Plot: Aspiring Hollywood actor Simon Williams is struggling to get his career off the ground. During a chance meeting with Trevor Slattery, an actor whose biggest roles may be well behind him, Simon learns legendary director Von Novak is remaking the superhero film “Wonder Man”. These two actors, at opposite ends of their careers, doggedly pursue life-changing roles in this film as audiences get a peek behind the curtain of the entertainment industry.
Review: The decision by Marvel Television to move towards more projects billed as part of their Spotlight banner was a smart one to break audiences away from the seeming reliance on having seen every entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While die-hard MCU fans will tend to tune in to every new entry in the saga, casual viewers can sometimes feel alienated by the dozens of films and interconnected backstories in the superhero franchise. The latest Spotlight entry, Wonder Man, aims not only to deliver a standalone series but also to serve as a satirical look at the Hollywood studio system. Unfortunately, Wonder Man does not deliver in any way despite the charismatic potential in star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and the return of fan favorite Ben Kingsley as Trevor Slattery. Wonder Man is a boring attempt to skewer Marvel Studios and the superhero genre that fails to be entertaining as a series and is a pointless detour in the MCU.
Wonder Man exists in the post-Blip era, a world that has seemingly returned to normal after countless battles between heroes and villains that threatened the planet. In Los Angeles, Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is a struggling actor who has lost yet another minor role after his Method approach alienates him from the crew. When Simon overhears Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley) talking about a casting call for the remake of the 1980s superhero movie Wonder Man, he finds a way to get an audition. In this world, Wonder Man was a cult classic now being remade by reclusive director Von Kovac (Zlatko Buric). Partnering with Trevor to audition, Simon must not only deal with anxiety about the part but also try to subdue his superpowers, which can have devastating consequences. Across the eight-episode series, Simon and Trevor contend with line readings, costume fittings, exposes by entertainment journalists, and more challenges that performers face while also staying a step ahead of Damage Control agent P. Cleary (Arian Moayed).
While billed as a Spotlight series, there is still a heavy reliance on knowing a couple of things about the MCU to garner much enjoyment out of this series. First, Ben Kingsley’s continued arc as Trevor Slattery gets significant screentime in Wonder Man. Begun inIron Man 3 and continued in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Slattery’s journey from actor to stand-in for The Mandarin is a major part of why Trevor meets Simon Williams. Kingsley previously played Slattery as a lush and somewhat of a dunce, but the goofiness of the character is not as heavy here. Yes, he is still a silly character, but his experience and friendship with Simon Williams give him a better purpose in this series. Slattery helping Simon become the actor he strives to be should have a satisfying focus for this series, but the eight half-hour episodes never really amount to anything more than showing the steps of casting, developing, and filming a movie, and the film even skips the production side of the story with a disjointed and rushed final batch of episodes.
As good as Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is as an actor, he never feels like he gets to do much with Simon Williams. While he is in virtually every scene of the series, I never got the feeling that this character’s powers were more than something necessary to qualify this as an entry in the MCU. The same goes for Damage Control, which is beginning to feel like a more sinister organization than we have seen in this franchise so far.
On paper, everything about Wonder Man should have worked. Taking one of Marvel Comics’ most powerful characters and including him in a send-up of the genre the series takes place in could have been a brilliant meta-move by the producers. In the wake of HBO’s short-lived series The Franchise from Sam Mendes and Veep creator Armando Iannucci, as well as the Golden Globe-winning AppleTV series The Studio from Seth Rogen, Wonder Man feels like a superficial spoof of the Hollywood machine that offers little insight we have not seen before.
There is an interesting standalone episode focused on Doorman (Byron Bowers) that explains why super-powered beings are not welcome in Hollywood in this universe, but it ultimately serves little purpose. With cameos from Josh Gad and Joe Pantoliano as themselves, there are some bright spots within the series that end up feeling incredibly wasted as the series plods along with no energy or purpose. There is virtually nothing superhero-related for most of the series outside of a handful of small moments, most of which appear in the trailer.
Created by Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton, who is also helming the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day, with showrunner Andrew Guest (Hawkeye, Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Wonder Man is dropping all eight episodes at once, similar to how Echo hit Disney+ back in 2024. Guest has credits on five of the eight episodes alongside writers Paul Welsh, Madeline Walter, Zeke Nicholson, Anayat Fakhraie, Roja Gashtili, Julia Lerman, and Kira Talise. Cretton directed the first two episodes, with James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now), Tiffany Johnson (Poker Face), and Stella Meghie (Insecure) each helming two episodes. Joel P. West (Shang-Chi) reunites with Cretton to score the series.
The scale of Wonder Man is so small compared to every Marvel Studios project to date that I was struggling to get a feel for what the purpose of this series actually is. There is a heavy focus on comedy, but the short season and short episode lengths make it hard to invest or care about the characters and their journey
While many of you have labeled me a Marvel Studios apologist in the past, I have found something to like in pretty much every MCU movie and series so far, even She-Hulk: Attorney-at-Law. Conceptually, Wonder Man was always going to be tricky to get the casual Marvel fan invested in, since most are unfamiliar with the character. Because this series avoids feeling like a Marvel Studios production and focuses on a secondary character and tangential lore in the MCU, it ends up wasting a promising concept with a boring series that fails to be an effective satire and even less effective comedy. I finished Wonder Man, wondering why I spent a full season with nothing to show for it. Wonder Man wastes the great Ben Kingsley and the incredibly talented Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in a lethargic, unengaging series. Easily the worst entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to date.
Wonder Man premieres all eight episodes on January 27th on Disney+.
The comment section exists to allow readers to discuss the article constructively and respectfully, focused on the topic at hand.
What’s Not Allowed