Worried as society comes apart at the seams? In your understandable late-night jones for escapism, have I got a show for you.
“Wonder Man” on Disney+, from Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Guest, is a bit removed from your standard Marvel Studios offering, which is a good thing. Through “Avengers: Endgame” it was a heck of a run, but ever since then (coming up on seven years), Marvel has simply been played out, particularly when it comes to its TV fare.
But this is only tangentially a superhero show, for now, anyway, and instead an insider’s satire of Hollywood. The two heroes of the story are actors, and Wonder Man isn’t really “Wonder Man,” that’s the name of the production they’re both desperate to join.
Ever read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last-gasp “Pat Hobby Stories,” based on his screenwriting days? The struggles, the rejections, the humiliations. The politics of the studio commissary. The grasping and ass-kissing and self-promotion.
The grubbiness. Just one example: Before callbacks, the deal these days is to duck into a low-budget “self-tape” studio in a strip mall and have your line-readings recorded on a camcorder.
In one such, in trying to get hired as “the man-boy protagonist” in a small-time feature, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Simon Williams, who does have a freakish power to spontaneously blow up without killing himself, tells his friend Trevor, “Right, so, I’m thinking the waiter character is third-generation from the Bronx. His father always wanted to own his own restaurant. He was a great cook, and he took Corey to the Carlyle when he was a little boy for tea once, so he’s always had this emotional attachment to it.”
“Not sure,” Trevor responds, “you’ll convey all this with, ‘Would you like to charge it to your room?’ ”
Trevor Slattery, played by Ben Kingsley, is a washed-out thespian with a Ringo Starr lilt who once notoriously impersonated a brutal terrorist, the Mandarin (see: “Iron Man 3”). Trevor is strong-armed by the feds into spying on Simon, but that doesn’t stop a quite touching friendship from developing between the otherwise friendless.
They’re a couple of losers. That’s the appeal.
With his superhuman ability to overprepare, Simon is a nervous, self-sabotaging sort, and at auditions for “Wonder Man,” the movie, at a famous director’s mansion, at first he blows it.
“The real you.” That’s what’s missing, Trevor tells him out on the terrace during a break. “It’s the sum of everything you’ve experienced. The loss, the joy. Sadness, heartbreak. Losing someone you love so much. Wanting something so badly you could burst. Hurting someone you care about. Being hurt by those you love. That’s your life. That’s who you are.”
Kingsley’s delivery, here and everywhere, is nothing short of hypnotic.
In finishing, he draws down on their job as actors: “When we share our pain, our grief, our joy, the audience — less alone in theirs. We’re all less alone.”
Even with the subtitles on, I had to play this soliloquy back to transcribe it, because on the first go-round I was having trouble seeing the screen for the welling-up.
Good luck finding a better summation of the point of the artistic endeavor.
Thus endeth the recommendation.