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Author Topic: Ant-Man and the Wasp  (Read 14382 times)
Mandella
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Reply #35 on: July 22, 2018, 01:37:59 PM

I thought Mandella was referring to Dr. Pym.


Whups. Yeah. That wasn't very clear at all.

Edited now for clarity.

Although now you mention it, Dr Pym could easily be in the movie too.
Brolan
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Reply #36 on: July 22, 2018, 04:39:29 PM

It is interesting that in the first end credits scene
Ironwood
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Reply #37 on: August 05, 2018, 09:01:42 AM

So, um, this was ok, but it was basically Iron Man 2.  Like, beat for beat Iron Man 2.

Odd.

"Mr Soft Owl has Seen Some Shit." - Sun Tzu
Threash
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Reply #38 on: August 05, 2018, 10:47:56 AM

I don't even remember Iron Man 2 enough to dispute that.

I am the .00000001428%
Mandella
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Reply #39 on: August 05, 2018, 08:11:08 PM

I don't even remember Iron Man 2 enough to dispute that.

I do, and I really don't know what the hell Ironwood is talking about.
Ironwood
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Reply #40 on: August 06, 2018, 01:03:09 AM

I'm a big high tech guy, but the offspring of one of my disgraced and stolen from colleauges is now here and causing trouble with similar tech.

Seriously ?  You don't remember Iron Man 2 much, eh ?


EDIT :  I mean, it doesn't actually MATTER, but it does once again speak to the Marvel Villain problem.  They just can't seem to write one.  We have hi-tech guy trying to make trouble (seriously, he might as well have been Hammer again, it was so carbon copy), we have offspring causing trouble with very, very tenuous logic and planning and then we have the closet betrayal.  And not a single one of them made any sense at all.

Thank God for Evangeline Lilly.  Seriously. 
« Last Edit: August 06, 2018, 01:07:45 AM by Ironwood »

"Mr Soft Owl has Seen Some Shit." - Sun Tzu
Khaldun
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Reply #41 on: August 06, 2018, 04:22:58 AM

I think most of it was pretty different, but I get what you're saying about villains.

I think in this movie part of the issue is they didn't want a genuinely dangerous villain for reasons of tone. They wanted a villain who basically just gums up the works sometimes but who also is not particularly wicked or nasty.

But this does incidentally suggest why the MCU doesn't have great antagonists, for the most part. They've tried to make superheroes mostly feel "real-world", e.g., they've downplayed the bright colors and mostly avoided the tropes of standard superhero fare, they've tried to make superheroes relatively rare, they've treated the major slugfests that have broken out in cities as events that have profoundly affected the whole world (well, except for the thing with the Dark Elves in Thor 2, that one people seem to have just forgotten), etc. But that extends to villains, and that's a problem. Comic-book villains are mostly pathetically stupid conceptually: they're people who have powers and devices that could change the entire world but they rob banks with them. Very few of them have any kind of useful dramatic arc or motivation to work with. So the MCU writers have had to try and inject that into every villain they use. What they're getting stuck on is "villain who has a motivation that directly ties to the hero's arc in this particular film and who is completely disposable once this plot is done." Occasionally that really works: Killmonger. Mostly it just means a kind of blah character who we forget the moment the credits roll.


Ironwood
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Reply #42 on: August 06, 2018, 05:22:04 AM

It's just so annoying.  We have literal templates for the baddies now and it bugs the crap out of me.  Sure, people talk about Killmonger, but even he was totally fucking retarded.  For my money, the one I 'got' most was fucking Vulture.  And that was mostly because the motivation made sense, the reactions tracked well and Keaton fucking blasted it out the park with the portrayal.  I guess I can't expect anything more from a 90 minute movie, but I'd really, really like to at least see an attempt at some kind of characterisation at some point.  Kingpin got a decent treatment in Daredevil after all.  Can't we try something like that ?  Can't we stop having either cardboard cutouts or Shakespearean rip offs or, worse, just some guy that wants to rule/destroy the world or just be hugely, hugely fucking selfishly stupid for no reason at all ?


Sorry, don't mind me.  I really enjoyed this movie, but I was once again left feeling 'Why are the characters doing that ?' and the answer was 'Oh Yeah, to make money at the box office.'

Blarg.


"Mr Soft Owl has Seen Some Shit." - Sun Tzu
Khaldun
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Reply #43 on: August 06, 2018, 06:36:04 AM

So, once you go slightly realistic, villains who just want to conquer the world start to seem kind of stupid. I can remember a bunch of Doctor Doom plotlines that ultimately make no sense outside of comic-book logic--there was the one where he wanted to sneak a mind-controlling statue into the UN General Assembly so he could get them to elect him emperor of the world. Put that in any movie and it's going to be the equivalent of Thanos' helicopter in Spidey Super-Stories--it's just silly. Anybody who isn't having a psychotic break kind of knows that even if  you had Superman's powers and you forced all the leaders of the world to say you were their king, that's not the same as actually *ruling* the world in a day to day way.

This is actually going to be an interesting challenge when they do attempt Doom, which I think they will. What does he want, besides killing or humiliating Reed Richards? For his country to be the top dog country of the world? That's more in scale and 'realistic' but almost so much so that it's hard to figure out where the villainy is.

I think what they've underdone so far are villains who have 'realistic' goals who have nothing prior to do with the heroes. The MCU so far is just absolutely lousy with antagonists who are directly tied to the heroes via common origins, family connections, or a shared history that precedes their mutual empowerment. I think Ironwood is right that this is one of the good things about the Vulture--he's about the only classic 'bank robber' villain in the MCU so far--a person with basically selfish motivations and very few principles who crosses the hero's path largely by accident. There's a ton of space for them to do more of this kind of thing, and at least a few established Marvel villains who can be fit into this space.

What I can tell they're reluctant to do, and for good reason, is to introduce villains whose motivations are genuinely terrifying or repulsive. Comics have acquired more of these slowly over the years, and some established villains have drifted in this direction, but they have a tendency to change the setting permanently to grimdarkery. Even the Red Skull in this MCU is less the committed Nazi ideologue of the comics and more a man pursuing his personal power at all costs.
Ironwood
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Reply #44 on: August 06, 2018, 07:02:48 AM

Vulture also allowed you to sympathise with him to an extent, a feature I find quite important.  He was a good guy fucked over not only by a bad economy, but by both Government and Economic forces entirely beyond his control.  He had a family and extended family that he genuinely cared for.  His methods were...questionable, of course, but you could at least follow along his rationale and, coupled with the quite clear temperament, it made sense.

In the same vein, Loki is someone who you can also sympathise with and understand, except where you can follow Vultures Logic, Loki goes right off the fucking deep end into moustache twirling of stupid proportions.

I don't really WANT a Villain that's repulsive or terrifying ;  lord knows we have enough of them in real life.  But what I wouldn't mind are more of them that at least make sense.


Goliath made no sense.  Ghost made very little sense.  Hammer-Guy-Who-Was-So-Derivative-I-Don't-Even-Remember-His-Name,-But-He-Was-Bitch-Raper-in-Predators made fuck all sense.

That's all I really wanna say about that.

Also, By God, Evangeline Lilly.  

"Mr Soft Owl has Seen Some Shit." - Sun Tzu
Khaldun
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Reply #45 on: August 06, 2018, 07:17:05 AM

The movie can't really decide if Hank Pym was a serious asshole or not. When you read between the lines, for example, Ghost's father kind of seems like he was a Hydra agent and Pym might well have been justified in freezing him out. Goliath could be read as a nice guy or as a mediocrity who has been manipulating Ghost. Ghost herself is either a scary assassin or a misguided lost girl. Because they don't really want to make these decisions, you can't really get a grip on any of these characters. If it turns out Pym is a genuine asshole who sabotages people who work with him, not only does Ghost actually have a right to seek some kind of vengeance against Pym, but you start to think differently about the motivations and attitude of the Pyms--father and daughter both--and you start to worry about Scott Lang being the next person they throw to the wolves. That undercuts the idea that it's Lang who has to keep improving and that it's Lang who is the screw-up, which is important the the comic tone. But if it turns out Pym is highly principled and the people he cuts out of partnerships are Hydra agents, selfish dicks, corporate scumbags with daddy issues (villain in the first movie), then Ghost and Goliath shouldn't be as sympathetic as they are.

So a lot of what's going on here is just that they can't make up their minds about these characters and their motivations. Which actually IS like Iron Man 2, really.
Rendakor
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Reply #46 on: August 06, 2018, 07:26:09 AM

Who is Goliath? Lawrence Fishburne?

"i can't be a star citizen. they won't even give me a star green card"
Ironwood
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Reply #47 on: August 06, 2018, 07:53:56 AM

The movie can't really decide if Hank Pym was a serious asshole or not.

I like most of what you say, but I'm going to single this one out :  It was hugely clear that Hank is a colossal asshole.  He also proves it time and time again.


Indeed, I have no idea why Lady in the Lake likes him.  Must have been something, but fuck knows what.

Even his daughter fucking hates him in the first movie.



"Mr Soft Owl has Seen Some Shit." - Sun Tzu
Ironwood
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Reply #48 on: August 06, 2018, 07:54:18 AM

Who is Goliath? Lawrence Fishburne?

Yeah.

"Mr Soft Owl has Seen Some Shit." - Sun Tzu
Rendakor
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Reply #49 on: August 06, 2018, 09:44:27 AM

Who is Goliath? Lawrence Fishburne?

Yeah.
Do they call him that in the movie and I just missed it? Or is this knowledge from the comics based on his name/background/whatever? I remember him saying he increased his size at one point, but never caught the name Goliath.

"i can't be a star citizen. they won't even give me a star green card"
Khaldun
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Reply #50 on: August 06, 2018, 10:55:52 AM

Yeah, it's very nearly an Easter Egg. In a way the movie is just reworking something that's true about Pym in the comics, too--he gives his goddamn molecule and tech away to all sorts of people (and has it stolen by others).

They haven't quite gone where the comics went kind of by accident with the character, which is to make him mentally ill in a variety of ways. But this movie maybe edges towards making him something other than a brilliant scientist, for sure. I guess I agree that the film means for you to think of him as an actual asshole, which also explains in some sense why the entire MCU kind of ghosted him (heh heh) after his time as a costumed superhero--SHIELD clearly lost his number when they were doing the Avengers Initiative, Tony Stark has never heard of the guy despite the fact that he ought to be well-known to the Stark family, and so on. But that really ought to shift some of the plot of this movie--rather than struggling with his own tendency to fuck-up, Scott Lang should be coming to recognize that Hank is a dick (maybe that's why Scott doesn't admit he still has the suit) and that Hope is really under daddy's thumb in some unhealthy ways.
Evil Elvis
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Reply #51 on: August 06, 2018, 01:03:49 PM

So, um, this was ok, but it was basically Iron Man 2.  Like, beat for beat Iron Man 2.

I think it actually ripped off the Iron Man: Armor Wars comic story line, where Ghost stole Stark's tech. IM2 was more or less a riff on that story. But yeah....
Ironwood
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Reply #52 on: August 06, 2018, 02:59:16 PM

Who is Goliath? Lawrence Fishburne?

Yeah.
Do they call him that in the movie and I just missed it? Or is this knowledge from the comics based on his name/background/whatever? I remember him saying he increased his size at one point, but never caught the name Goliath.

Yeah, he specifically said he was the partner on the Goliath project and he'd grown to, er, 21 feet.  Or something.


"Mr Soft Owl has Seen Some Shit." - Sun Tzu
Khaldun
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Reply #53 on: August 06, 2018, 03:17:21 PM

Wait, Ghost stole Iron Man's tech in Armor Wars? I thought Ghost was one of the few armored types who had his tech completely from his own research and development? The character was kind of dumb when he was first introduced, but in Thunderbolts I thought he got kind of interesting.
Evil Elvis
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Reply #54 on: August 06, 2018, 04:01:41 PM

Wikipedia tells me I'm wrong, and Spymaster stole his tech.  Ghost was the main villain in a bunch of issues leading up to Armor Wars though (along w/ Spymaster), so I think that's why I was mistaken.
https://comicvine.gamespot.com/iron-man-221-ghost-in-the-machine/4000-28460/

Wikipedia does says they made Ghost the one who stole his tech in two different animated shows though, so there's that.
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