“Marty Supreme Christmas Day. Marty Supreme Christmas Day.”
Orange blimps.
Raining orange Marty Mauser ping pong balls.
For the past few weeks, Timothee Chalamet’s voice echoed these phrases repeatedly to publicize the new movie Marty Supreme, where he plays the main character, Marty Mauser. The movie came to theaters on, of course, Christmas Day. “Marty Supreme” included other notable actors and celebrities, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin O’Leary, and Tyler, The Creator.
The movie takes place in 1950s New York and follows Marty Mauser as he attempts to achieve greatness by becoming the World Ping Pong Champion. As a shoe salesman, Marty is constantly looking for a way to escape his life by winning more ping pong tournaments. After he comes in second place to Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi) in the London championship, Marty makes it his mission to defeat him in the next championship in Japan. However, he does not have enough funds to travel. Throughout the movie, the audience is taken on numerous adventures in Marty’s pursuit to earn money in order to compete in a rematch against his rival, Koto Endo. Crashing through the ceiling in a bathtub, breaking and entering, and setting fire to a gas station are a few of the extremes Marty went through while trying to get enough money for Japan.
Many audience members were left with mixed emotions towards the movie as a whole and Marty Mauser as a character. A ping pong match was unfolding: the constant back and forth of Marty’s character was confusing and thrilling. People were rooting for Marty to succeed, yet also anticipating his downfall because of his obnoxious behaviors.
The promotion of Marty Supreme has been a task heavily taken on by Chalamet. Orange is a common theme in their advertisements because Marty Mauser wants to revolutionize the ping pong ball by making it orange. Over a month before the movie was released, A24, an American film production company, posted a video on TikTok over 18 minutes long. The video is a staged zoom call of Chalamet telling his advertising team of all the plans he hopes to pursue to attract a large audience. Some of his ideas include turning the Statue of Liberty orange and dropping orange Marty Supreme ping pong balls from the sky. While this was a satirical promotional video, Chalamet and his team did carry through with some of their ideas, such as orange Marty Supreme blimps. More recently, Chalamet was seen promoting the movie by wearing matching orange attire with Kylie Jenner, his current girlfriend, at the “Marty Supreme” premiere.
“Marty Supreme” has also received a lot of attention in the film world since its release. The movie is expected to be nominated for many awards and is a strong contender to win. Chalamet has already won the Critics’ Choice Award for best actor and his first Golden Globe for best actor. Marty Supreme can be expected to be seen in upcoming months at the Oscars and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards.
Overall, “Marty Supreme” is a highly exhilarating movie with plot twists and adventures in almost every scene. While it is not a movie for everyone, it definitely leaves the audience with a gained lesson and sense of confusion. Upcoming months will reveal how award show professionals view the movie and Chalamet’s performance.
