\n
Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), left, and Simon Williams (Yahya Adbul-Mateen II) team up in \u201cWonder Man.\u201d <\/p>\n
(Suzanne Tenner \/ Marvel Television)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n
Slattery tells Simon that European art director Von Kovak (Zlatko Buri\u0107) 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 \u2014 where he again meets Trevor, auditioning for Barnaby, Wonder Man\u2019s 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\u2019s a love story, above all \u2014 \u201cMidnight Cowboy,\u201d not an accidental choice, is more of a touchstone than any Marvel movie.<\/p>\n
Simon does have powers \u2014 things shake, break or explode around him when he\u2019s upset, and his strength can become super in a tight spot \u2014 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 \u2014 its history established in a sidebar episode, a cautionary Hollywood fable with Josh Gad as himself \u2014 which prohibits anyone with super powers from working in film or television, all Simon lives for.<\/p>\n
There is little in the way of action, and you won\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019s going to go, and will be glad it does.<\/p>\n
Whether discussing acting techniques or the traffic they\u2019re stuck in on Hollywood Boulevard (Trevor: \u201cProbably the Hollywood Bowl.\u201d Simon: \u201cIt\u2019s too late for the Bowl.\u201d Trevor: \u201cIt\u2019s usually the Bowl. I remember seeing Cher there once \u2014 breathtaking. Chaka Khan, now there\u2019s a woman\u201d), 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).<\/p>\n
\u201cOur ideas about heroes and gods, they only get in the way,\u201d says Von Kovak, putting a room of hopeful actors through their paces, and essentially speaking for the series he\u2019s in. \u201cToo difficult to comprehend them. Let\u2019s find the human underneath.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t stop me if you\u2019ve heard this one before, since I\u2019m admittedly something of a broken record on the subject, but I very much prefer Marvel\u2019s television series, which tend to be fleet, original and unpredictable, to its movies, which tend not to be. \u201cLoki,\u201d \u201cMs. Marvel,\u201d \u201cMoon Knight,\u201d \u201cEcho,\u201d \u201cWandaVision\u201d and its spinoff \u201cAgatha […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2251538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2251537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Wonder-Man-review-Grounded-Hollywood-story-shows-why-MCU-TV.com2F2c2F402Ff92b180041a68e2771171d1d.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2251537"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2251539,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251537\/revisions\/2251539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2251538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2251537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2251537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2251537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}