Latest / Vigilante Vibes Podcast / Ep. 207. Marvel Studios' Wonder Man Breakdown

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Ep. 207. Marvel Studios' Wonder Man Breakdown · Vigilante Vibes Podcast

• 0:11
  Hi guys, it's Megan from Vigilante Vibes and I am here
• 0:13
  today to give my review on Wonder Man the series.
• 0:17
  So I binge the entire thing. It is now 1:20 in the morning
• 0:22
  and I wanted to give my thoughts while they were fresh.
• 0:25
  So if you are listening to this, I'm probably asleep finally, so
• 0:32
  I hope you enjoy it. So Marvel Studios Wonder Man, it
• 0:36
  released all 8 episodes at once. I think there was quite a bit of
• 0:40
  hype in amongst the fandom. I mean, not as much as I would
• 0:43
  have liked, but I saw people excited and I saw people who
• 0:46
  were live threading it or, you know, commenting as they go on
• 0:50
  social media who really enjoyed it as well, which makes me very
• 0:54
  happy because I loved it. I probably would say this is the
• 0:59
  best show about acting of all the acting shows.
• 1:03
  It's not your normal Marvel thing.
• 1:06
  That is one thing I saw people complain about is that it's not
• 1:09
  for they're saying it's not for a casual Marvel watcher because
• 1:14
  it's not superhero pushed. It doesn't.
• 1:19
  It's not built on action scenes and all that.
• 1:22
  It's built around someone's life, and Simon Williams in the
• 1:25
  comics was an actor, and in this he's an actor.
• 1:31
  So in the comics he actually left the team.
• 1:34
  I want to say it was The Avengers.
• 1:36
  At that point, he told Beast that he wants to go seek
• 1:39
  employment elsewhere and that he's been acting like a
• 1:42
  superhero the whole time anyways, so might as well be an
• 1:44
  actor. Of course, it was a struggle to
• 1:48
  get into it, but so was Simon Williams.
• 1:50
  In the show, Simon Williams was, I should just call him Simon,
• 1:54
  his whole no reason for his full name.
• 1:57
  But Simon in the show had been going to auditions for 10 years.
• 2:02
  He had been trying to get callbacks, doing whatever he can
• 2:06
  to be an actor and he just was not successful.
• 2:08
  And I think the first episode shows why.
• 2:12
  I will not lie to you. He the first episode, he was
• 2:15
  insufferable as an actor because he was just a side character, a
• 2:20
  tiny side character, and he was trying to change the scene.
• 2:23
  He was trying to change everything about it and the
• 2:26
  director and all that. We're just so done with it,
• 2:29
  which was fair. So he got fired.
• 2:31
  I believe that was American Horror Story Movie, I guess.
• 2:35
  So he got fired. Then he runs into Trevor
• 2:38
  Slattery, who was working for the DODC and actually trying to
• 2:44
  catch Simon in the act of using his powers and proving that he
• 2:47
  is actually a very dangerous being.
• 2:51
  At this point, we do not know he has powers.
• 2:54
  I mean, we like, we know, but the audience does not know
• 2:57
  because we're not showing it. And it builds up to his powers a
• 3:02
  lot throughout the show. And I think they did an
• 3:04
  incredible job with that. So Trevor went with Simon to his
• 3:09
  mother's birthday because Trevor's trying to get close to
• 3:11
  him. Trevor's trying to get all the
• 3:13
  information on, find proof so he doesn't go end up going back to
• 3:16
  jail because remember, he was broken out of jail, so he never
• 3:19
  finished his sentence. So his whole thing was either he
• 3:22
  goes to jail or he brings in Simon with proof.
• 3:26
  So Trevor makes himself very open to him and becomes really
• 3:31
  good friends. They go to his mom's birthday,
• 3:34
  not Trevor's, Simon's mom's birthday.
• 3:36
  Who I loved the mom, the mom, I, I, I would die for her.
• 3:41
  So he goes into that birthday party.
• 3:44
  He gets to know everyone. He's asking, do you have any
• 3:47
  stories about Simon as a child? And he becomes very aware that
• 3:50
  Simon is a very lonely person. He's never had a single friend.
• 3:57
  He has never put himself out there.
• 4:00
  He's never made a friendship. He's never joined any teams,
• 4:03
  nothing like that. He's always been alone.
• 4:05
  And it makes sense because at 13 there was a fire at his house.
• 4:10
  He, his family was not there. The fire supposedly happened
• 4:15
  because he didn't know how to work the stove because he was a
• 4:18
  13 year old kid. But I think it's not really
• 4:24
  confirmed in the show, but in the comics, Wonder Man, Simon
• 4:29
  Williams is a mutant. So at 13, what happens at 13,
• 4:33
  all of my mutant fans, that's when it usually when the X gene
• 4:37
  activates and they be they get their powers.
• 4:40
  So that sounds like his ex gene was activated and he never told
• 4:45
  anyone. His mother knew his brother knew
• 4:47
  they never told anyone either. And he kept to himself because
• 4:50
  he didn't want to put anyone at risk.
• 4:52
  But he also didn't want anyone to know because in this world,
• 4:55
  thanks to our boy doorman, they are not allowed to hire an actor
• 5:01
  who is immune or who is a has powers, who is an empower A
• 5:06
  superpowered being. So they did bring Doorman into
• 5:10
  this really, really heavily Doorman from the Great Lakes
• 5:14
  Avengers. If you're interested in Doorman,
• 5:15
  just look at my channel. I have a whole thing about him,
• 5:19
  but also they changed his back story entirely.
• 5:22
  He's not a mutant. He actually accidentally got his
• 5:25
  powers when he was taking out the trash at his job and there
• 5:28
  was a rocks on dumpster that was leaking stuff and it kind of
• 5:35
  formed this weird black hole and he fell into it.
• 5:40
  And then from that day forward people could go inside him and
• 5:43
  go out the other. So he was a door.
• 5:46
  It was fine. I should have known they were
• 5:49
  never going to give us another Great Lakes Avengers reference
• 5:54
  of any kind. I should have known.
• 5:56
  I got myself too excited. But also, the Roxanne thing is
• 5:59
  pretty cool that that Roxanne is a continuing reference in the
• 6:03
  MCUI love when they do that. So yeah, he never met Doorman.
• 6:10
  Doorman was the reason the law was made.
• 6:12
  He was the reason actors could not be superpowered.
• 6:16
  But also he tells Trevor this, and Trevor has no idea, but
• 6:20
  Trevor's an actor himself. So I was like, why does Trevor
• 6:23
  not know? Wouldn't he?
• 6:27
  I think he would. I think he would.
• 6:29
  So yeah, where was I going with that?
• 6:32
  Oh yeah. Simon's powers.
• 6:34
  He has powers and he finally uses them.
• 6:38
  We see a lot of instances where he uses them, but we also see he
• 6:41
  cannot control them at all. And This is why the DODC want to
• 6:49
  bring him in. And that is Trevor's job.
• 6:52
  But Trevor, they become best friends.
• 6:55
  They go on a call back together for the movie Wonder Man.
• 6:59
  There is a huge back story with it with Simon Simon's father who
• 7:03
  has passed away was took him to the Wonder man movie and they
• 7:09
  both watched it together, fell in love with the movie.
• 7:11
  They just Simon Says he was born for this role.
• 7:15
  Well, he he does after a while does get the role and so so does
• 7:19
  Trevor Slattery. So there's just so at this
• 7:24
  point, there's so much that happened in the show, tiny
• 7:28
  little things. First of all, the brother Eric,
• 7:33
  if you don't know Simon Williams, Wonder Man's brother
• 7:35
  in the comics is the Grim Reaper.
• 7:38
  And when you first meet Eric, you can believe it because he is
• 7:43
  a Dick. He never stops messing with
• 7:47
  Simon. He never stops putting him down.
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  He never stops making him feel like trash.
• 7:52
  And that's when I was like, that's my Grim Reaper right
• 7:54
  there. That's him, that's him.
• 7:57
  So yeah, there's that. There's also a lot of references
• 8:02
  to the real world, our world, ours, not the MCU, like Twilight
• 8:08
  movies and Sons of Anarchy. The show is now Canon.
• 8:12
  Josh Gad was in the in one of the episodes of Doorman.
• 8:16
  He was singing the Frozen soundtrack, which actually went
• 8:20
  really hard and I feel like no one's talking about it, but it
• 8:24
  went, it was good. And also, whatever happened to
• 8:27
  Josh Gad? Because in the show, he's he
• 8:31
  makes Doorman into an actor and in they're making a sequel of
• 8:37
  their first movie together and he is throwing all the piles of
• 8:41
  money in a duffel bag through Doorman and so they can get out
• 8:46
  because they're robbing somewhere.
• 8:47
  It didn't give too much detail. And then at one point, Doorman
• 8:52
  cannot take any more. And Josh Gad does not know that.
• 8:57
  And he goes inside Doorman himself expecting to come out
• 9:00
  the other side. He does not come out the other
• 9:03
  side. Instead, Doorman vomits
• 9:05
  everywhere. It's like pure water.
• 9:07
  And Josh Gad is nowhere to be found.
• 9:10
  Also, he's Josh Gad in this universe.
• 9:12
  He's not like a character, he's Josh Gad.
• 9:15
  So there was this whole thing like where's Josh Gad?
• 9:17
  He's missing and we still don't know where he is, so that's OK.
• 9:22
  So leading up to him finally getting the shot to be Wonder
• 9:27
  Man and Trevor Slattery to play who is called Barnaby in the
• 9:31
  movie as well. Simon and Trevor are invited to
• 9:34
  this little conference of actors to so they can pick who will be
• 9:39
  the ones to play it. And you see Simon act he I was
• 9:47
  cracking up because he was so annoyed at the other actors.
• 9:49
  And I get it, I would be too. I think it goes back to Yahya's
• 9:54
  Abdul Mateen, the second amazing performance throughout the
• 9:57
  entire show. But he just nailed just the
• 10:01
  bitter, angry guy who is, who hates the other actors, who
• 10:05
  aren't as talented, who have not had it as hard, who hasn't had
• 10:08
  to work as hard, just getting roles like crazy.
• 10:12
  And it was so perfect. Both Yaya and Ben Kingsley were
• 10:17
  just, I would follow Ben Kingsley into battle.
• 10:21
  It was just an they both. I don't care to see them in
• 10:24
  anything else. This is it for me.
• 10:26
  I'm good. We do have confirmation that
• 10:29
  Wonder Man will show up in another MCU project.
• 10:32
  And you should note that the show was created by Destin
• 10:35
  Daniel Creighton, or Cretin, cretin, cretin.
• 10:39
  I don't know. If you're not new to my show,
• 10:42
  you know that sounding out names and pronunciation is my Achilles
• 10:47
  heel. So if I pronounce, mispronounce
• 10:48
  anyone's name, just know it's not on purpose, it's because I'm
• 10:51
  dumb. So yeah, it should be noted that
• 10:54
  that is the same person who is direct who did direct Spider Man
• 10:58
  Brand New Day. So maybe we're getting a Wonder
• 11:01
  Man reference or a cameo there. I could see it, but I also can't
• 11:07
  see it. Nevermind.
• 11:09
  Anyways, back to where I was. They get the role.
• 11:14
  They both Trevor Slattery and Simon Williams get the role.
• 11:17
  They are in heaven. Everything is happy.
• 11:19
  We see Simon doing some happy dances in his new trailer.
• 11:23
  He is getting food brought to him.
• 11:25
  He is just over the moon. They're getting their clothes
• 11:30
  fitted. Everything is going well until
• 11:33
  the New York Times wants to write an article about both of
• 11:37
  them. And that's not a big problem.
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  Except the woman that does it has a way of her words.
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  A way with her words where she makes the subject of her
• 11:47
  interviews look horrible. Character assassination and
• 11:51
  being Simon Williams and having mutant abilities most likely.
• 11:57
  And those are a secret that can be terrifying because she talked
• 12:00
  to everyone in his life. His mean ass brother, his
• 12:03
  mother, his ex-girlfriend. So Simon was losing his mind.
• 12:09
  Trevor was not. Trevor was keeping Simon in
• 12:13
  line. So what they didn't know was
• 12:15
  that the person doing the interview would go for Trevor.
• 12:21
  She had so many questions about his time as the Mandarin and
• 12:24
  that made him lose it to the point that it was revealed that
• 12:29
  he made a deal when he got out. When he was arrested, when he
• 12:34
  came back to the States and it was then revealed that his deal
• 12:38
  was to get information on Simon. So Simon, who is extraordinarily
• 12:44
  angry, he is going to kill someone if he doesn't get out of
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  there, heads out of the restaurant.
• 12:49
  I think it was restaurant, heads out of the restaurant, goes down
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  the street, goes into a warehouse that's on the set of
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  Wonder Man and explodes it. It is a huge explosion destroys
• 13:00
  it and it knocks out the power everywhere.
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  And there is a huge manhunt for whoever did it.
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  And the DODC think that it was him.
• 13:09
  So they're sending people look for him.
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  And then Trevor, you know, Trevor calls him the next day
• 13:14
  and says, I figured it out. I fixed everything.
• 13:19
  And Simon's like, what do you mean?
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  Trev and Trevor got back into his Mandarin persona and
• 13:26
  admitted to exploding the building.
• 13:28
  So now Trevor is going to jail, Simon is still on the movie, and
• 13:35
  everyone's really, really sad. But Simon does the movie.
• 13:39
  It is wildly successful. People love him, people want to
• 13:42
  be him, people want to be with him.
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  Everyone is super excited. Even that mean ass brother was
• 13:48
  proud of him and that should tell you something.
• 13:51
  But yeah, that happened, and the excitement died down from Wonder
• 13:55
  Man. And we're on to the last episode
• 13:58
  now Where Simon follows a man named Chuck Easton Eastman.
• 14:05
  He tells Chuck that he is doing research for a role.
• 14:08
  He cannot tell him anything about it.
• 14:10
  He cannot say who the director is or anything.
• 14:12
  He says, you know, these studios, they want to keep
• 14:15
  everything private, which I felt was a very funny thing to say
• 14:18
  about in a Marvel Studios project.
• 14:22
  I hope you're listening. Marvel Studios.
• 14:24
  I know that was about you. So he follows this man Chuck
• 14:28
  Eastman all over his life. He stays in his house, he
• 14:31
  follows him to work. He just shadows him so he can
• 14:34
  learn more about this role. Turns out Chuck's job is
• 14:39
  security at the facility that Trevor is being held at.
• 14:44
  Such what is the code? What?
• 14:47
  What a coincidence. Who would have thought?
• 14:49
  What are the odds? So Simon, being the ride or die
• 14:54
  he is, gets to come with him to work and they tell the Chuck's
• 14:59
  job. This is a new hire, this he's
• 15:01
  training, I'm training him. And he excuses himself to the
• 15:06
  bathroom after a little bit and he finds Trevor and then they
• 15:11
  get out of there and don't think that like, he kind of left Chuck
• 15:16
  in a horrible position because Hit Chuck's wife called and said
• 15:20
  there's been a huge anonymous deposit in our accounts, enough
• 15:23
  to where you can just quit that horrible job you hate so much.
• 15:28
  So everyone's pretty much set up except everyone will be after
• 15:33
  Simon and Trevor. And that's where we're at.
• 15:36
  That was that was the show and it was a very fun watch.
• 15:41
  There was a great build up. There was a lot of character
• 15:44
  development. There were times where I did not
• 15:47
  like Simon. I thought he was such a Dick.
• 15:49
  But then there were other times I'm like, well, OK, not so bad.
• 15:53
  But I loved the show and I cannot wait to see where we see
• 15:58
  Wonder Man next, because I got to tell you, the actor killed
• 16:03
  it, knocked it out of the park. These are one of those hires
• 16:07
  that you just talked about, like Florence Pugh as Yelena, Robert
• 16:13
  Downey Junior is Iron Man, Tom Hiddleston's Loki, Charlie Cox
• 16:17
  as Daredevil, and then you have Yahya Abdul Mateen the second as
• 16:23
  Wonder Man, and it was so good. I'm just a little bummed.
• 16:27
  There's two things I'm a little bummed about.
• 16:30
  One, it was Doorman's background.
• 16:31
  I was hoping for a Great Lakes Avenger reference or something,
• 16:34
  but they took away the fact that he was a mutant all together.
• 16:38
  Which is fine, but we also did not get confirmation that Simon
• 16:43
  is a mutant. Waiting confirmation, but I
• 16:46
  think it's the thing he's a mutant.
• 16:49
  They never said, oh, he got bit by radioactive spider.
• 16:52
  He fell in radioactive goo when he was saving someone from
• 16:56
  getting hit by a car. You know, it was nothing like
• 16:58
  that. It was just when he was 13.
• 16:59
  There was a fire and that's all he remembers from I mean, he
• 17:04
  doesn't know why it happened. He doesn't want it.
• 17:06
  All of this ads leads into he's a mutant and I really, really
• 17:11
  dig that because if we have wonder Man is a mutant in the
• 17:14
  MCU and he has been on so many X teams in the comics like West
• 17:21
  Coast Avengers, Avengers, X-Men, all that stuff With that we he
• 17:27
  he could go anywhere, he could be anything and he's not going
• 17:30
  to be an actor now. There's no way.
• 17:32
  And just like the comics, his time as an actor was short
• 17:37
  lived, which I'm cool with. That's great.
• 17:40
  But it worked really, really well for the show.
• 17:43
  It was well worth the wait. I loved it.
• 17:46
  I'm really happy about it. I'm really, I'm really bummed
• 17:49
  it's over. I just, I want, so I want to see
• 17:53
  so much more of it and I'm really, really happy with how
• 17:55
  many people I saw genuinely loving it.
• 17:59
  Also, Marvel, can we talk? Because if you're going to drop
• 18:02
  all episodes of the show, can it not be at 9:00 PM Eastern
• 18:07
  Standard Time on a Tuesday? Who are you trying to hurt?
• 18:13
  I got things to do tomorrow. Too many things.
• 18:15
  That's why I'm doing this review right now.
• 18:18
  Whatever, that's my problem. Whatever.
• 18:21
  But yeah, I really enjoyed it. I thought it went, it was very,
• 18:25
  very well done. And we did get some really great
• 18:29
  comic accurate. Looks like we got Doorman and
• 18:33
  his comic accurate. It wasn't a hat.
• 18:36
  What was it? Mask.
• 18:38
  It was a mask. Like I said, it's like now it's
• 18:41
  1:43 in the morning. I'm really tired.
• 18:44
  And we also got to see Simon in the Wonder Man movie in a comic
• 18:49
  accurate suit and the original and like the glasses, which were
• 18:53
  the original glasses from the original Wonder Man movie, he
• 18:57
  solved his father, which was very, very sweet.
• 19:00
  And when they watched the movie, his mother was so, so proud of
• 19:03
  him. And it was just it ended on a
• 19:05
  very good note and then it's set up it it ended setting up for
• 19:11
  something else because now we know we're going to see Trevor
• 19:13
  again at some point. We're definitely going to see
• 19:15
  Wonder Man. I just I just wish there was
• 19:18
  more hype for the show. It's a very, I feel like it, it
• 19:21
  just came out. It's already very underrated.
• 19:23
  The show did phenomenally people I've seen, I've not seen anyone
• 19:28
  hated. I've seen people complain, but I
• 19:30
  don't haven't seen one hate it, which I feel is a very good
• 19:35
  thing. And I don't know, it felt like
• 19:38
  Marvel didn't have much hope in it because today they released
• 19:41
  the Daredevil Born Again season 2 trailer, which I have a
• 19:45
  reaction video on my channel if you're interested.
• 19:49
  You got to plug yourself whenever you can, you know, but
• 19:53
  I wish they would have posted that any other day.
• 19:57
  I would have really liked both of those different projects to
• 19:59
  get their own time to shine. But.
• 20:02
  I'm just saying they would as if they would ever drop a new
• 20:09
  series trailer on the day that Daredevil Born Again came out
• 20:13
  and I don't see it, but whatever, I'll mind my business.
• 20:18
  So yeah, that is my review. I really liked it.
• 20:22
  Let me know if you guys did. Let me know in the comments
• 20:25
  also, I just don't have anything else to say.
• 20:27
  I'm really tired, so thanks for tuning in.
• 20:30
  Thank you for sticking with me to the end.
• 20:32
  If you did, If you did not, you'll never hear this anyway.
• 20:35
  So I guess suck a fat 1. I don't know.
• 20:38
  I don't know. I'm really tired.
• 20:41
  So yeah, I enjoyed it. Good show.
• 20:43
  If you haven't watched it, you should check it out because it's
• 20:46
  great. It's a very grounded show.
• 20:48
  It's a very grounded show. Actors did phenomenally.
• 20:53
  I the only negatives I can say were the doorman back story.
• 20:57
  And you know what, nevermind, it's just the doorman back story
• 21:01
  for me. That's it.
• 21:02
  Everything else is great. So if you want to know more
• 21:05
  about Simon Williams, I am going to plug myself again.
• 21:08
  Look on my channel because I also have a breakdown of who he
• 21:11
  is in the comics and he has a very, very vast history.
• 21:18
  He does a lot, he sees a lot, he fights a lot, and it's all
• 21:21
  great. So yeah, thank you for watching,
• 21:23
  thank you for listening. Let me know where you think
• 21:25
  we're going to see Wonder Man in the MCU again.
• 21:28
  Personally, I think it'll be Vision quests, because if you
• 21:32
  want to know about how Vision and Wonder Man are connected,
• 21:36
  just check out my channel. I've been talking for too long.
• 21:40
  I'm so sorry. So have a marvelous night.