and the emissary of justice would be compelling. The Pilot Wonder Woman(PWW) was a cold calculating murderer, an insult to Wonder Woman and people who admire her and what she stands for.
Moving on to her…alter egos. That seemed rather…to be blunt stupid. Three alter egos? They were trying to “humanize” her in the cheapest and laziest way possible by having her complain about having to be perfect and having her be so torn up about Steve. Who they made a lawyer instead of an air force pilot, something that took away what made him interesting. That and…in the current comics he is married to Etta, so I was hoping there would be tension between Wonder Woman dealing with her good friend and ex falling happily in love. Nope. Which is fine, but they did not convince me, as a television viewer(forget my being a WW fan) to care about Wonder Woman being in love with Steve.
But as I was saying, the alter egos felt so tacked on almost. Knowing her background as an amazon, it is hard to believe she would willingly be Diana Prince. Even excluding that fact, there was not enough of her background to support her wanting a “normal life”
Also her company made zero sense. I intially thought she was a government contractor or made weapons based on Amazon technology….but their biggest product is dolls? Really? That can support all of those jets, computers, and what appeared to be hundreds of employees. Laughable at best.
Then we move on to the inherent racism of the black family. The boy being a black athlete named Willis, no father to speak of, but multiple siblings…and of coarse from the ghetto. Thank god they made Etta black or it would have been much worse I guess. Beyond that the plot was only barely interesting and Veronica Cale an uninspired villainous, who leaves the audience without impression of the true scale of her economic or political power. They seemed like they were trying to portray her as a woman whose confident and two steps ahead and her defeat at the end of the episode nullifies that entirely.
On a plus side the actions scenes were very well done, as you pointed out. They were very fast paced and felt like she had real power, but she did not get a challenge out of the episode, she just won. Its like a story without a definable reason for the reader to keep reading.
Acting wise everything that seemed wrong seemed to be poor dialogue and one note characterization. Adrianne P lacked the sense of nobility I always admired about Wonder Woman(from comics to Lynda Carter), but I did love when she tells people off. Unfortunately there were not enough scenes of her doing positive things to balance. Elizabeth Hurley was fine, but lacked any definable traits to really make her pop. A lot of her thing seemed to be “I’m good looking and know people”, but Hurley always has this tone about her that reeks of this delicious intelligence. If they emphasized Hurley’s ability to manipulate people as compared to WW’s honesty it would work. However there is little seperating PWW and PVeronica Cale:
-One uses people, and in fact tortures them with cruel experiments
-One tortures a man to get information
-One uses her power and influence
-One uses her physical power to influence
In fact you could say that Cale was ultimately less of a criminal than PWW because she did not outright kill anyone. (Did they explain how those kids got the drugs? Why was she selling them out on the streets knowing the results and not knowing who was buying?)
Ultimately, this pilot makes my brain go “This is why we can’t have nice things”. They tried to hard to make it a superheroine drama, so it became a drama with Superheroine bits glued on. Their are some truly great interpretations of Wonder Woman (the origin used in animated film, was actually very powerful, the Perez era comics made me cry due to the nobility of Diana, and the immense humanity she embodies).
I leave you with this:
A female superhero, specifically WW should embody these things:
1) Courageousness
2)Bravery
3) Nobility
4)Compassion
5)Honesty
6) And a deep love for all people and the ability to forgive
For Wonder woman number 6 IS Wonder Woman.
In the Pilot this is what we have:
1) Sad pathetic woman
2)A woman who pines over a man she gave up years before
3)A woman who essentially complains about being a wealthy, powerful, moderately respected woman in order to live in an apartment with a cat and go on Facebook…thats what we called First World Problems at my college
4) A woman who tortures and kills
5) A woman who is dumb enough and naive enough to commit slander without usable proof
6) A woman who kills or at least critically injures first then asks questions later
7)A hero that promises vengeance and never justice
8) A hero whose claim to fame is her constantly whining “People expect me to be perfect” let me run away to my cat and apartment or ignore the people I trust to work with me closely
How can you like this Wonder Woman? It is not even Wonder Woman…it is not even a hero show…its about a crazed vigilante who Batman wouldn’t even touch.
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Regarding Wonder Woman’s actions being illegal, would any superhero’s actions be tolerated by the law in reality? Batman is always being targeted as a vigilante. There have been plot lines about the government trying to exercise control over superheroes. Nowadays even the real life cops are walking on eggshells because every misstep makes headlines. I think it’s unrealistic to expect superheroes to NEVER kill anybody. I can understand why they’d want it to be that way in a kids’ cartoon, but if you want to talk about realism, sometimes you just have to throw a pipe at somebody.
Superheroing seems to be a legally gray area in most superhero universes, dependent on the leniency of law enforcement and the government. But Wonder Woman straight up tortured a dude and killed another, and entirely unnecessarily. I don’t mind a superhero killing every now and again when it’s warranted (Wonder Woman killing Max Lord, for example), but she tortured someone when she could have used her lasso and killed someone she could have KOed. For me, killing bad guys should be a last resort, not a regular part of the job.
I get what you’re saying, but I for one found it refreshing to see someone actually get killed by WW, and in a pretty spectacular way. And as far as her torturing a dude, I think they were just following in the footsteps of another, very popular, show, “24”.