{"id":386180,"date":"2026-01-23T14:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T14:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/386180\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T14:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T14:10:11","slug":"wonder-man-review-a-harmless-hollywood-diversion-for-marvel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/386180\/","title":{"rendered":"Wonder Man Review: A Harmless Hollywood Diversion for Marvel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Simon has felt different his whole life. He has no friends to speak of, his family finds him a worrying curiosity, and he can\u2019t maintain a romantic relationship. When he finds out that a respected director is remaking Wonder Man, a superhero movie he enjoyed with his late father, he begins to fixate on landing the lead role and finds an unlikely ally in Trevor Slattery<\/a> (Ben Kingsley), a washed-up actor who portrayed the Mandarin terrorist in Iron Man 3 and popped up again in a pocket dimension during Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.<\/p>\n

The pair is an absolute delight to watch. Abdul-Mateen II\u2019s neurodivergent-coded Simon is determined but hapless<\/a>; an introverted guy who has set himself the goal of becoming a famous actor but keeps getting in his own way and undermines his natural talents as a result. Kingsley\u2019s Trevor enters Simon\u2019s life as the extroverted influence he\u2019s badly needed for a while. It would be easy to imagine Trevor as Simon\u2019s excitable imaginary friend if we didn\u2019t already know he was real. He only adds to the feeling that Simon could lose control, pushing and exploiting his new friend in escalating, precarious circumstances as the duo trots around Hollywood trying to make their mark.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Simon\u2019s caught the eye of the Department of Damage Control (remember them?<\/a>), who consider him a threat. His unexamined powers are truly a compelling problem across the board, because even though Simon genuinely couldn\u2019t give a single fig about them, the MCU\u2019s version of Hollywood has also banned people with superpowers from acting under something called \u201cthe Doorman Clause.\u201d The question of how Simon can land the role of Wonder Man and keep a lid on his powers hovers over the series like a dark cloud \u2013 eventually, something will have to give.<\/p>\n

For anyone concerned about making a weekly commitment to this story, the good news is that all of Wonder Man\u2018s episodes are arriving at once, and they average out to sitcom length. It will take less than four hours to get through the entire season, and most of the episodes (and their jokes) land perfectly well. There\u2019s a standout episode in the middle that pushes the show a little deeper into its own lore, but there\u2019s also a frustrating episode that feels like unnecessary running around and almost derails its momentum.<\/p>\n

Luckily, it doesn\u2019t. But for a while, it adds to the feeling that we\u2019re stuck in a bit of an MCU segue. Wonder Man is indeed a character-driven project, so it is much less concerned with superhero fripperies. It takes place in a universe where Rogers: The Musical<\/a> is still doing business, but audiences are still experiencing superhero fatigue<\/a>, which is a meta approach from Marvel that may be part of its undoing \u2013 it\u2019s rather unlikely that people who have become less interested in the studio\u2019s output will see the show on their Disney+ menu and be thrilled enough by the premise to give it a go, while those who are still committed to the machinations of the MCU might find it charming but ultimately a bit forgettable.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking for superhero cameos, CGI battles, and piles of easter eggs, this is definitely not the show for you, but if you feel like watching a wholesome, funny little show about friendship that happens to focus on someone with superpowers, you could certainly do a lot worse than Wonder Man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Simon has felt different his whole life. He has no friends to speak of, his family finds him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-386180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}