Wonder Man: a ‘rare morsel of actual substance’ in the Marvel Universe

“We are back in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). If you feel fatigue stealing over you already, banish it!” said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. This nifty and unexpectedly excellent eight-part series on Disney+ follows Simon, an actor with secret superpowers (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who has been trying to make it in Hollywood for years. Then he gets a shot at auditioning for a film about his childhood hero, Wonder Man. As a result, he meets Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), “a washed-up, drug-addled actor” – who is a character that first appeared in “Iron Man 3”. Slattery has a sinister purpose in taking Simon under his wing, and there are some superheroics to please MCU fans. But “the real meat of the thing” is the “meticulous and moving examination of the growing friendship between the men”. The series also serves as “a meditation on the film industry and a masterclass on the art of acting”.

The show “has a distinctive sense of wonder”, said Mike Hale in The New York Times. Yet the low-key buddy comedy sometimes feels at odds with the series’ Marvel wrappings. “The more realistically human you make your characters and their interactions, the more obtrusive and artificial the mandatory superhero material will seem.” I’d call it a “rare morsel of actual substance” in a cinematic universe “gone thoroughly to seed”, said Louis Chilton in The Independent. But it’s unlikely that this breezy departure from the usual bilge will do much “in the long term for a franchise whose rattly breaths are numbered”.