New Things #16: Wonder Man

My hot take when it comes to Marvel is that, if Doomsday and Secret Wars disappoint, Kevin Feige should be replaced as the head of Marvel.

I’m sad to say that Wonder Man didn’t do anything to alter my thinking on that. And I really do hate to say that because I’ve wanted Marvel to break from their normal approach and try something new with their films and shows and this certainly does that but I think it was unsuccessful and a step in the wrong direction.

For me, the first issues was that Wonder Man himself isn’t a very interesting or likeable character and then, on top of that, his main conflict is completely concocted. That might be OK if there was some emotional growth for the character but I didn’t feel like Simon Williams really showed much change at all. This star of the show was Ben Kingsley as his Trevor Slattery character made yet another scene stealing appearance. But his character also was the one with the real conflict and the real inner struggle and actual change.

In terms of the bigger picture, this was exactly the wrong show for Marvel to go with IMO. Marvel films/shows are struggling to retain their audience so they go with a slow burn, inside Hollywood./acting show?! I’m sure some critics and artistes will celebrate the sloth-like pace and industry touches but it’s absolutely not something that I think will bring back any of the mainstream audience. (And, quite frankly, it’s still not good enough to win over cinephiles IMO.)

Again, I’d love to see Marvel hit up different genres and expand their storytelling but, while the pace may have obscured it, this was another formulaic piece, this time, they just didn’t force in an action scene every episode. It felt like it could have been a Trojan Horse - using the superhero angle to get people to tune in to a character piece but, as I said, the main character didn’t do much for me nor did I think we really gained great insight into him and they barely even touched the topic of him having to hide his amazing powers. They also made the decision to give him a girlfriend for two cliched scenes that added absolutely nothing to the story or character.

I’d be absolutely stunned if this saw a second season - I’m not even sure where you go with it - and either way, I’d throw it in the same PASS pile as the Netflix/Marvel reboots. You’d think with all of the stories Marvel has spun over the decades that the TV shows would be better but they just can’t seem to hack it consistently. (And I looked up Wonder Man on Wikipedia and the original character seems a lot more interesting that this adaptation.) Maybe when they reboot the MCU after Secret Wars, they can do something more interesting with Simon Williams,