What's the best way to build buzz?
Is WandaVision playing the television game right?
It’s Friday, February 26, and here’s where we are…
All you need to know about the difference between releasing every episode of something at the same time or releasing a show on a weekly schedule can be summed up by looking at the way WandaVision has owned the conversation in pop culture every Friday morning for the last two months.
This morning is no different, and they deserve the buzz. Today’s episode is a huge info dump, and that can be deadly. Honestly, this was the moment I was dreading because these are often graceless moments for films or television shows, especially when you’re dealing with the kind of dense continuity you’ve got with the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far. Instead, this episode managed to make the grief that is the dramatic engine of the entire series suddenly land with real weight, and it recontextualizes everything we’ve seen about Wanda so far since her introduction in Age of Ultron. It’s a terrific episode, although I do have one question, and I assume they’ll sort this out with the final episode of the series next week: why, if Wanda is the one doing all of this and Agatha wants to figure it out, did we get an “Agatha All Along” song implying she was the one doing everything? They seem at first to be contradictory ideas to me.
Also, I’m making a prediction here. Paul Bettany caused some buzz by mentioning a big star cameo appearance during the series, one that fulfilled a lifelong dream for him. He’s said that he has always wanted to work with this person, and people have been guessing for the entire run of the show. Most of the guesses have been along the lines of Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellen, actors playing already established Marvel characters. I think those people are barking up the wrong tree. I also think the people who have been predicting the introduction of Reed Richards or some equally important Marvel character are wrong. I think people get overwhelmed by all the little bits and bites of information that end up in circulation and they start connecting dots and they decide that something’s true even though no one’s ever said it was true, and suddenly expectations are all haywire and out of control.
I think the answer is something a little more specific to the world of WandaVision, and I think this most recent episode made it clear where they’re going. I believe Dick Van Dyke is going to show up in the final episode, pulled directly out of Wanda’s subconscious. They made it explicit this week that Dick Van Dyke is Wanda’s favorite from childhood, the show that meant the most to her, and more importantly, the show she and her family were watching when that Stark Industries bomb hit their house. We’ve heard reference to that event before but now we see it play out, and we see that Wanda may have had more to do with it than she thought. This was before she’d been experimented on by HYDRA, after all, when she supposedly didn’t have any powers. This show suggests that she manifested those powers in this moment of horrible stress and that her exposure to the Mind Stone only accelerated something that was already there.
Whatever happens in this final episode next week is going to have major ramifications on Marvel films including Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Spider-Man: No Way Home and Ant-Man: Quantumania!, and, no, I don’t think Dick Van Dyke is going to be the Big Bad for Marvel’s Phase Four. But I do think that whatever jump forward we’re about to see is going to be explained at least in part by someone wearing a face that is meant to put Wanda at ease. Van Dyke is already a consultant on the show, and they got a lot of mileage out of telling the story about his meeting with Kevin Feige and his vague sense of Marvel’s massive success. They said he advised them on how to get the classic sitcom stuff right, and I believe that to a degree. But come on… out of all of the shows that had an influence on WandaVision, why is he the only one the studio brought in? I don’t think it’s as simple as a meeting or him telling them to shoot in front of a live audience. And let’s be honest… Dick Van Dyke has been a legend in this industry as long as Bettany’s been alive, and I would imagine any actor would be hugely honored to be able to actually play scenes with Van Dyke. He seems like the perfect fit, and his history with Disney makes him almost uniquely suited to bridge these worlds.
We’ll see next week, though, and in the meantime, Marvel and Disney will ride that buzz all week as only they can. I mean, they’re not the only ones who can do it, clearly, but they have turned it into fine art. There are certainly other big buzzy stories today. It can be as simple as a tweet from a filmmaker like this one…
… which is genuinely exciting. District 9 left a very clear dangling storyline and it seems like giving it a decade or so to percolate is the right way to approach a return to that world. I just rewatched this recently with my kids and it really was a terrific piece of science-fiction world-building. If they nail this script, this is something worth being excited about.
I don’t write much about reality television. I watch a smattering of it with my girlfriend and we almost always talk about it as “trash.” There is something zero calorie about most of it that makes it feel like the dirty secret in my media diet.
Even so, I am willing to admit that I got a real nostalgic charge from this trailer this morning for a project I didn’t even realize was shooting:
And, yes, my first thought looking at them was “Damn, they got old! After all, they were my age when the show first aired, so why aren’t they the same… oh, shit, they are.” Watching a reunion of the cast from the first season of The Real World is going to make me think about who I was and where I was when that show aired. I was living with four other people at the time, and the apartment before that had been four of us, and the one before that was five of us, so the show felt like it was very much about the way my friends and I were living. MTV was programming directly to my demographic at that moment, and I ate it up. These days, I do not feel particularly targeted by MTV, and I get it. I’m 50. They aren’t interested in my money or my likes or dislikes. This will be an interesting exercise in reflection for an industry that rarely actually reflects on anything. Reality television is voracious and rarely looks back. It’s constantly churning through people for new drama, and there’s a hint of Michael Apted to the decision to go all the way back to the original cast from the ’92 season of the show as a way of showing just how far we’ve come and how little has changed.
Finally, there’s the buzz you get from trying something radically different like Warner Bros is doing with Superman. Ta-Nehisi Coates is going to be writing a new take on the character for Bad Robot to produce with DC Films, news that was broken this morning by Shadow & Act. Right now, Warner hasn’t announced any casting, but the last actor who the studio had attached to the role in any capacity was actually Michael B. Jordan. While Henry Cavill has never been officially fired from playing the part, the studio started exploring options for a new version in 2019, and at that point, they were closely watching the box-office performance of Creed II to see if Jordan could open a sequel. The studio was high on him overall and while they never got to the point of making an official deal, they were definitely interested in exploring the idea of a Black Superman at that point. I would have been all aboard for Jordan in the role, and I’ve seen plenty of people throw other great names into the mix today like Jonathan Majors or William Jackson Harper. Whoever it is, it ultimately comes down to a certain kind of charisma, and it’ll all depend on what they end up writing. Abrams and Coates haven’t officially said what they’re planning and I think it’s always dangerous to just assume you know what’s happening because of the people involved. But this is something that Warner has been working toward for a while now, and this seems like a major step in a very specific direction.
What’s pretty safe as a bet is that it won’t be another variation on the Superman we’ve already seen. The last time Abrams took a crack at the character, he seemed willing to shake it up, and while I wasn’t the biggest fan of his script, I’ll say this for him in hindsight: that kind of daring is what it’s going to take to really make a stand-alone Superman movie into something special. Years after my infamous script review of his version, he and I had a conversation about it, and I think the work he would have done between that early draft and the actual eventual production of the film would have addressed some of the biggest and strangest choices he made. At this point, I think it’s all up for grabs, and I think the way you mix and remix the familiar is what’s going to distinguish future takes on Batman or Superman.
It’s ironic that we got this announcement the same week that Superman & Lois had its premiere because that show’s pilot ends with a reveal that felt very much like something that JJ Abrams tried in his script, making Lex Luthor a Kryptonian who followed Kal-El to Earth. I’m not sure that’s exactly where they’re going with the Luthor on this show, but that’s certainly the way it felt by the end of their (very good) first episode. They’re definitely doing their own take on the character, introducing two teenage sons to tell a very particular family story using Superman as the launching point. Even as recently as a decade ago, studios would have been worried about confusing the consumer if they had all these various interpretations out there at the same time. Now they can have their CWverse and the Snyder Justice League and whatever Abrams is doing and they can trust that the audience will be able to figure out how it all does or doesn’t fit together.
I’ll say this, though: while I don’t think there’s any single definitive way to portray Superman on film, I loved his introduction in the Superman & Lois pilot. The first time we see him, he saves a kid from a car that’s about to flip onto him, and when the kid mentions that he likes Superman’s suit, Superman smiles, genuinely pleased. “Thanks! My mom made it for me.” That one moment sold me on this version of the big blue Boy Scout, and I look forward to seeing how they play this season out, even as I remain wide open to whatever this theatrical take is as well.
REAL GOOD FAKES
I’m going to make the freebie today a little shorter than normal because I have some stuff I have been trying to finish for subscribers. I’ll have reviews this weekend for Cherry and Tom & Jerry and Minari, as well as some thoughts on some subjects that got me in trouble when I tried writing about them earlier this week.
As I try to do on most Fridays, I want to give you a question to discuss. Have you seen the Tom Cruise deepfake account on TikTok that seems to be freaking people out?
Here’s one example…
And here’s another…
It helps that the guy does a terrible Tom Cruise impression. I don’t think anyone’s in any danger of thinking that’s actually Cruise, no matter how convincing the technology is. And, yes, we’ve gotten to a point where can pull off some truly bizarre dark sorcery, and it’s strange that you can pull off something using commercial software that looks as good as, if not better than, the work that’s being done by studios.
I’ve seen people complain that this means they can’t trust anything they see anymore, but that’s not really true. It is definitely going to require people to do some legwork and to figure out which outlets and organizations are scrupulous about how they present things as the truth. I saw this story about one of the ways photographers are looking to establish a way for you to be able to see exactly what’s been done to a picture, and I thought it was a nice counterpoint to all of the freaking out.
How do you feel about this kind of technology? Does it scare you now that Pandora’s Box is open? Or do you just see this as an inevitable step in the way we play with recorded imagery? I think we’ve never really seen the kind of chaos this will cause, but I think we’ll figure it out eventually. There will be mistakes. There will be scandals. We’ll all fall for something that isn’t real, or we’ll all end up disbelieving something that we see with our own eyes. We’ll learn from that, though, and I think there will end up being safeguards that make it possible to be sure that the world we’re seeing is the world as it is.
But I’m not sure, and that’s the crazy part.
As always, I want you guys to feel free to discuss anything in the comments. I’m curious what you’re watching and reading right now and how quarantine’s treating you as we enter the second year. Have you picked up any new media habits? Refined any old ones? Retreated into old favorites? Tried to experience things that are all new to you?
AND FINALLY…
It’s been just over a year since I introduced the paid version of this newsletter, and every day, a few more of you join the mailing list. I cannot thank you enough for the choice you’ve made, and I hope that as we move into this second year, you continue to feel like you’re getting your money’s worth.
Trust me… it weighs on me. It may only be $7 a month that I’m asking people to pay, but it’s still a choice. That’s not nothing. I want you guys to feel like there’s plenty of variety in the inbox and that you’re getting things that you couldn’t get if you just read the free version. I also have some bigger projects in the works that require some time and attention, and balancing those things is a constant worry for me.
Over the last few days, I wrote an edition of this newsletter about a few different topics. It was probably six hours work total and when I got to the finish line and started editing, I realized that I couldn’t publish it. At all. When that happens, there’s an element of panic that sets in. I’m just one person. I don’t have a bench of writers turning out new content. I also don’t have a backlog of work I’ve created. I’m constantly working, but not all of it is for immediate consumption, and that means I don’t really have a fallback if something doesn’t go well. Part of me considered posting it anyway, but that felt like a real violation of the trust you put in me.
Not every single thing I send you is going to work. Not every piece is going to connect all the dots or land every punch. But without an editor or a process that my work goes through, I have to be willing to say to myself that something didn’t work and I have to be willing to take the loss on a day or two of work. Much of my work online has been created in a sort of feverish rush because that’s what the Internet demands, and you can certainly get caught up in that mindset. But it’s a trap, and it’s one of the reasons so much of what gets published is impermanent and inconsequential. It’s not because of ill intent. It’s the process. You can’t grind out nine articles a day and have anything of depth to say about anything after a while. It becomes mechanical and actual insight requires some kind of consideration or reflection as part of the writing.
That fear that I am letting down the audience is a weird one to navigate, because it’s no good for publishing in general. I spent too long buying into the idea that you publish based on what gets the most immediate engagement instead of publishing based on intent. In the long run, the reason people read what I write isn’t because I am the fastest person to publish a review or because I have the highest SEO engagement. It’s because, over time, I’ve done my best to follow my own interests and to write about them honestly and openly. Real curation… and in the broadest sense possible, curation is what I think matters most when writing about culture… can’t be driven by marketing schedules and it certainly can’t be driven by fear or desperation.
One of the reasons that there’s so much of our publishing space that is devoted to outrage is because outrage will work on the audience one of two predictable ways. It’s all about generating a response of some kind, and even if it’s anger, at least that anger is likely to keep you engaged. The amount of time we spend, as a culture, hate-consuming media of various kinds is genuinely insane. I’ve been guilty of it, certainly, but I’ve worked hard in the last year to break myself of the habit.
A good example of that was Real Time with Bill Maher, a show I used to watch every week. I’ve been to a few tapings. I know one of the producers of the show because he produced the Ain’t It Cool pilot for Comedy Central a hundred years ago. I would watch the show and I would get angry at it and I would have a hard time pinpointing my problem. It’s easy for me to understand it now but I just couldn’t identify the issue, week after week after week. It took my girlfriend watching about half of a single episode of it with me for her to see it, though. “You want Bill Maher to be someone else,” she said. “You want his politics to be something else.” And she was right. I wanted a mirror, and instead, I think Maher is a disturbing dinosaur who hides behind the phrase “free speech” to excuse myriad grotesque views. He’s welcome to be that, too. I don’t have any problem with his show’s continued run on HBO. I don’t begrudge him his success. I just don’t need to watch his program or listen to him belabor a point ever again. I don’t think he’s actually interested in what his guests have to say, and that’s my biggest problem with most of the outrage industry. I don’t mind the idea of conversations, even heated ones, as long as I believe everyone involved is actually listening to each other. Otherwise, what’s the point?
When you stop inviting outrage into your media diet, you’ll find it changes your overall perception of things. This doesn’t mean tuning out anything and everything that you might disagree with… it just means you need to decide when it’s worth your time and energy to engage with something and when it isn’t.
I deeply appreciate the choice you’ve made to spend your time and attention on my work, and those of you who are already paying, thanks for taking that extra step. Here’s hoping you continue to think it’s worthwhile.
We’ll wrap it up today with my weekly media diary, and as always, anything I particularly enjoyed is in bold.
THIS WEEK’S BOOKS: Sleazoid Express by Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford; Tonight, On A Very Special Episode, Vol. 1 edited by Lee Gambin; The Very Best of the Very Best: 35 Years of the Year’s Best Science-Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois; Peace Talks by Jim Butcher; Experimental Film by Gemma Files
THIS WEEK’S COMICS: Star Wars: Epic Collection - The Empire, Vol. 3; Star Wars: Epic Collection - The Empire, Vol. 4
THIS WEEK’S PODCASTS: The Kingcast - “Pet Sematary (2019) with Patrick Monahan,” “In Defense of Andy Dufresne with Lindsay Traves,” “IT with Emily Gordon”; High & Mighty with Jon Gabrus - “Sopranos w/ Mike Mitchell, Ben Rodgers and Charlie Sanders,” “Transit w/ Scott Frazier”; Screen Drafts - “Eddie Murphy with Dave Schilling and Ricky Carmona”; The Boogie Monster - “Vans, Jetskis and Bullshit”; MBMBaM - “Bros Better, Bros Best”; The Dollop - “Wicked Phenix City,” “The Ringer”
THIS WEEK’S TV: Kid Cosmic S1 E2, E3; Perry Mason (1957) S1 E3; Married at First Sight Australia S2 E3 - E6; The Expanse S1 E9; WandaVision S1 E7, E8; Your Honor S1 E5, E6; Somebody Feed Phil - “Buenos Aires”; Wellington Paranormal S1 E1; Last Week Tonight with John Oliver S8 E2; Search Party S2 E10, S3 E1, E2; Allen v. Farrow S1 E1; American Idol S19 E2; Bob’s Burgers S11 E11; Perry Mason S1 E4; Superman & Lois S1 E1; This Is Us S5 E9; Resident Alien S1 E5; The Witcher S1 E1, E2; All in the Family S1 E5; Sanford & Son S2 E8; Married At First Sight S12 E7; Mr. Mayor S1 E9; Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel S1 E1, E2
THIS WEEK’S GAMING: Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
THIS WEEK’S MOVIES: Guns at Batasi; The Kid Detective; The Sword and the Rose; A Tiger Walks; The Light in the Forest; The Incredible Journey; Ride a Wild Pony; Big Red; Tonka; Miracle of the White Stallion; Nikki, Wild Dog of the North; Third Man on the Mountain; Westward Ho, The Wagons!; The Black Hole; Old Yeller; Barton Fink; So Long at the Fair; Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art; Us Again; Raya and the Last Dragon; Tom & Jerry; The Asphyx; Critical Condition; The Counselor
That’s kind of creepy. I had the exact same realization about Bill Maher. He’s a smug individual. I thought “Ok. He holds similar opinions to me about drug legalization & religion so we must be the same” but then you can tell about how he thinks of other cultures like Muslim’s, as if they are lower beings. Anyways, I shouldn’t clog up this forum with politics. I stopped watching Bill like 5-6 years ago & never turned back.
You know what’s odd about that Tom Cruise Deepfake? The guy doing actually does a great Tom Cruise impression. Seriously. I think it’s the actor Miles Fisher, who was in a Mad Men episode(he sells weed to the Orson Welles wannabe). For some reason though when you stick Tom Cruises face on him? It seems bad. But when it’s just his face? It’s really good. Isn’t that odd?
Oh. For anyone reading this and you are a new subscriber who just waits for Drew to post new articles, take a look at his back catalogue from the past year. I’ve been doing that and there’s some great stuff in there.
I agree the Dick Van Dyke guess- he may be the one to help Wanda process her grief and remove the Hex
Really enjoying “Superman and Lois” so far - this could be the best version of Superman since the first two Christopher Reeve movies and two leads are the best versions of the characters in a long time
And I highly recommend “Sleazoid Express” to fans of exploitation movies. I moved to NYC in the mid 80’s after college just the “The Deuce” was starting to die off and the authors love the genre and are great storytellers. Each chapter is devoted to different type of movie and the theater that primarily showed that type of film. The chapters start off with a description and history of each theater and the ambiance and atmosphere of actually watching a movie there. The descriptions are fantastic and you’ll feel like you’re actually in a dank and dirty grindhouse watching “Cannibal Holocaust” . I went there occasionally and believe me they got it right