Monday Movie Review: Assembled: The Making of WandaVision
WandaVision, I just can’t quit you. It should come as no surprise that I am still low-key obsessed with the limited series on Disney+, even with the new addition of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which is one hundred percent my latest obsession (more on that later). I recently rewatched all of WandaVision with my husband, who hadn’t seen it yet, and I think it’s even better the second (some episodes third or fourth) time around. So of course when I saw the new special Assembled: The Making of WandaVision, I was all over it.
The special is about an hour long and touches on all the different elements of making the show as awesome as it was. I really enjoyed the insight the whole thing provided, but probably my favorite part was hearing about how they made the first few episodes. I know a lot of people didn’t really buy into the first couple episodes because they just felt so different from anything else we’ve seen in the MCU, but I loved them. Maybe because I, like Wanda, grew up in a sitcom loving household. I thought it was so cool to learn about how authentic the producers and director were to the medium when filming episodes one and two in particular. They even sat down with Dick Van Dyke to hear about what it was like rehearsing and performing in front of a live audience. How cool is that? I love that they actually brought in a real studio audience for the filmings (how lucky are those people!!!!) and what I was surprised most by was to learn that they didn’t do any CGI stuff (other than Vision’s appearance) for those episodes. Everything was old school, wire tricks, pausing the camera to do a quick change, stuff like that. I thought that was fascinating!
I also really loved hearing from Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez about their theme songs and how they went about writing a song for each decade. It was cool to hear about their process and the through line they put into each version. (Though they didn’t talk about Agatha All Along, which I think we can all agree is the best song in the show.) They are obviously geniuses so it was cool to get their take on the music.
And of course, getting to watch Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany talk about the show and their characters and their whole experience in the MCU was awesome. The whole thing was the perfect cap to the series, and really I’m just sad that we don’t have any more WandaVision episodes coming, though of course we haven’t seen the last of their characters. If you enjoyed WandaVision, you probably want to check out Assembled!
Overall Rating: A
March 24, 2021 @ 7:35 pm
I’m really glad they put this little “making of” on Disney+ cause I thought it was really interesting! I agree about how they filmed those first few episodes and how true they stayed to the original way sitcoms were filmed. Like you I grew up in a “TV Land” house and we watched tons of old sitcoms so I adored the first few episodes of this - I think there was a real nostalgia factor for me.
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