Featured Essays Wonder Man Wonder Man Was Great, but Disney Corporate Synergy Still Messed It Up The series was a gem… except for the oversaturated branding By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on February 10, 2026 Credit: Marvel Studios/Disney+ Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Marvel Studios/Disney+ Wonder Man is easily one of my favorite pieces of the MCU’s last five years. (Marvel Studios should have let it be a weird little movie instead of an awkwardly paced miniseries, but I digress, and it’s too early for a digression.) It does the thing that the sprawling cinematic universe did well at its outset and keeps forgetting as its mythos builds: take a few subgenres and aesthetics, and meld them into a coherent narrative with a superpowered person(s) at the center. And the show skimped out on action sequences, to my never-ending delight—so many movies, even within the action movie millieu, could use fewer. (The third act climatic battle has become a punchline rather than a crescendo over the last decade.) We got more talking! More backstory! More thematic resonance! And yet… we’ve got to talk about the Josh Gad in the room. There’s a bubbling issue in our age of deregulated media conglomerates that brings to mind the brand synergy zeal and business word salad that blossomed in ‘80s corporate America. Everything that you “consume”—and that obviously includes media of any kind, according to these folks—is ultimately being optimized to remind you to consume more stuff. That’s what makes the capitalism engine go vroom. And there’s also rights issues to consider, right? Namechecking (or visually showing) an IRL brand in your fictional story typically costs money in one direction or another, and demands sponsorship contracts with clauses galore. You’ve likely heard some of these stories before: E.T. and the fateful Reese’s Pieces product placement when M&Ms wouldn’t play ball. Wayne’s World devoting an entire joke segment to egregious sponsorship deals. Wreck-It Ralph 2 basically being a two-hour ad for being online. Superman getting thrown into an IHOP that one time. Remember when James Bond movies were in the business of making Sony Vaio happen? Anyone? But now that a few measly megacorps own… everything, these references are being reworked to keep you within a super-brand “stable,” as it were. Why make deals with outside companies when you can make a deal with yourself, and get yourself more money? It’s weird enough when television characters spend any length of time debating television, but now characters in Netflix programs inevitably make comments about “cuing up Netflix,” when the subject of cozy evenings arise. Or a buddy is being dramatic, and someone teases that their lives are going to become the subject of a Netflix special. Or a kid comes into the room to tell mom a big secret, but just wait, she’s gotta pause Queer Eye on the giant flatscreen before you can talk! It’s wildly inorganic and throws you out of an immersive state every time, because even if the dialogue or situation doesn’t feel forced (which is rare), you cannot help but be reminded of the fact that you are watching a thing on Netflix, and Netflix wants to remind you of this, so they can encourage you to keep watching a thing on Netflix. Nothing in this world makes me want to exit the app faster. The fact that each individual streamer only uses their own service makes the effect that much worse—in case you forgot you were watching Hulu, don’t worry about it… they’ll be sure to remind you at the thirty minute mark. But I’ve got a different beef with Marvel Studios because they’re owned by Disney, and Disney is determined to be the best at what they do. Part of the difficulty here is that the House of Mouse is now home to some of the biggest fandoms on the planet—they’ve got Marvel, yes, but also their entire stable of animated films (plus Pixar), and all of Star Wars to name a few. (Please don’t get me started on the fact that Disney has gobbled up the studios that produced work by animators and creators they wouldn’t give any creative control or capital to, thereby managing to own reams of work that they once outright refused to bankroll.) Disney knows something about fandom because that’s a business they’ve had to harness in order to survive. Credit: Marvel Studios/Disney+ So you can see how Josh Gad might have ended up in Wonder Man, and why Disney might have thought itself oh-so-clever for the premise: We’ve got a bottle episode giving backstory on the in-universe ban against superpowered people working in film and television. We need the central character of the episode to enjoy a brief stint working for a celebrity, who can have fun poking at their own career while they play a fabricated version of themselves. If we pick from our own roster, we can lightly roast ourselves (without needing to work out any kind of pesky permissions) while heartily reinforcing brand supremacy. It’s a nice gig for the actor in question, who doesn’t have to commit to an entire series-worth of shooting time in order to make some money. Gad’s an easy choice because he voiced one of Disney’s most recognizable sidekick characters for one of the most popular animated films of all time, a character who’s deliberately off-kilter and lends himself to endless send-ups; if you’ve watched Frozen 2, you already know that Disney has milked this cow before, with an entire extended credits sequence featuring Olaf recapping the plot of the first film to Marshmallow the snow giant. This time we’re treated to Gad in the club, where he’s allowed to perform with the DJ (because he’s famous, natch), and treats the crowd to an adult rendition of “In Summer,” telling the room “We’re melting! Melting, bitches!” as he pours his drink on a guy’s head. Comedy gold, of course. Wow, Disney sure does know how to razz itself by allowing an actor to cut loose and “riff” on his own ultra-famous performance with curse words… Here’s the part that the corporate sector never seems to understand about these setups: It’s not funny when you make the joke. Your implicit permission ruins the gag. This was a major piece of the marketing for Deadpool & Wolverine, by the way: There are countless interviews where star/co-writer Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy tell folks that they were stunned at the jokes that Disney and Marvel Studios allowed them to make at their so-called expense. It’s a strange party line to witness because when you take stock of the jokes that fit the description, there’s nothing remotely unsafe about them: Disney says we can’t do cocaine. Disney brought Hugh Jackman back as Wolverine after the studio-previously-known-as 20th Century Fox killed him off. Pegging isn’t new to Deadpool, but it is to Disney (and still is, because no pegging ever occurs, alas). “Alioth is in this thing? From [insert relevant brand connection for further consumption]?” Suck it, Fox—I’m going to Disneyland. All the while, we’re wholly aware of the fact that Disney is signing off on these jibes because it makes them look better as a company. Disney doesn’t mind if you take the piss; they’re not a regular mega-conglomerate, they’re a cool mega-conglomerate. They’ll make fun of themselves, see? You don’t even have to do it. But they do, in fact, mind when you do it: Disney’s lawyers are famously tetchy if you mess with their IP without express approval. They tried to fine an elementary school parent teacher association a few years back for screening one of their movies without a $250 permit, as a mild reminder (before realizing that was a bad look and apologizing). And just in case you think that Disney was at least mature enough to steer clear of the dreaded streamer name-drop, I direct you to episode five of Wonder Man: a shot of the El Capitan Theater shows a billboard bearing the words ‘Ohana means family’ with the Disney Plus logo directly beneath it. But perhaps it was just there when the scene was shot, you might point out? Afraid not, as Wonder Man was filmed and edited over the course of 2023 and 2024—Lilo & Stitch didn’t premiere at El Capitan until May of 2025, well after the show had wrapped. The billboard is there for the obvious reason, which is to subliminally call you toward a different viewing once you’re done. Less awkward than a character suggesting that their favorite movie was just added to Disney Plus, but just as blatant and tacky. Credit: Marvel Studios/Disney+ I could go on about how patently strange it is when the MCU tries to intersect bluntly with our own reality (I’m still reeling from Luke Cage suggesting that Barack Obama was president in the MCU, after what we’d seen of their world leaders up to that point). What does it mean for Frozen to be a hit in the MCU, and how did the public handle the film coming out the year after Captain America reemerged from his own thaw? Why is Disney just as obsessed with doing live-action remakes in their universe as our own? Are we allowed to talk about the fact that the high school auditorium quality of Rogers: The Musical indicates that Broadway is still decimated in the wake of multiple attacks and the Blip? But really, all it makes me want to do is think about Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and the endless behind-the-scenes negotiations that film had to go through because two major studios—Disney and Warner Bros.—were in an all-out brawl to demand equal screentime. The quality of the film can be put down to the fact that it was emphatically not an advertisement for other properties; it was meant to be a real world where animated characters were real actors. It was possibly the only time that being deeply referential didn’t feel like a garish cash grab, or a fight for our endless collective attention. The worldbuilding was authentic and the place felt lived-in, inch by two-dimensional inch. The brand synergizing notes that occurred in Wonder Man weren’t massive asides, but they were glaring ones that distracted from the tale they had to tell. It felt like nothing so much as a Disney executive entering my living room with a skateboard to “How do you do, fellow kids” me until I re-upped my Disney Plus subscription. And I’m not saying that this did or should have distracted everyone else to the same extent—I’m saying that we should all be concerned about the ways in which our entertainment and precious attention are being continually and grossly modified and commodified to aid someone’s bottom line when all we ever agreed to… was being told a story.[end-mark] The post <i>Wonder Man</i> Was Great, but Disney Corporate Synergy Still Messed It Up appeared first on Reactor.