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Over the past few weeks, Marvel trailers have been impossible to avoid. Each of the teasers for Avengers: Doomsday fully embraces superhero excess, promising over-the-top adventures with familiar faces. The teasers have been about bringing back favorites from movies past, including Captain America, Thor, and the X-Men.
But before we get to Doomsday, we get to meet Simon Williams, the main characeter of the Disney+ miniseries Wonder Man. And if the show’s latest trailer is any indication, Wonder Man is trying to be everything that Doomsday is not. With font and music choices that feel less like a Marvel movie and more like a Wes Anderson film, the trailer shows how struggling actor Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and the one-time Mandarin Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley) prepare to star in eccentric auteur Von Kovak’s (Zlatko Burić of Triangle of Sadness and Superman) big screen version of the cult TV show Wonder Man. Along the way, the trailer raises the question of superhero fatuige, the very phenomenon that Marvel created.
For the uninitiated, superhero fatigue is the term used to describe the reason that MCU and DCEU have ceased to dominate the box office like they once did. The term suggests that fans who once happily lined up to watch even deep-cut characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy and made outright disasters like Suicide Squad into box office phenomenons won’t even check out good Marvel shows such as Loki season 2. In particular, audiences don’t come any more because superhero movies have become overblown, formulaic, and convoluted; making people feel like they’re doing homework when watching the films, not enjoying themselves.
Wonder Man seems to address the issue of superhero fatigue not just by having characters talk about the issue, but also by downplaying the superheroic elements. While there’s a brief mention to the fact that Trevor appeared in Iron Man 3 as the false Mandarin, there are no suggestions of larger connections to the MCU: no Avengers, no Doctor Doom, no Spider-Man. You don’t even need to know who the Department of Damage Control is to follow the plot. Moreover, the teaser downplays Simon’s powers so much that no one watching the trailer necessarily understands what Wonder Man can do.
But can the studio that gave everyone superhero fatigue satirize superheroes? Can it make people interested in superheroes again?
If the comics are any indication, Marvel certainly can. Although superheroes dominate Marvel Comics, the publisher has long produced stories across a number of genres, even while remaining in the mainline universe. War series The ‘Nam mostly followed Viet Nam soldiers, but also had appearances by Steve Rogers and a pre-Punisher Frank Castle. In various iterations, The Sensational She-Hulk has been a post-modern romp, a legal dramedy set in the superhero world, and, recently under author Rainbow Rowell, a romance story. In fact, the Wonder Man series that seems to inspire the show was just as much a Hollywood satire as it was a cape and cowl book, and Damage Control began life as a series about blue collar workers cleaning up after superheroes.
If Marvel can channel the energy of those comics, then Wonder Man can be something different than the same old superhero entry that everyone’s tired of. But if the series abandons the promise of the trailer to embrace the convoluted plotting and generic heroics that built the MCU, then Wonder Man will only increase superhero fatigue, even as Doomsday approaches.
Wonder Man premieres on Disney+ on January 27, 2026.
The post Wonder Man: Can Marvel Pivot Past Superhero Fatigue? appeared first on Den of Geek.
