“WandaVision” is the first series from the MCU and it has as its stars, Wanda and Vision. It is believed to have grave consequences for the future of the franchise.
Let’s find out some trivia and facts about it.
- WandaVision is an American television miniseries
- It is created by Jac Schaeffer for the streaming service Disney+
- It is based on the Marvel Comics characters Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch and Vision
- The series is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)
- It shares continuity with the films of the franchise
- WandaVision takes place after the events of the film Avengers: Endgame (2019)
- It was produced by Marvel Studios
- Schaeffer is serving as head writer
- Matt Shakman is the director
- Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany reprise their respective roles as Wanda Maximoff and Vision from the film series
- Debra Jo Rupp, Fred Melamed, Kathryn Hahn, Teyonah Parris, Kat Dennings, and Randall Park also star
- By September 2018, Marvel Studios was developing a number of limited series for Disney+, centered on supporting characters from the MCU films such as Wanda and Vision, with Olsen and Bettany returning
- Schaeffer was hired in January 2019
- The series was officially announced that April
- Shakman joined in August
- The series is presented as an homage to past sitcoms, with Wanda and Vision living in a reality that takes them through different decades of television tropes
- Filming began in Atlanta, Georgia in November 2019
- Production halted in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic
- Production resumed in Los Angeles in September 2020
- The series was completed that November
- WandaVision premiered with its first two episodes on January 15, 2021
- It will run for nine episodes until March 5
- It is the first series in Phase Four of the MCU
- The series was praised by critics for its homages to past sitcoms and the performances of Olsen and Bettany
- After the events of Avengers: Endgame (2019), Wanda Maximoff and Vision are living the ideal suburban life in the town of Westview, trying to conceal their powers
- As they begin to enter new decades and encounter television tropes, the couple suspects that things are not as they seem
- Schaeffer received comics material and an outline of what Marvel Studios hoped to accomplish with the series, in order for her to help shape their ideas into a coherent structure
- Feige came up with the idea of having Maximoff and Vision be in a “strange fantasy world of suburban bliss” based on his love of sitcoms and how they can be used to escape from reality
- Feige was also visually inspired by Mike del Mundo’s “Norman Rockwell meets Leave it to Beaver” covers of the comic book series The Vision by Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta
- Schaeffer hired eight writers for the series’ writers room, including four women and several people of color, because of her belief that “stories are better the more perspectives you have”
- Megan McDonnell served as a staff writer on the series, before being promoted to story editor
- Many of the writers had previous television experience, which Schaeffer used to help craft each episode within the larger narrative
- One of the initial challenges for the series was figuring out how to tell the story in the long-form structure of a limited series rather than a film
- WandaVision has been described as part “classic sitcom”, part “Marvel epic” by Feige
- Schaeffer and Shakman called it “a love letter to the golden age of television”
- The series pays tribute to many eras and genres of American television, including modern documentary-style sitcoms like Modern Family and The Office
- The writers and Shakman focused on the family sitcom over other types such as workplace sitcoms because the family aspect kept the series “very centered”
- Both Schaeffer and Shakman studied past sitcoms to learn their “trappings and styles”, while avoiding tropes from older sitcoms that would not be acceptable in a modern series
- They and Feige spoke with Dick Van Dyke, the star of the eponymous 1960s sitcom, to learn how that series could “be very broad with silly physical-comedy gags, and yet it never feels false”
- Other past sitcoms that inspired the series include I Love Lucy, My Three Sons, Father Knows Best, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Bewitched, Family Ties, Friends, 30 Rock, and Parks and Recreation
- The series also has meta references to Full House, which starred Olsen’s older sisters Mary-Kate and Ashley
- The “House of M” comic book storyline by Brian Michael Bendis and Olivier Coipel was one inspiration for the series
- Other inspiration was taken from The Vision and the Scarlet Witch by Bill Mantlo and Rick Leonardi and from The Vision and the Scarlet Witch by Steve Englehart and Richard Howell
- The series explores how Maximoff grew up in an Eastern European country and relied on black-market American products such as television
- It takes place after the events of Avengers: Endgame (2019), and “directly set[s] up” the Phase Four film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), in which Olsen reprises her role as Maximoff
- The first episode of the series filmed for two days in black and white, and had a live studio audience present, to mimic sitcom filming
- For episodes with a laugh track that was not recorded live, the series worked with an expert to explain how laugh tracks changed throughout time, which helped inform the sound design
- A 4:3 aspect ratio is also used for the black and white scene
- Shakman enjoyed being able to experiment with the aspect ratio, having it be directly related to the narrative
- Other period-specific touches were done in each episode, such as period-appropriate camera lenses and lighting and live special effects
- Hall used 47 different camera lenses for the seven time periods covered in WandaVision, many of which were modern lenses custom modified to keep characteristics of the actual period lenses
- As for lighting, tungsten lights were mainly used for the 1950s to the 1970s episodes, as those were the lights of the era, with LED lighting being used starting in the 2000s episodes
- After the first two episodes mainly reference The Dick Van Dyke Show and Bewitched, respectively, further episodes have multiple sitcom homages in them
- In January 2020, Christophe Beck announced he would compose the score for the series, after previously scoring Ant-Man (2015) and Ant-Man and the Wasp
- Beck paid homage to the sitcoms in each time period through his instrumentation, compositional style, and period-specific recording and mixing techniques
- Earlier episodes feature small orchestral ensembles, with later episodes having more of a rock-pop style, and the music becoming more “pervasive” as the series progresses
- Beck looked for ways to connect his music across the different styles, such as composing one love theme for Maximoff and Vision
- Michael Paraskevas and Alex Kovacs co-composed the series’ music
- In December 2020, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez were announced to have written theme songs for some of the series’ episodes
- They were approached for the series by Shakman, who was friends with Lopez at college, and they had previously worked with Beck on the music for Disney’s Frozen franchise
- In order to tie their themes together, Lopez and Anderson-Lopez created a four-note motif that worked in each of the theme song styles
- Lopez described the motif as “kind of like the WandaVision call-out, easily identifiable in some way in each song”
- The theme for the first episode evokes the “dawn of television” and is about the love between Maximoff and Vision
- Soundtracks for each episode, including Beck’s score and the theme songs by Lopez and Anderson-Lopez
- They will be released digitally one week after each episode premieres
- The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 97% approval rating
- Based on 128 reviews
- With an average rating of 7.75/10
- The website’s critical consensus reads, “Part loving homage to TV history, part off-kilter mystery, WandaVision is a wonderfully weird and strikingly bold step into the small screen for the MCU – and a perfect showcase for Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany”
- Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 76 out of 100
- Based on 37 critics
- Indicating “generally favorable reviews”
Got anything to add?