f13.net

Trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlNFpri-Y40)

I was bored (colorful CGI landscapes and 70s hits feel extremely overdone at this point, alas) until the reveal at the very end.   :drill:

I don't understand any of these trailers. They seem like they're all written for niche die hard fans, yet... the franchise is still the most popular thing going around.

Am I no longer considered part of the potential market for these movies? I'm not sure what this is about or why I should consider watching it.

I thought I recognized the voice, but the pacing and inflection was so different that I wasn't sure until then.


--Dave

this is gonna be fuckin incredible

Well, we already knew he was in the movie, so it wasn't a reveal in that sense. I wouldn't be surprised if we get multiple "Kangs" in the film, given what we heard in "Loki".

But visually, yeah, I wasn't all that impressed--it doesn't feel that different than some of the trippy visuals in both Strange films; it seems as if it might be time to really go for something completely different in visual terms but that just might be too expensive or complicated for Marvel at this point.

Quantum just means magic.

And the hyper-saturated fantasy worlds from the Thor films, and the Guardians films, and Shang-Chi...

I guess it's easier/cheaper to do fantastical landscapes at this point than it is to do "real-world" backdrops since it puts you way over on one side of the uncanny valley?

This is the closest we’ll get to the Micronauts and I’m going to watch it for that, if nothing else.

Obviously, they should have shot the Quantum Realm scenes on location. Why should they expect us to accept cheap digital fakes of Planck scale geography?

--Dave

It looked fun and colourful to me. Though I must admit I forgot to put on my Monocle of Heavy Ennui before viewing it.

I'm so bummed that they can't actually USE the Micronauts, since Hasbro hired Paramount to do something with them (which I think is never going to get done). Those were the most fucking awesome toys ever and the Marvel licensed comic was pretty good too.

I suppose they could do Psycho-Man in some form. There's some other Kang-related shit that could show up too--the Growing Man, the Space Phantoms, etc.

Latest trailer (very spoilery): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WfTEZJnv_8

I wonder if the heist is vs. another Kang.

Early reviews agree on one thing: Majors is fantastic as Kang. Don't agree on much else.

I'd say most seem to agree that the movie isn't very good. Metacritic currently has it matching Eternals score.

Edit: Actually now at 50 which is two points below Eternals. That said, public sentiment has turned against the MCU in general now.

I'll believe that when they stop making billions each year.

Sure, but the Star Wars prequels and sequels made a shit ton of money also, even as people turned on them.

That's too bad. It's the same director -- Peyton Reed -- as the other two. I wonder what happened.

Well, I'll reserve judgment, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was "you have this thing to deliver and this thing to deliver and this thing to set up and here's your budget, shut up if it's not enough".

It's sort of like the thing with Thor in the Age of Ultron movie where he goes into a cave for no fucking reason and it means absolutely nothing in the context of the film (and in the end actually doesn't deliver even in the bigger story). Executive notes and funding limitations and interferences in telling a coherent story. Or so I would guess.

Apparently this is what Iger was brought back to reverse--the people who wanted him as savior want him to reinstate creators making creative decisions and commanding budgets in relationship to that.

I'm on record as thinking that Ant Man & The Wasp is arguably the dullest MCU film with only Thor: Dark World possibly standing in the way of it taking the crown. The original Ant Man is not much higher on the list for me. Rudd as Ant Man is great as comic relief when he's around the other Avengers but the solo movies have always felt pretty lifeless. The complaints I see about this movie generally seem to be that not much actually happens. We get Kang of course but it doesn't sound like the movie does much to set up future conflict with him.

I'm looking forward to stuff like Daredevil, smaller more human tales. So far the best of phase 4 has been stuff like Hawkeye, where the scope is smaller and the focus more on a couple characters than an epic cast and setting. The heroes of phase 4 MCU for me are folks like the Swordsman or the therapy group from She-Hulk.

This movie could be just lots of Ant-Man joking around during a heist movie and featuring tons of Luis and the guys. Fishburn and Ghost were awful in #2, and Ghost is part of the next generation of heroes? Ecch. Almost every attempt to force in another next gen hero has been bad. Especially when they've had actually entertaining side characters that are basically dead-ends or one-offs.

Yeah, so far the theme in reviews (just reading summary level stuff, not the spoilery details) is that the movie is just kind of dour and lifeless and has no reason to exist but to set up the next movies. The Rolling Stone review says it "makes Eternals feel positively breezy by comparison". Uh-oh. Apparently the version of MODOK in the film provides some weird humor (but of course) but the tonal inconsistencies are huge.

It seems like all of Phase 4 has just been setting up something else. And most of the setup is trash.

I mean, that's what happens when you get up your own butt about the concept of a "cinematic universe" and establishing a hundred hour continuity instead of just making movies that are fun to watch. 

The MCU peaked at Iron Man 1 and it's been downhill ever since.    :grin:

IMO the movies peaked with GotG and Thor:Ragnarok and the MCU concept peaked with Infinity War and most of everything around it has been really boring paint by numbers. I'm glad this phase of movie making is (hopefully) phasing out and maybe we can get some stuff with money put into behind it which isn't shitty sequels and remakes.

I would not hold your breath on either of those hopes.

Yes, last year truly heralded the beginning of the end of sequels and remakes in big budget film.

1   Top Gun: Maverick   $718,318,561   
2   Black Panther: Wakanda Forever   $436,499,646
3   Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness   $411,331,607
4   Avatar: The Way of Water   $401,007,908
5   Jurassic World: Dominion   $376,851,080
6   Minions: The Rise of Gru   $369,695,210
7   The Batman   $369,345,583   
8   Thor: Love and Thunder   $343,256,830
9   Spider-Man: No Way Home   $231,808,708
10   Sonic the Hedgehog 2   $190,872,904

Elvis, Nope, Smile, The Lost City, Bullet Train and The Bad Guys did make it to the 11-20 slot, but I think that's broadly typical (that there are some substantial commercial hits that aren't sequels etc that make it that far up the charts).

Was kind of surprised that Everything Everywhere All at Once wasn't in the top 20 but that's probably that A24 only distributes to art house places for the most part.

Well I thought it was just fine.

Metacritic doesn't have its audience score up yet but Rotten Tomatoes is currently at 86% vs 48% for its critics score.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ant_man_and_the_wasp_quantumania

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/ant-man-and-the-wasp-quantumania

I liked it more than the other 2 Ant Man movies.

I liked it better than Thor 4 and Dr Strange 2.

I liked both of those more than most people so I’m not quite there with it (but it’s not far off for me). Solid middle of the pack MCU. There were a few things played as jokes that maybe felt a little forced to me and didn’t quite land, like the goo alien that’s kind of a comic relief character. MCU movies being tonally all over the map isn’t anything new though.

Just saw it.

I thought it was fairly decent. It rolls along at a pretty fair clip. The "downtrodden refugees and resistance fighters who will show up in the last act to storm the castle" plot is pretty tired and there weren't any twists in this one. . *Kang* himself calls that out near the end when he references how many times he's put down rebellions. (Doesn't look like he's learned all that well how to do it, but I think he can be forgiven that because he's eager to get the fuck out of this place and distracted by his eagerness.) Wasn't much of an arc for Our Heroes either besides "Janet Van Dyne has a secret" (I honestly thought for a second it was going to be that she started banging Kang at some point, but no, she just banged Bill Murray) and "Scott feels really guilty about missing his daughter's childhood".


I really hope they can have a few films coming up where the big set-piece at the ending doesn't have to involve a cast of thousands, the end of the world, with lots of noise and explosions, etc.


I would rank it well above my least favorite MCU films, in any event.

There's a kind of half-hearted attempt to give Scott an arc with Cassie pointing out that post-Endgame he seems more interested in cashing in on his fame than helping people, and then Scott's reluctance to get involved in the rebellion. Obviously though it's never really in doubt that he's going to help.

It's interesting. With the exception of Spider-Man, I don't think there's a single hero in the MCU who does anything like the conventional "nightly patrol". Which I think is great, because that trope has always been at least silly and at worst a contributor to the idea that crime is absolutely everywhere. So I'm not actually sure what a super-powered person who isn't on call as a paramilitary first responder to global emergencies is supposed to "do" in the MCU that constitutes great power matching great responsibilities. I'm pretty sure that going Giant-Man on cops clearing a homeless encampment wouldn't fit the bill. I suppose volunteering to help with natural disasters, etc, would be good, but even there, I'm not sure you want an untrained giant moving rubble in a collapsed building where you're looking for earthquake survivors.

And in the Pym household, Scott's pretty much the only guy with no scientific skills. I guess he could be the head of security for Hope's firm. It kind of feels like Cassie is just telling him "Get a job, you bum!" which is kind of WTF. Nobody's hurting for money at Chez Pym.

He was a prodigy electrical engineer in the first movie...  he was in prison because he engaged in some kind of break-in/sabotage against his unethical former employer.  Pym recruited him because of that combination for his heist. 

Daredevil.

And in a different way Luke Cage.

And Iron Fist at the end if we are counting those shows, he takes over for the presumably dead daredevil.

In theory there's probably a lot Scott and the Pyms could do with Pym Particles to help the world, but Hank is understandably protective of the technology to the point where he probably wouldn't go for it.

Also a giant Scott probably wouldn't be helpful moving rubble, but Scott with an army of ants he can communicate with would probably be great at finding survivors.

MCU, so the Netflix shows don't count. I guess Daredevil is still patrolling, but it does kind of seem like he's finding more things than criminals in his MCU incarnation.

I think the if Pym Family want Scott to be doing useful shit with Pym Particles, that's a family affair. We've seen in the past that they're kind of digusted and annoyed when he goes off reservation and makes his own judgment calls.

Honestly, he kind of feels like he's in the worst in-law situation ever: high expectations, low permissions with a dependency on his partner and her family's tech. Not all that surprised that he spends his time reading to little kids instead.

If they ever release a full version of Scott's audiobook it would put this movie in the top tier of MCU movies for me.

I kind of thought the same thing re: his family situation. Scott seems like the odd man out, sort of everybody's favorite dude-to-shit-on. I mean, we know that other people found Pym really irritating to work with back when he was in his scientific and superheroic prime, and his family kind of seems made in his image. No wonder he's enjoying being the public face of the family: it gets him away from the rest of them.

I almost wonder why Hope doesn't hire him as the company spokesman/mascot. Sort of the thing Iron Man was actually supposed to be in the comic books originally--the guy Tony Stark sent to corporate shows and opening ceremonies (while secretly *being* him).

I saw this, and my expectations were low so I was able to enjoy it as dumb fun.  At one point I had the thought "wow, these visuals are really ripping off Star Wars here," and a few seconds later my wife leans over to me and says "so the Quantum Realm is just Star Wars?"  Which I mention just to highlight that for the sheer amount of stuff they're throwing on screen to try to wow you, not much of it feels particularly fresh and interesting.  The compositing was also really rough in a few spots (like 80s monster movie with rear projection effects rough) which didn't help.  But the heroes were mostly charming, and Majors did some great growling and scowling and scenery chewing, and there were lots of lasers, and I liked Scott doing a book reading at City Lights (the other SF locations were fake as far as I could tell).

Majors was a perfect choice for Kang. His power levels were all over the place but I'm not sure they've ever been very clearly defined in the comics either. I could also chalk it up to him being stranded in the Quantam Realm. Given enough screen time and story, I think he might actually bring the same gravitas to the character that Brolin gave to Thanos.

MODOK was hysterical and I loved it. The character has always looked ridiculous, and lately the comics have treated him more as a laugh than a real threat. He works best that way.

I think the movie's biggest problem was that it had a real interesting dilemna there - should heroes from the real world get involved in the Quantam Realm's disputes? How do they even know Kang is evil? There's some real moral ambiguity that could have been explored, but it felt like they didn't really have (or want) time to explore that. And the heroes being able to just toodle in between worlds kind of undercut the whole importance of stopping Kang from entering the portal.

I still liked it. It was fun, and I like Cassie. She'll fit in with the Young Avengers well.

Is he even supposed to have any inherent powers in the MCU? I thought he was just a guy who invented the MCU equivalent of the portal gun from rick and morty, cept also time travel, and all his powers are entirely technology based. He was just a dude until he got his suit back and just a dude after he lost most of it.

Kang? Yeah, he has no intrinsic powers. He's combat-trained to the point that he can give Captain America a good fight, but there's always the vague stink of a cheater about him, e.g., a dude who depends on technology and time-travel to get the advantage and is kind of non-plussed when that doesn't work. It's one reason I kind of hate him as a character: he's got no consistency. You see a writer doing Dr. Doom wrong and you go "no way man, Doom wouldn't say that or do that". Kang? He's often a fucking screaming wuss who had some kind of stupid time-travel plan or throws dinosaurs and robots at people and then runs away. The one time he's been remotely consistent is Busiek's "Kang Dynasty" story and even there it's clear that other incarnations of him have been goddamn babies who have done timey-wimey shit to avoid having their face smashed in by Thor etc--that's what the hardcore Kang of the story has decided to face the music on and not pull.

If you look at his big picture, he's basically a 24th Century incel who gets a big stiffy at the thought of superheroes and combat in the past, rips off a time machine, and spends a few centuries lording it over early Egyptians with 24th Century tech while telling himself what an awesome motherfucker he is.

That is a stunningly accurate take on Kang, including his whole blue balls pursuit of Ravenna.

I would not at all mind if the Council of Kangs gets their divergent heads handed to them for the first half of The Kang Dynasty and then the real guy shows up, punks the shit out of them and then says to the Avengers, "ok, look, I don't have time for you people, I got real business to take care of".

BTW, I think "Scott Lang"'s book is coming out for real, and I would assume it has an audiobook option...

Yup. (https://www.instagram.com/p/Csb4vxorvG9/)

Finally saw this the other day on Disney+. I really liked it. CGI wasn't great but it was a fun movie.

Getting Black Panther 2 vibes of random suit handouts and genius teenagers making quantum (sorry) leaps of science in their garage. Not quite as bad as it was in BP2, but the teen iron man in that, Cassie in this, and that portal chick from Strange 2 were all weirdly jammed in.

It was ok for an overly CGI movie with garbage character interaction, but that's been this entire phase of movies. Every single one is a step back from the previous entry in quality.

The thing that bothered me most was none of the great cast from the first couple, the FBI dude or Scott's crew. The comedy in this was painful. Without Kang, this was a flop. I did enjoy it overall as a dumb popcorn movie.

The best part was an end scene from a tv show imo.

It does feel like they've hit the limit of what they can do with effects unless they want to either dial it back a bit towards "modified realism" or they want to spend a lot more money. Or just generally rethink the house visual style--it's just not holding up very well.

I also think the films are less referencing other genres/stories and more referencing themselves, which is making the whole thing feel a bit enclosed and claustrophobic.

They also desperately need to have a few truly great action scenes in an upcoming film--there really have not been many lately worth rewatching.