Every new Disney Plus present set inside the Marvel Cinematic Universe appears to reach with much less fanfare than the one earlier than. It looks like even Marvel Studios has grown uninterested in the countless promotional cycle, and the countless parade of more and more minor Marvel characters taking their activate stage. Making an attempt to promote MCU loyalists on this newest streaming sequence could be a problem anyway: Surprise Man focuses on a very obscure Marvel hero residing an unusually mundane life, with few ties to the MCU’s greater occasions, and no clear place within the hype-strewn buildup to the studio’s subsequent huge occasion film, Avengers: Doomsday. There isn’t any villain in Surprise Man. There are not any huge, explosive battle scenes. Surprise Man doesn’t save the world, be part of the Avengers, discover the multiverse, or head to area.
However that’s precisely what makes Surprise Man some of the compelling, purely gratifying reveals in Marvel Studios’ roster. It isn’t geared toward same-old same-old hero-villain clashes, or at teeing up the subsequent saga. Co-creators Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) and Andrew Visitor (Neighborhood), working below the “extra grounded tales with much less homework” Marvel Highlight banner, provide up the rarest factor within the Marvel playbook: a narrative that’s distinctive, private, character-focused, and designed to face by itself.
Collection star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II has already achieved his time as a much more explosive superhero (in Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen) and a way more conventional supervillain (as Black Manta in Aquaman and Aquaman and the Misplaced Kingdom). In Surprise Man, he isn’t tremendous in any respect. His character, Los Angeles actor Simon Williams, is a struggling day participant with a behavior of overthinking and overrehearsing the small roles he will get. He’s clearly coming from a spot of sincerity and nervousness moderately than ego, however that doesn’t make him any much less of a nuisance throughout productions, as he pins down administrators and screenwriters to quibble over each minor side of his characters, from his phrase option to his lighting to his props.
Simon’s different huge subject is an uncontrolled expertise for destruction. When he will get emotionally overwrought, objects round him shake and generally shatter. That isn’t significantly helpful for a superhero, however there’s no signal that Simon has any curiosity in heroism. He simply needs the profession break each hustler in Hollywood is searching for, the audition that can lastly make him well-known sufficient to keep up a sustainable profession. If he’s ever outed as having a superpower, although, his performing profession might be over, as a consequence of a studio initiative known as “the Doorman Clause.” (That title, and the reasoning behind it, doesn’t emerge till midway by way of the sequence, in a raucous flashback episode that’s one of many present’s many highlights.)
Whereas licking his wounds after his newest profession setback, Simon spots disgraced actor Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley) in a movie show exhibiting John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, and chats him up. Trevor, Surprise Man’s predominant nod to MCU’s bigger continuity, was a down-and-out actor and addict himself when he agreed to impersonate a terrorist chief known as The Mandarin as a part of a scheme seen in 2013’s Iron Man III. He launched a small redemption arc in Cretton’s Shang-Chi, and now he’s again in Hollywood, searching for work. Studying that Trevor’s about to audition for Surprise Man, a revival of a tacky superhero franchise, Simon units out to get into that audition by any means mandatory. It isn’t simply that he needs to work with the director, a unusual, well-respected genius; Surprise Man holds specific household significance for Simon, and the potential of truly enjoying the function in a reboot leaves him frantic.
Surprise Man is essentially involved with the lifetime of an L.A. actor making an attempt to make it huge in Hollywood: The dispiriting auditions. The lengthy dry spells between gigs. Getting work, however being a little-valued, simply changed a part of an detached mechanism. Making audition tapes. Competing with pals, or coping with the jealousy and resentment when their careers take off. Making an attempt to get the eye of a busy agent who’s extra centered on newer and warmer expertise. Making an attempt to anticipate what a robust director wants, and turn into that factor. Doing all this whereas hiding a secret, harmful energy is only a comparatively small wrinkle in a narrative that always feels extra like Robert Altman’s The Participant than like Iron Man or a Spider-Man film.
However there are important wrinkles to this story, too. Trevor has an unpleasant secret he’s holding from Simon, which complicates their budding friendship. And Cretton and Visitor do a superb job of turning that friendship into one thing viewers can root for a similar manner they’d root for the Avengers to take down Thanos. Simon and Trevor each desperately want one another: Simon wants Trevor’s chill perspective and business expertise to assist him navigate his personal anxious tendency to sabotage himself, whereas Trevor wants somebody who respects him, likes him, and sees him as a mentor, moderately than a washed-up loser and a global joke. Their mutual vulnerability and starvation for attachment places Surprise Man among the many MCU’s most appealingly human outings.
The sequence performs out with extra humor than thrills, particularly throughout an prolonged cameo from a well-established actor enjoying himself as considered one of Trevor’s rather more profitable former pals. There are a number of motion scenes, significantly within the flashback episode that explains the Doorman Clause, and within the sequence’ most disposable subplot, a foolish, time-wasting distraction involving a blackmail tape and a stolen bike. However at its coronary heart, Surprise Man is about Simon and Trevor, and the way they navigate their shared ardour for motion pictures, basic monologues, and performing not primarily as a path to fame or riches, however as a calling Trevor claims is a very powerful job on the planet.
Surprise Man does usher in plenty of components that might resurface in later MCU initiatives. Simon’s older brother Eric (Demetrius Grosse), right here only a judgmental scold who needs Simon to stop his unprofitable performing profession and get into the insurance coverage recreation, is a full-on supervillain within the comics. Arian Moayed (Succession) resurfaces as Agent Cleary, the predatory authorities hack he performed in Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man: No Approach House. The Doorman flashback has an necessary contribution from Roxxon, the damaging company that’s been a big a part of Marvel’s comics universe for the reason that Sixties, and has been referenced in greater than a dozen MCU reveals and films.
However the present’s ties to the better MCU are largely negligible Easter eggs. Like Simon’s fixed fears about his powers, these hyperlinks are only a reminder that on this setting, superheroes and villains are a routine a part of the panorama. The way in which Surprise Man operates as a ground-level story that isn’t entangled in MCU continuity is precisely what the Marvel Highlight initiatives are supposed to be — however the earlier present below that banner, Echo, was a lot much less distinctive and experimental, and rather more entwined with important Marvel characters. Surprise Man is a way more interesting and thrilling proof of idea. Nevertheless it doesn’t appear to be Disney has a lot religion within the present, given its minimal advertising help and the single-day streaming dump for each episode of a present that feels prefer it was initially designed to spark weekly hypothesis, dialog, and anticipation.
That’s significantly irritating on condition that Surprise Man is considered one of Marvel Studios’ most interesting reveals so far. Avengers: Doomsday is clearly meant as a corrective for Marvel’s superhero-fatigue-related box-office stoop, however this present is arguably a greater route altogether: a creator-driven departure that does one thing fully new, totally different, and enjoyable with this setting, as a substitute of making an attempt to copycat the franchise’s previous successes. It’s precisely what the MCU most wanted: a brand new thought for what a Marvel present might appear to be.
All eight episodes of Surprise Man debut on Disney Plus on Jan. 27.
