The Trouble with WandaVision

Trust (your audience) issues.

Spoilers for WandaVision ahead, if that’s something you care about.

Back in 2019, a minorly successful Italian-American named Martin Scorsese got in a little bit of trouble talking about Marvel movies. “Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks,” he said in an interview with Empire Magazine. The conversation went haywire from there, blowing up into a referendum on the film industry as a whole. Marvel fans protested that Scorsese was being a snob and a gatekeeper; Scorsese’s defenders noted that he was merely making a point about the modern stratification of Hollywood economics, not making a personal judgment.

In a way, that was always the trouble with Scorsese’s argument. He was speaking about the rise of the billion-dollar blockbuster, unprecedented moneymakers that could completely wipe out mid-budget movies as we know them. It was a theoretical debate, framed from a position of ignorance on the quality of Marvel’s films themselves. Scorsese was correct about the effect of these movies on Hollywood, but because he doesn’t actually watch them he didn’t even come close to touching Marvel’s other great negative impact: its poisonous disinterest in challenging a now-massive audience.

Take Marvel’s current flagship streaming series, WandaVision. Initially, it seemed to break the mold, not just challenging its audience but outright confusing it by transposing its superhero characters into a vaguely surreal pastiche of 50s and 60s sitcoms. The first three episodes were an enjoyably offbeat affair that committed to homage in a way few other of the studio’s properties had, complete with a live studio audience and amiably plotless episodes. Critics called it “Lynchian!”

By episode four, the show had already tired of that format. Instead, it zoomed out to reveal the government facility that was carefully taking notes on the situation and remarking on how weird this all was. At one point, Randall Park (in a performance that can only be described as “there”) remarked, “So you’re saying the universe created a sitcom starring two Avengers?”

This, of course, is an homage to the moment in every David Lynch film where a set of characters are introduced to carefully explain exactly what is going on onscreen to any viewers who might be behind. The show has now gone on like this for several weeks. Moments from the first few episodes that were unsettling in their unexplained form are carefully unpacked in extended, deathly boring sequences. Other moments that seemed to be quite clear are explained again, in case you weren’t paying attention the first time. During a traumatic childhood flashback in the most recent episode, a character exclaims “So much trauma!”, as if the show’s writers were deathly afraid that audiences might blink and miss just how much trauma was present onscreen.

In a way, it feels unfair to criticize Marvel for this sort of thing. Of course a superhero sitcom from the biggest company in the world isn’t going to be Mulholland Drive. But again and again, Marvel and its fans invite comparison to better works and demand recognition for simply making those comparisons. Being the biggest franchise in the world isn’t enough. Marvel pretended to be a vaguely creepy sitcom for a little while, and respect must be paid for that incredible creative risk.

There’s a level of schoolyard insecurity to this hyperbole surrounding the show, this feeling that a pat on the head is warranted for consuming a piece of art that’s even 10% of the way to being truly strange (Truly Strange is Doctor Strange’s sister). For weeks, we were subjected to thinkpiece after thinkpiece about how the real, subtextual villain of the show was secretly the abstract concept of grief, only for the penultimate episode to throw ambiguity out the window and practically say directly to camera, “Did you know that this show is actually about grief?” And even upon losing that one resolute strain of ambiguity, the show is still being hailed by viewers as some kind of profound triumph, one that has screenwriters the world over “whispering a reverent ‘OH FUCK.’”

Here is where I should probably say that I’ve liked quite a few Marvel things over the years. I still think the second Guardians of the Galaxy is a pretty impeccable piece of blockbuster entertainment, and I retain a lot of fondness for Shane Black’s deliciously subversive Iron Man 3. But one of the things I like most about those movies is how they proudly wear their source material’s goofy soap-opera impulses. As Marvel continues to monopolize Hollywood box-office (such that it is at the moment), they seem steadily determined to monopolize genre itself as well. Captain America: The Winter Soldier isn’t a superhero movie, they say; it’s a Sydney Pollack spy thriller. Ant-Man and the Wasp is a romantic comedy, complete with that classic romantic comedy finale where the protagonist gets really big and capsizes a boat. And WandaVision — for three or so episodes, price and participation may vary — is a sitcom. You can get it all, right here! Why bother going anywhere else?

In reality, as we all know, the show will end as all these things do, with two or three overqualified actors having a smoky confrontation in an Atlanta parking lot. Marvel’s output shares with Todd Phillips’ regrettable Joker a total lack of interest in actually shaking up the landscape of the genre. They wear their superior influences like ill-fitting human skinsuits designed solely to beg for that pat on the head, that nice-job-for-trying encouragement that allows their mediocrity to sneak by unnoticed. WandaVision will fade away with the reminder that for just a few weeks, Marvel fans were bold enough to venture to the sidelines of their comfort zone and watch something just a little different, just a little weird. Even if that something wound up being just like everything else in the end.

What’s worth watching this week: The Empty Man, a late Fox acquisition dumped into theaters by Disney last year, is scary, well-constructed, and rentable now.