Does greatness make you terrible?

Spoiler alert for Marty Supreme

If Timothée Chalamet has mastered anything, it’s being antagonistic. From his character in Lady Bird (2017) to The King (2019) and now Marty Supreme (2025), he’s very good at being bad.   

Marty Supreme is a sports drama based on the life of American table tennis champion Marty Reisman. The film follows Marty (Chalamet) on a tumultuous saga around New York, hustling to earn enough money to compete at the World Table Tennis Championships in Japan.  

Yet, unlike in Lady Bird and The King, essentially every character in Marty Supreme is unlikable. 

A film with no redeeming characters is typically difficult to enjoy, but Chalamet’s portrayal of Marty’s obsession with greatness makes enjoying the film easy. 

Marty is selfish and arrogant. He stole from friends and family, put loved ones in danger and refused paternal rights to his unborn child. 

I initially struggled with deciphering the meaning behind the film. After I sat through two-and-a-half hours of violence and seedy characters, capped off by the infuriating ending in which Marty (after very little character development) finally assumes the responsibility of fatherhood, it was hard to find anything remotely commendable about any of his actions. Yet he did it all in the name of greatness. 

In a time that could be described as a nonchalance epidemic, I think his obsessive, and in a sense corrosive, effort is somewhat aspirational and a novelty for viewers.

The method acting didn’t stop when shooting wrapped. Chalamet continued to channel his Marty Supreme character off-set during the film’s whirlwind of a press tour.  

In October, almost two months before the film’s release, Chalamet invited fans from Instagram to join him at New York’s Regal Times Square cinema, where the first 30 minutes of the film would be previewed. Hundreds of people packed the theatre, with many crowded outside. 

On Nov. 15, the actor “leaked” an 18-minute Zoom call in which a boisterous Chalamet pitched absurd marketing ideas to the bemused staff of A24, the film’s distributor. In the video, he suggests painting the Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty orange, in honour of the film’s now iconic colour.

Chalamet went on to create Marty Supreme merchandise jackets. The jackets, limited edition and now a collector’s item, were sold at a pop-up store in New York City. Jackets were also sent to Bill Nye, Michael Phelps, Kid Cudi and other celebrities whom Chalamet considers great.

The press tour and film depicted greatness as a virtue. Not something ingrained into someone’s DNA, but rather a reward for hard work, dedication and a dash of daring. 

The lengths that Chalamet went to promote the film were unorthodox. He proved to possess a great passion for the film and for his work as an actor. Like Marty, Chalamet is in “pursuit of greatness,” according to his speech at the 2025 Screen Actors Guild Awards. In terms of the current nonchalance epidemic, I think it’s refreshing to witness such obvious passion. 

When I consider my own life, I admire the way my friends and family are consumed by their goals. I love and cherish these people, in part, because I admire their aspirations to follow their dreams. That’s why Marty Supreme was so successful. In both the film and the press, we saw Chalamet and Marty doing the most for what they believed in.