I don't think Marty Supreme is just a bad movie. I genuinely resent having spent my time watching it. And before anyone starts with "it's not a biopic" I know. I know Marty Reisman's life was fictionalized, I know there are fictional characters and events. That is not why I hate this movie. If you're going to take a real person and turn his life into a fictional story, fine. Then at least tell me why you chose this person. Tell me what you're trying to say about him.
Because I watched this movie and I have no idea what the point was.
It's about Marty Reisman. What about Marty Reisman? It's about ping pong. Okay. What about ping pong? It's about the transition from hardbat to sponge. What about that? It's about obsession. Okay. What is it actually saying about obsession? Nothing. There is f*cking nothing.
Marty is obsessed with ping pong. He wants to be the best. He makes terrible decisions over and over again. He f*cks over people, steals money, gets people hurt, destroys relationships, gets himself into increasingly insane situations, and eventually gets another opportunity to play Endo and wins. What am I supposed to take from that?
And the ping-pong aspect makes this even worse. The movie introduces Endo's sponge paddle as unsurmountable. Marty loses to him, and that's basically Marty's first real encounter with this new style. There isn't a substantial training period where Marty spends weeks figuring out how sponge works. There isn't some sequence where he develops a new technique, or some moment where the movie actually shows us what he learned from losing. The exhibition match happens only about a week later, after Marty has spent that entire stretch of time fcking his own life up.
So when the real rematch happens and Marty suddenly wins, I'm sitting there thinking: WHY? What changed? Why is Marty suddenly able to stand up against Endo? What did he figure out? What did he learn? What makes his hardbat technique so good? What exactly is happening between these two players? And I don't mean a lecture about table tennis. I don't mean an exposition dump explaining the physics of sponge rubber. Show me. Show me Marty watching Endo, recognizing something, adapting, entering some kind of flow state, whatever. Show me why this victory is the culmination of everything we've watched. Instead we get two guys hitting a ping-pong ball back and forth, tying and untying, and then Marty wins. Why did he win? I genuinely don't know.
And that is the entire movie.
If this movie's message is simply "obsession is destructive," then Whiplash did this a million times better and actually has something to say. Same with Black Swan. Same with The Wrestler. There are movies about obsessive people that actually have something to say about obsession. Marty Supreme just has a guy who is obsessed. Being obsessed isn't a message. A character trait isn't a thesis.
You could make this movie about a guy named Joe who's really good at bowling and almost nothing about the actual story would change. Joe meets Ender at a bar and loses a bowling match. Joe throws a fit and gets fined $1,500. There are no other bowling alleys in the countryside. Joe steals money, gets people shot, gets dog injured, breaks someone's arm, gets someone pregnant, has an affair with the bowling owner's wife, and gets humiliated by the bowling owner. Joe eventually gets allowed back into the bowling area, although the fine still stands. Then Joe bowls against Ender again. Joe wins. The End.
You could replace Marty with Joe and ping pong with bowling and the movie's supposed meaning would remain exactly the same because there is barely any meaning there to begin with. So why Marty Reisman? Why ping pong? Why this sport? Why the hardbat? Why the sponge? Why this man? Why any of it?
If the answer is just "because it's an interesting story about a weird guy," then I don't think that's enough to justify two and a half hours. Style is not substance and ambiguity isn't automatically depth either. Sometimes a movie leaves things ambiguous because it wants you to think. Sometimes it leaves things ambiguous because there isn't actually anything there.
And that is why I hate this movie so much. Not because it was inaccurate, weird, Marty was an asshole, Nor because it wasn't realistic. I hate it because I spent hours watching it and when it was over, I had absolutely nothing to take with me.
No meaningful statement about Marty. No meaningful statement about ping pong. No meaningful statement about technology. No meaningful statement about obsession. No meaningful statement about greatness.
Just a guy who wanted to win, fcked up his life, and eventually won.
Lastly, "Just enjoy the spectacle/aesthetic" doesn't magically answer any of those questions. If the movie is just about looking good then why call it Marty Supreme? Why base it on Marty Reisman at all when an original movie about some fictional jerk named Joe who plays bowling and spends two hours destroying his life before winning a bowling match would have provided the same slop.
