Entertainment
Review: ‘Wonder Man’ shows, again, why the MCU is superior on TV with a grounded Hollywood story
Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one before, since I’m admittedly something of a broken record on the subject, but I very much prefer Marvel’s television series, which tend to be fleet, original and unpredictable, to its movies, which tend not to be. “Loki,” “Ms. Marvel,” “Moon Knight,” “Echo,” “WandaVision” and its spinoff “Agatha All Along” — all (among others) are worth watching, even the ones that are dumped after a season.
Developing longer stories with less money, the TV shows makers need to be inventive, creative with their resources, so they invest in characters and ideas rather than special effects and action. They focus on secondary or ensemble figures who would never be given a theatrical feature of their own to carry, are particular about culture and family and place, and are often less contingent on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with its phases and stages, its crossovers and cross-promotions and long-range marketing plans. At once higher concept and more grounded than the movies, they’re interesting on their own, to the point where, when they finally hitch on to the Marvel multi-mega-serial train, I find them disappointing.
“Wonder Man,” whose eight episodes premiere all at once Tuesday on Disney+, is perhaps the most grounded of these series. Created by Destin Daniel Cretton (“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”) and Andrew Guest (who has written for “Community” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”), the series is a (generally) sweet, disarming tale of actors in Hollywood, tricked up with picture-business details that you don’t need to be au fait with the MCU to appreciate. There are things it might be helpful to know, but you can work out everything that matters through context. (Locals will enjoy playing Spot the Locations.)
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays Simon Williams, who as a child became a fan of a B-movie superhero called Wonder Man — not a “real” superhero, in this reality, merely a fiction. Now in his 30s, he’s a struggling actor in Hollywood, good enough to land a small part in an “American Horror Story” episode, but not clever enough to keep from slowing down the production with questions and suggestions when all he needs to do is deliver a couple of lines before a monster bites his head off. He loses the part and a girlfriend directly afterward.
Taking in a revival house matinee of “Midnight Cowboy,” he meets Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), who is back from having played the Mandarin — that is, he acted the part of a terrorist called the Mandarin, believing it was just a job — in “Iron Man 3” and providing appealing comedy relief in “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.” The character here is more fleshed out, something of a mess (but 13 years sober, he likes to point out), serious but not a joke. Before it all went wrong, Trevor played King Lear (in Croydon), appeared in “Coronation Street” and in a movie with Glenda Jackson, was off-off-off Broadway in “The Skin Our Teeth” and briefly had the lead in a hospital show with Joe Pantoliano, who’s very funny playing himself.
Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), left, and Simon Williams (Yahya Adbul-Mateen II) team up in “Wonder Man.”
(Suzanne Tenner / Marvel Television)
Slattery tells Simon that European art director Von Kovak (Zlatko Burić) is rebooting Wonder Man, a role Simon feels born to play. He makes an end run around his unconvinced agent, Janelle (X Mayo), and wheedles an audition — where he again meets Trevor, auditioning for Barnaby, Wonder Man’s pal, or sidekick or something. There are wheels behind wheels in this setup, some of which could use a little grease, but for most of the series they do their squeaking off to the side. It’s a love story, above all — “Midnight Cowboy,” not an accidental choice, is more of a touchstone than any Marvel movie.
Simon does have powers — things shake, break or explode around him when he’s upset, and his strength can become super in a tight spot — which puts him in the sights of the Department of Damage Control, embodied by Arian Moayed as P. Cleary, who would like to contain him. But he struggles to keep them secret, especially in light of something called the Doorman Clause — its history established in a sidebar episode, a cautionary Hollywood fable with Josh Gad as himself — which prohibits anyone with super powers from working in film or television, all Simon lives for.
There is little in the way of action, and you won’t miss it. The fate of the world is never in question, but a callback for a second audition means everything. The only costumed characters are actors playing costumed characters; the only villains, apart from the bureaucracy that seeks to bring him in, are Simon’s own self-doubt and temper. As things progress, Trevor will become a mentor to Simon. As is common in stories of love and friendship, a betrayal will be revealed, but if you have seen even a few such stories, you know how that’s going to go, and will be glad it does.
Whether discussing acting techniques or the traffic they’re stuck in on Hollywood Boulevard (Trevor: “Probably the Hollywood Bowl.” Simon: “It’s too late for the Bowl.” Trevor: “It’s usually the Bowl. I remember seeing Cher there once — breathtaking. Chaka Khan, now there’s a woman”), Abdul-Mateen and Kingsley work well together; their energies are complementary, laid back and loose versus worked up and tight and, of course, each will have something to teach one another about who they are and who they could be. I was genuinely anxious for them, as friends, more so than just wondering how such and such a superhero (or team) might defeat such and such a supervillain (or team).
“Our ideas about heroes and gods, they only get in the way,” says Von Kovak, putting a room of hopeful actors through their paces, and essentially speaking for the series he’s in. “Too difficult to comprehend them. Let’s find the human underneath.”
Remarkably Bright Creature (Photo – Netflix)
“I’d like to be under the sea in an octopus’s garden…”
Remarkably Bright Creature
Directed by Olivia Newman – 2026
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan
Whenever you have a lyric from a C-list Beatle song running through your head while watching a movie, it’s not a good sign.
But halfway through Remarkably Bright Creatures, a new film starring Sally Fields, those words earwormed their way into my head, replacing, I fear, the heartwarming sentiment I was expected to feel.
Based on a popular novel, Remarkably Bright Creatures—or RBC hereafter—is narrated by a captive octopus named Marcellus, who makes observations from his tank in a seaside Washington town.
The digitally animated creature, voiced by Alfred Molina in a flat tone that itself sounds half-submerged, spends his days hiding from the grasping eyes and fingerprints of schoolchildren on field trips. By night, he communicates through touch and glance with the janitor, Tova Sullivan, played by Sally Fields, a widow with a tragic past. She hobbles around on a sprained ankle and debates whether to move into a retirement facility.
As you might guess, RBC is slight on dramatic material, relying instead on the commentary of Marcellus, the aging octopus; Tova’s interactions with her octogenarian friends; and the arrival in town of a struggling musician seeking the father he never knew.
The film reminded me of those BBC-produced cozy mysteries I’ve become fond of renting from the Pasadena Public Library: small-town atmospheres filled with chumminess and colorful characters. Those mysteries, however, have an unsolved crime to propel the plot. Aside from the struggling musician’s attempt to locate his wealthy, incognito biological father, RBC leaves the viewer with little to chew on—or, I suppose, suck on. Marcellus’s eight arms and clinging suckers not only allow him to move in unique ways, but also to comment on the other characters from the vantage of his tank, a POV oddity that becomes one of the film’s more troubling anomalies.
As usual with this geezer genre, there’s the sobering apprehension of familiar faces, Kathy Baker and Joan Chen in this case, whose wrinkles and tissue breakdown reminded me of my own softening jawline. Colm Meaney, playing a former Grateful Dead fanatic turned coffee-shop owner, serves as Sally Fields’s love interest; his Irish brogue further evokes those BBC cozies.
“She lives in a larger tank than me,” observes Marcellus of the fussy attendant. His periodic comments sprinkle the plot, easing along our understanding of the characters until the metaphorical enclosure around Sally Fields dissolves as she takes the aging Marcellus to the seashore and returns him to his own octopus’s garden.
What the ultimate public reception of RBC will be, I don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought Project Hail Mary, with its spidery co-star in a beach-ball enclosure, would be popular either, so I suppose there’s hope yet for the movie and its slithering protagonist.
> Streaming on Netflix.
In a squeaker race for Cannes’ top prize, Romanian director Cristian Mungiu prevailed on Saturday, taking the Palme d’Or for his tense community drama “Fjord.”
The movie, a widely admired conversation-starter at the festival, stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as religious parents who come into conflict with the child protection services of their tiny Norwegian town where they have relocated with their family.
Mungiu, a previous winner of the Palme for his controversial 2007 abortion drama “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” now joins an exclusive group of 10 filmmakers who have won the Palme twice — an achievement shared by Francis Ford Coppola (1974’s “The Conversation” and 1979’s “Apocalypse Now”) and Ruben Östlund (2017’s “The Square” and 2022’s “Triangle of Sadness”), among others. No one has ever won a third Palme d’Or.
Another record, maybe even more impressive, was set by distributor Neon, which, with “Fjord,” extends its streak of Palme wins to an unprecedented seven in a row. Those previous six Neon winners, many of which eventually claimed Oscars, are “Parasite,” “Titane,” “Triangle of Sadness,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” “Anora” and last year’s “It Was Just an Accident.”
Neon will release “Fjord” in the fall, with an extensive awards campaign to follow.
This year’s nine-member main competition jury, led by Korean director Park Chan-wook and studded with notables including “The Substance” star Demi Moore, Stellan Skarsgård and “Hamnet” director Chloé Zhao, seemed intent on spreading the wealth among as many winners as possible. There were three ties at Saturday’s awards ceremony.
The award for actress was shared by Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto, co-stars of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden,” a movie pegged by many to potentially go all the way. Similarly, the prize for actor was bestowed on both Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne, co-stars of Lukas Dhont’s World War I romantic drama “Coward.”
The prize for directing went to three people — and two movies — with a joint win for Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (better known as Los Javis) for their century-spanning queer historical drama “The Black Ball,” as well as to director Paweł Pawlikowski for his exquisite post-World War II psychodrama “Fatherland.” (Pawlikowski half-joked at the podium, “This was a disastrous piece of mise-en-scène” after the awkward award presentation had him waiting in the wings.)
Claiming this year’s Grand Prize (essentially second place) was “Minotaur,” the rapturously received comeback film of Andrey Zvyagintsev, a Russian director who had been sidelined with a near-fatal bout of long COVID that put him in a coma. His new movie, about a wealthy Moscow family, is both an erotic thriller and an indictment of amoral oligarchy detached from the war with Ukraine.
The festival’s third-place Jury Prize went to the borderland German drama “The Dreamed Adventure,” directed by Valeska Grisebach.
Not to shock anyone, but it’s important to disclose that I’ve never seen an episode of “The Mandalorian” (or any “Star Wars” show). But the breakout star of the series, “Baby Yoda,” aka “The Child,” aka Grogu, has become a ubiquitous pop cultural sensation, so it’s nearly impossible to go in completely cold to the big screen adaptation of the series, “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu.” Still, I can report that it’s possible to go in colder than most and still maintain your footing, to alleviate any concerns of fellow casual “Star Wars” fans.
That’s because “Mandalorian and Grogu” director and co-writer Jon Favreau, and co-writers Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor, traffic in easily digestible tropes, archetypes and genre references. The story is like an old-fashioned film serial blown up to blockbuster proportions, set in a world that has dominated pop culture for almost 50 years. The remnants of a crumbling empire, a bounty hunter with a heart of gold, a cute green guy who wields the Force — what’s not to get?
How Mando (Pedro Pascal under the helmet) and Grogu linked up has been covered in the series, so if you’re a die-hard fan, there’s not a lot of repeat or recap. Essentially, what you need to know is that the story is set in the period between the original “Star Wars” trilogy (ending with “Return of the Jedi”) and the sequel trilogy (starting with “The Force Awakens”). The Galactic Empire has fallen, replaced with the New Republic. While former Imperial warlords drift about, trying to amass power, the New Republic sends out the Mandalorian to haul them back to headquarters to snitch on their comrades. Reparations and justice for corrupt and evil fascists — we simply love to see it.
Favreau’s film plays like another installment in the Mando and Grogu adventures: We meet up with them mid-raid, which results in a dead target, and doesn’t please his boss, Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver). Still, she sends them on to their next assignment, doing some dirty work for the criminal gangster organization the Hutts. Jabba’s son Rotta (Jeremy Allen White) is missing, and his aunt and uncle would like him back. While Mando hates to work for the Hutts, they’ve promised intel on a very promising, and very elusive, Imperial leader.
When they find Rotta (weirdly buff for a Hutt) in the fighting pits of the urban enclave Shakari — thanks to information from a food vendor voiced by Martin Scorsese — Mando is surprised to find that Rotta’s not inclined to return to his family. White’s actorly presence comes through in his vocal performance, lending the beleaguered fighter a sense of depressed world-weariness and poignant ennui.
But this plot point kicks off a narrative whirlpool in which “The Mandalorian and Grogu” finds itself trapped — Mando is knocked out cold, wakes up in an unfamiliar spot, and then has to fight a bunch of CGI beasties. This happens at least three times in the film, and it gets repetitive. The nods to Ray Harryhausen monster movies are appreciated, but it quickly loses its novelty.
The film takes its cues from those old timey epics, as well as from Westerns and samurai movies — anything with a lone fighter who lives by a code and has a desire to fiercely protect his loved ones. There’s an element of the classic Western “Shane” as Mando fights to protect his diminutive sidekick, and Pascal delivers his quips (“Fighting’s not a sport, it’s a last resort,” etc.) with John Wayne-style panache.
But with his helmet hiding his face (to take it off is shameful), and most of the characters computer-generated, our emotional touchpoint throughout remains a puppet — Grogu. With his huge eyes, baby coos and little shuffle, he’s been engineered to elicit cute aggression from audiences and everyone he encounters, including Rotta, and various creatures who help him along the way, resulting in a wave of deus ex machina story beats where someone swoops in to save the day. Over and over, Mando finds himself in a jam but we never think he’s in any real danger, because would this kiddie-skewing “Star Wars” actually force Grogu to grapple with grief?
Ludwig Göransson’s expressive score does much of the emotional heavy lifting too. He peppers in an electronic techno theme among the sweeping orchestral stuff for a feel that’s both ‘80s retro and distinctly modern; when the film pauses for Grogu’s moment of heroism it’s quietly atmospheric and curious. The score is the single best element of filmmaking on display, because the cinematography is a desaturated CGI mish-mosh.
Grogu’s cuteness may be a powerful force, but it’s not enough to sustain this big-screen leap, especially in a blockbuster this bloated, and frankly, dull. If it feels like a serial, maybe it should have stayed a series.
‘Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu’
2 stars out of 4
Running time: 2 hours 12 minutes
Rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence and action.
Where to watch: In theaters Friday, May 22.
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