The marketing campaign began with a Youtube video uploaded to A24’s channel that was framed as a ‘leaked’ Zoom meeting where Chalamet acts as a boss giving crazed ideas to his ‘marketing team’. He reflects the character he’s playing known as Marty Mauser, an American table tennis player and his journey into becoming a world champion.
The most well-known part of the campaign was the release of a “Marty Supreme” jacket that has a 1990’s vintage feel to it, and that was sold online through limited-time flash sales retailed at $250. The windbreaker would become a staple of fashion related to the movie as they had multiple celebrities sporting the merch such as Kylie and Kendall Jenner, Hailey Bieber, Tom Brady, Kid Cudi, and Chalamet himself. Finally, in an Instagram post by break-out British rapper EsDeeKid, Chalamet references his upcoming film in a remix on a track titled “4 Raws” that went viral on social media.
The techniques used to market the film built anticipation among the public ahead of its release and left viewers speculating what the movie was about.
Directed by Josh Safdie, known for the 2019 film titled Uncut Gems, co-wrote the movie with Ronald Bronstein. It’s set in the 1950’s and follows fictional character Marty Mauser, who is “in pursuit of greatness” and is loosely based off world champion table tennis player Marty Reisman.
The film is intense. Mauser is not the most likeable character in any form, and he constantly makes bad decisions while remaining cocky at his abilities in which he somehow manages to win the viewer back every time. The ending is beautiful, even though whether the ending is happy or not for Mauser remains ambiguous to the watcher.
It explores themes of relentless ambition and unhealthy obsession that can be seen as narcissistic and reckless at times. The pursuit of his goals is similar to other award-winning movies like the 2014 film Whiplash, and Black Swan from 2010.
Not only is the movie performing phenomenal with its audience, but with its critics as well. Peter Bradshaw, a writer for The Guardian, states, “By the end of this movie my head was oscillating from side to side as if it had been hit with cymbals. The catastrophes, the stunts, the shocks, the jabbering desperation and Marty’s supercharged neediness, with everything important in his life poised to be thrown away, like the box of Marty’s patented table tennis balls that goes out of the window.”
Peter Dubruge, a writer from Variety, comments, “The movies have rarely given us such an entitled underdog, and it’s both mesmerizing and maddening to watch this arrogant table-tennis prodigy ricochet from high to low for nearly two and a half hours.”
Stretching from the film’s genius marketing ideas to its complex characters and storyline, Marty Supreme has proved to be a standout film. As it captured the eyes of critics and the general audience, hopefully changing the way films are sold to the public for years to come.