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\n Simon Williams, the lead of Disney+\u2019s Wonder Man<\/a><\/em>, is no superhero. I don\u2019t mean he\u2019s a future Avenger yet to come into his potential \u2014 he\u2019s just not a superhero in any sense, and has no desire to become one. Nor is he any kind of villain, though like any of us he has his bad days.<\/p>\n \n No, Simon, an aspiring actor played by former DC supervillain<\/a> Yahya Abdul-Mateen II<\/a>, is that rarest of Marvel protagonists: a totally regular person, albeit one blessed (or saddled) with unexplained hidden powers.<\/p>\n Wonder Man <\/p>\n<\/h3>\n The Bottom Line<\/span> More human than superhuman. Airdate:<\/strong> Tuesday, Jan. 27 (Disney+) \n Perhaps this should make him less interesting than the likes of Spider-Man or Captain America, who can\u2019t seem to step outside for coffee without being whisked into one galaxy-hopping adventure or another. Simon\u2019s most dramatic chase, by contrast, is tracking a scooter-riding brat through Los Angeles gridlock. But Wonder Man<\/em> turns Simon\u2019s ordinariness into its secret weapon, delivering a dramedy that\u2019s all the more charming for being so low-key.<\/p>\n \n As the second title released under the \u201cMarvel Spotlight\u201d banner, following 2024\u2019s Echo<\/a><\/em>, Wonder Man<\/em> is a standalone affair. Well, mostly. The Disney+ series finds Simon looking for his big break, and then stumbling into an irresistible opportunity when he meets Ben Kingsley<\/a>\u2018s Trevor Slattery \u2014 whom fans will recall as the oddball thespian revealed in 2013\u2019s Iron Man 3<\/a><\/em> to be posing as the terrorist Mandarin, though the show provides enough context for even non-fans to get up to speed. (Trevor also appeared in 2021\u2019s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings<\/a><\/em>, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton<\/a>, who co-created Wonder Man<\/em> with Andrew Guest, but that\u2019s less relevant to the plot.)<\/p>\n \n Now just a working actor like any other, Trevor tips Simon off to the auditions for Wonder Man<\/em>, a remake of Simon\u2019s favorite 1980s action movie. The two couldn\u2019t be more different in temperament: Simon overthinks his roles to the point of self-sabotage; Trevor is all impulse and intuition. Simon is so reserved that even his live-in girlfriend (an egregiously underused Olivia Thirlby) has given up on him; Trevor is a kooky gadabout who\u2019d be right at home trading druggy celebrity anecdotes with Oliver Putnam<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n They nevertheless become fast friends, drawn together by two major commonalities. The biggest is a sincere passion for their craft. These are men who bond by reciting their favorite monologues at each other, who absolutely mean it when they tell Joe \u201cEverybody Calls Me Joey Pants\u201d Pantoliano (in a highly amusing cameo) that acting is the \u201csingle most consequential\u201d calling a person could possibly hope for in life. <\/p>\n \n Abdul-Mateen and Kingsley are adorable in their bromance, the former\u2019s combination of confidence and neediness playing against the latter\u2019s oddball sense of humor. Their chemistry, fun and fizzy with a hint of melancholy, is the main reason to watch Wonder Man<\/em> \u2014 more so than any big shocking twists (there aren\u2019t any) or action thrills (there is one important fight scene in eight half-hour episodes) or weighty themes (this isn\u2019t really that kind of show).<\/p>\n \n Trevor and Simon also share, unbeknownst to Simon, the interest of the Department of Damage Control. Desperate to fill up their new state-of-the-art prison with \u201cenhanced individuals\u201d in order to justify the enormous budget granted to them by the government \u2014 a situation with definitely no real-life resonance<\/a> at all \u2014 they\u2019re looking to lock up any superpowered being who might possibly be conceived of as dangerous. So Simon is seen as a viable target, thanks to some vague ion-based (don\u2019t ask me) ability to blow things up, and Trevor is blackmailed by ambitious agent Cleary (Arian Moayed) into helping entrap him.<\/p>\n \n To the extent that Wonder Man<\/em> has a villain, it\u2019s a system that targets minority populations under the callous pretense of \u201csecurity.\u201d Simon\u2019s reality is one where studios have banned all superpowered performers following a tragic incident (dramatized in an episode-length black-and-white flashback starring Byron Bowers as DeMarr \u201cDoorman\u201d Davis and Josh Gad as an entertainingly douchey version of himself), and where the DODC has no qualms about detaining people who\u2019ve committed no crimes. The stakes might be low in the sense that no one\u2019s trying to stop the manifestation of depression<\/a> or an otherwordly entity <\/a>from smiting the planet, but they\u2019re astronomical from Simon\u2019s perspective: If his secret were to come out, he could lose not just his career but his freedom.<\/p>\n \n For most of the series, though, Simon\u2019s most pressing concerns are ones that\u2019ll be familiar to any struggling artist. He argues with an agent, Janelle (X Mayo, very funny), who\u2019s as encouraging of his talents as she is exasperated by his self-important habits. He sweats in audition rooms full of actors who are more successful or more connected. He argues with relatives who dismiss his aspirations as irresponsibility or laziness.<\/p>\n \n Wonder Man<\/em> shares with other recent showbiz sendups like The Other Two<\/a><\/em> or The Studio<\/a><\/em> the wry amusement of creators who\u2019ve clearly spent enough time in the trenches of Hollywood to know just how unglamorous it is up close \u2014 to know their way around cramped trailers and cheap apartments and self-tape studios. It does not, however, share with those shows the sharp satirical bite toward the industry in general, or the skepticism toward and critique of big-budget IP filmmaking more specifically. This is hardly surprising, given that Wonder Man<\/em> hails from the money-minting Marvel machine, but it feels like a missed opportunity nonetheless.<\/p>\n \n Instead, the series subverts the genre in its own characteristically unflashy way. By stripping away the epic scope and fantastical battles these superhero blockbusters have been known for, it brings to the forefront the very human drives \u2014 for approval, for connection, for meaning \u2014 that have always given Marvel movies their real magic. It\u2019s a pretty neat trick, even if it is a modest one. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Simon Williams, the lead of Disney+\u2019s Wonder Man, is no superhero. I don\u2019t mean he\u2019s a future Avenger yet to come into his potential \u2014 he\u2019s just not a superhero in any sense, and has no desire to become one. Nor is he any kind of villain, though like any of us he has his … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Ben-Kingsley-in-Marvel-Disney-Dramedy.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17911"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17913,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17911\/revisions\/17913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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Cast:<\/strong> Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Ben Kingsley, Arian Moayed, X Mayo, Zlatko Buric
Creators:<\/strong> Destin Daniel Cretton, Andrew Guest
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"