Last night, I watched every episode of Disney’s Wonder Man without realizing I’d completed the series. The story didn’t seem resolved to me, though in retrospect, I can see why the writers thought it had a conclusion of sorts.
As something to distract me from some boring work I was doing, it was only slightly less boring than the work I was doing, and then only because I was curious about what Disney would do with Simon WIlliams, aka Wonder Man.
The first thing I noticed is probably the first thing everyone else noticed: they race-swapped Williams, making him a black man. Secondly, they also personality-swapped him, making Williams a gloomy sort with a tragic backstory we never fully see or hear, instead of a happy-go-lucky and very friendly actor. Third, they also power-swapped him. Instead of being super strong and somewhat invulnerable, I’m not sure what Williams’ powers were supposed to be.
WIlliams in the TV show was super strong (like most superheroes) and somewhat invulnerable, but he also had the ability to cause explosions and levitate things if he became emotional. Why? Did this make him more interesting? I didn’t think so.
The most interesting episode, “Doorman” was about a different black man who became a tragic black superhero. Simon WIlliams barely appeared in the episode, which was a good thing. The episode ends with the mysterious disappearance of a character and, seemingly, the “Doorman” superhero as well. I was genuinely curious about both, but couldn’t care less how they linked to the Wonder Man story.
The writers made a big effort to showcase the Haitian/Creole/immigrant status of WIlliams’ parents. This left me scratching my head as I tried to figure out what his parents were saying in heavily-accented English, or not even trying to understand them when they spoke French. Why did they speak at all? The purpose of these characters seems to have been to convince audiences that Williams had some good qualities that would otherwise be invisible, or that he had a genuinely tragic backstory they were going to keep secret.
The best part of the series was seemingly the only white character, Trevor Slattery, the infamous “Mandarin” actor from Iron Man 3. He manages to be interesting in most scenes, but those scenes revolve around teaching WIlliams how to act so that he can get jobs as an actor. The perhaps unintended result is that audiences got a view of how actors see themselves and their craft. This left me with less respect for them than I had before.
The comic book Wonder Man was an affable egotistical glory hound. He was fun. This was the Batman version of Wonderman, played by a nearly 100% DEI cast, with DEI crew as well (else how could it be so boring)?
And for the record, I am sick of seeing race-swapping. This has gone well beyond Julie Andrews’ gender-swapped Peter Pan and is now at the level of Samuel Jackson playing George Washington or John F. Kennedy. It’s getting to the point where I want to stop watching when this modern stereotype of a black character appears, and that stereotype is pretty easy to describe: they’re black.
I didn’t care about this at all when black characters fit into the story naturally, like Barney Miller’s Harris (who was fantastic) or Benson from Benson. Now though, they just come across as wrong, and I’m starting to react by reflex instead of giving them a chance. In this case, I started by giving the show a chance because I wanted to like it. After all, Tilda Swinton and her weirdo 3-way domestic bliss didn’t stop her from being an interesting “Ancient One” in Doctor Strange, despite not being an old wrinkled Chinese man, but this Wonder Man wasn’t at the same standard.
There was a time I wanted to work for Disney. I interviewed there twice. Now I’m glad I never did. They are an embarrassment. Everything they touch, it seems, rots to nothing.
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English (US) · 