Marvel puts sitcom spin on superheroes
Blockbuster comic book movie factory Marvel Studios’ initial venture into episodic television is ... a sitcom?
Well, to be fair, it’s not just any sitcom. “Wandavision,” which sees its first two episodes hit the Disney+ streaming platform today, will look more like
sitcom, from the blackand-white 1950s to the cynical ’90s, over its nine-installment first season.
The bizarre concept features “The Avengers’ ” most unusual supercouple, Wanda Maximoff (aka Scarlet Witch, played by Elizabeth Olsen) and synthezoid Vision (Paul Bettany), in a series of scenarios that evoke “I Love Lucy,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “Bewitched,” “The Brady Bunch” and, for variety, a hint of “Twilight Zone.” And that’s just in the first three episodes.
Head writer Jac Schaeffer (who also wrote Marvel’s pandemic release-delayed “Black Widow” movie), first season director Matt Shakman (“The Boys,” “Succession,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) and Kevin Feige, studio president/ chief creative officer ,wanted each installment informed by a different, iconic sitcom — in chronological order. It’ll be a virtual lesson in how the genre developed as it reflected sweeping changes in American society and attitudes.
“We approached every era with authenticity,” Shakman, a former child actor, said in a Zoom interview from Los Angeles. “We wanted to avoid parody at all costs. We wanted to make sure that every little detail was done right — from costuming to production design, to lensing and lighting. And, most importantly in terms of actors, tone and style and how they approached each era, because comedy changes and performance styles change.”
by Jim Kiest
They’re still superheroes, though, even if the couple doesn’t seem to remember key aspects of their past nor acknowledge the radical differences in their environment from episode to episode. Fans are promised explanations, and dark forces from the Marvel Cinematic Universe will intrude on upcoming storylines. But for the next two weeks it’s about Wanda and Vish trying to fit into suburbia while keeping their powers hidden from the neighbors, with just a smattering of post-“endgame” matter.
“The idea always was to do something that could not be done as a feature, that plays with the format and plays with the medium,” Feige noted during a virtual press conference. “There were a lot of meetings before people actually understood what we were trying to go for. We’re only sitting here because Jac and Matt did, and were able to turn a wacky idea into a spectacular show.”
It’s a lot to compute. For those who need a refresher: English actor Bettany was first heard from in 2008’s “Iron Man” as the disembodied voice of Tony Stark’s supercomputer, J.A.R.V.I.S. Robo-villain Ultron used that program to mentally power the synthetic being Vision he created in the second “Avengers” film, and the redfaced fellow fell in love with Wanda over subsequent movies. Thanos obliterated Vision in “Infinity War,” and he was one of the few who didn’t come back at the end of “Endgame.”
A truly tragic, stoic figure, now Bettany is making like Rob Petrie and Darrin Stephens.
“I was really concerned how the character was going to remain the same when he is stuck performing in all of these TV sitcom tropes,” the actor said from New York City. “I worried about how could I play this. Then I realized that Vision’s actually always been changing. He started off as this omnipotent, naive creature that we see born, becomes obsessed with what is the nature of humanity, then, by ‘Infinity War,’ he’s arguably and ironically one of the most human characters in the movies.
“I thought, ‘Well, we’ll just chuck a bit of Dick Van Dyke in there, a bit of Hugh Laurie and, later on, Bryan Cranston.’ If his honest, decent center remains the same, then it can absorb and withstand all sorts of changes to the character as we hurtle through the American Century in American sitcoms.”
It was tricky playing an enhanced human housewife across 50 years of TV time, too. “The way women move throughout the decades changes so much when it comes to what society wants from them,” Olsen,
whose older sisters Marykate and Ashley were child sitcom superstars on “Full House” in the 1980s and ’90s, said during the press conference. “So Jac did write in quite a few nods to how those were evolving through the decades.
“In the ’60s (Wanda) gets to wear some pants, and that would adjust how someone moves through space. And when we talk about vocal work and speech and cadence, manners were a huge part of every decade.”
Contributing to the disorienting confusion of it all, parts of different episodes were shot out of sequence, unlike the standard a-show-at-a-time sitcom schedule.
“One day you’d be in the ’50s, the next day you’d be doing some greenscreen Marvel action thing,” Shakman recalled. “The schizophrenia of the job was actually one of its great joys. And there’s a much larger universe out there we had to be aware of, so it was necessary for us to correspond with other Marvel filmmakers and what they’re doing.”
The Captain America spinoff “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” was supposed to be the first MCU series on Disney+, but when pandemic lockdowns impeded production, “Wandavision” was further along and able pivot into post-production, Feige said.
“Things have a way of working out for a reason,” Shakman said. “This is an honor, obviously, but it makes sense that the first Marvel Studios production for Disney+ is a giant love letter to the history of television.”