Update: ‘Wonder Woman’ Pilot Rewritten, Now Less Crappy

Almost every story about NBC’s remake of “Wonder Woman” has carried the asterisk of David E. Kelley’s script for the pilot that leaked this winter. That script made Diana Prince to be an Ally McBeal-like mess of emotions, “crying, moping over ice cream, and hunching in a fetal position.” But io9 has somewhat heartening news: rewrites to the script have made Wonder Woman a great deal tougher. I say “somewhat heartening” because the toughness is often a lame, stereotypical kind of toughness. See for yourself:

At one point, she confronts a pair of security guards, whom the script calls Frick and Frack. They tell her she can’t go up to the roof of a hospital, and she says, “I’m Wonder Woman. How do you think this ends?” And then she lifts one of them into the air by the throat and the other one by the chest…

[In another scene,] Diana keeps saying things like, “Let go of me, sir” and “I’ll ask you again to remove your hand.” But he responds that he’ll let go of her arm when he feels like it, and calls her a “Prada bitch.” So she lifts him into the air by his throat.

As far as I can tell neither of these scenes advances the plot, they just let us see Wonder Woman lifting guys by their throats.

If you’re at all interested in the new “Wonder Woman,” I recommend reading the whole thing. There’s also a scene where Wonder Woman gouges out a guy’s eye with her thumb, which is more along the lines of Warming Glow-approved violence. But I’m not really a good baseline for judging violence. I’m not gonna be happy until Wonder Woman gets a warhammer and spends an entire episode caving in skulls.