Ant-Man and the Wasp (a movie review post)

 

MCU #20

You can see my original review here. It's still completely valid, though I am going to say some other things in this one, things that may seem counter to my original review, though they really are not.

This movie is a lot of fun, whatever else may be said about it.

That said...

I think this movie is a little... sloppy. As I've said before (including my previous review of this), I love Walton Goggins, but his character, Sonny Burch, feels superfluous at best. That whole plotline seems to be there just to provide a reason for the car chase. Which is a lot of fun, but...
And there's the whole truth serum bit...
    "If it walk like duck and talk like duck... it's truth serum."
Or something to that effect.
And that scene is hilarious and I love it, but...
The whole Sonny Burch thread could have been eliminated and nothing that matters would have been lost from the movie. Unless the "boss" he referred to is going to be important, but that hardly seems to be significant enough for what feels more like filler, at this point.

Of course, they may have been going for a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World vibe with everyone after the shrunken office building, but they really needed more people after the building if that's what they were trying to do.

Things I love in the movie:

-- The truth serum joke.

-- The Hot Wheels car carrying case.
--Giant-Man
--Michael Pena

The thing is, there isn't anything I don't like about the movie. It's a lot of fun, and I enjoy it. I enjoyed it no less this time than the last time I saw it. But, looking at it from a storytelling viewpoint, the plot could have used some tightening.

Or maybe not. I mean, if it's fun and people enjoy it, what's the problem?
Yes, you could say that I have internal conflict over this stuff. 

It's a good movie, but I think it could have been better. I guess that's what I'm saying.

I guess not all of the sequels can be better than their predecessors.

Well...
Let's get it ranked.

1. Captain America: Civil War

2. The Avengers
3. Captain America: The First Avenger

4. Avengers: Infinity War

5. Spider-Man: Homecoming
6. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
7. Iron Man

8. Black Panther

9. Doctor Strange

10. Ant-Man

11. Thor: Ragnarok
12. Thor: The Dark World
13. Thor

14. Guardians of the Galaxy

15. Ant-Man and the Wasp

16. Avengers: Age of Ultron

17. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
18. Iron Man 3
19. Iron Man 2
20. Incredible Hulk (Edward Norton can't use Pym particles. It would cause a singularity and destroy the Earth.)

Ant-Man (a movie review post)

 

MCU #12

You can go back and see my original review here.

My original review of Ant-Man covered most of the points I would make here, so let me do a slight re-cap and see what else I can dig into.

Corey Stoll. Still not a fan. When it comes down to it, I think it's because he comes off as nothing more than a petulant child, and it's really difficult to take that seriously. He's like the angry five-year-old who has found a gun but doesn't really know what he's doing with it when he starts shooting rather than stomping his feet. Of course, now I'm thinking of Republicans and their constant foot stomping and waving around of guns. Well, from that perspective, maybe Stoll wasn't too far off in his presentation. It's difficult to take those people seriously, but they're causing real harm.

Still love Michael Pena. He's so great.
Still love the scene with the Falcon. If I'm choosing specific scenes from Marvel movies, this is probably one of my top three (along with the elevator scene from Winter Soldier and the Mjolnir scene from Ultron).

I remember being very annoyed with the character of Paxton when the movie came out, but I've softened on that and think the character works. Bobby Cannavale is really great.

From my current standpoint, that Hank Pym arranged for Scott Lang to break into his house has got to be one of the best plot ideas in any of the Marvel movies. Pym and his sitting in front of his bank of monitors is very spider-like, and the whole thing demonstrates how brilliant Pym is supposed to be. Not even daddy-Stark could replicate his formula, after all.

At the moment, the Ant-Man movies are a little on the outer rim of the MCU, kind of like Spider-Man. He's a character moving in and out of what's going on but, mostly, doing his own thing. So far. I think we're going to see some changes to that with the next movie, but that's just speculation on my part.

Oh, the usage of the ants is quite extraordinary. 
Also, for those who don't know, Ant-Man (and Wasp) were part of the original Avengers in the comics (Captain America was NOT). My understanding is that Ant-Man was being worked on as part of phase one of the MCU originally, but they decided to shelve him because they didn't think audiences were quite ready for it. They decided to focus on Cap, Thor, and Iron Man. I think this was a good call. I suppose it's also how we end up with Lang as Ant-Man rather than Pym. It's a good change. I like what they've done. Ant-Man is a strong movie. So let's look at the rankings.

The rankings!

1. The Avengers
2. Captain America: The First Avenger
3. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
4. Iron Man

5. Ant-Man
6. Thor: The Dark World
7. Thor

8. Guardians of the Galaxy

9. Avengers: Age of Ultron
10. Iron Man 3
11. Iron Man 2
12. Incredible Hulk (Norton caused Hulk to be beat by an ant.)

Ant-Man and the Wasp (a movie review post)

It's probably fair to say that Ant-Man is the least of the Marvel movies.
But this isn't all about size.

Seriously, though...

As far as Marvel movies go, the Ant-Man movies are a bit of lighthearted fun. Which is not to say that they don't deal with some serious topics, but humor is rather more infused in these movies than in the rest of the offerings from Marvel. Even more so than the Guardians movies.

This is not a bad thing. Really, it means that Marvel provides something for everyone.

Except a rom-com. You could probably make a case for the first Ant-Man filling the rom-com slot, but it's a heist movie and doesn't really hit all the rom-com notes. Man, now, I think Marvel needs to do a rom-com. Maybe with Dazzler once they get the X-Men back from Fox.
Yeah, I'm into this idea...
But I digress.

This movie has Boyd Crowder!!! Um, I mean, Walton Goggins! Have I mentioned before that I love Walton Goggins? Well, I do. Because Justified, the best TV show ever.
Um, where was I...?

In Marvel, actions have consequences, which is one of the best things about the MCU so far (something that Warner Brothers/DC still haven't picked up on), and we pick up with Scott Lang suffering the consequences of getting caught while helping Captain America in Civil War, which also serves as an ongoing conflict throughout the movie: When do you do something because it's the right thing to do even when it's breaking the law? A good thing to be thinking about in our current political climate, I think.

Mostly, though, the movie is a lot of good fun, full of people stealing things back and forth. While the good guys try to rescue Janet Van Dyne from the quantum realm.

The cast, as continues to be the case in all of the Marvel movies, is perfect and amazing. I love Paul Rudd and Michael Pena, and they are great together in these movies, though there's not quite as much of them together in this one as the last one. Did I mention Walton Goggins? WALTON GOGGINS! Randall Park is a lot of fun, too.

Possibly, actually, the weakest casting Marvel has had so far was Corey Stoll in the first Ant-Man movie, which has nothing to do with this one, but it's the only bit of weak casting I can think of in the whole franchise so far.

Anyway...

The movie is a lot of fun. It's probably not quite as good as the first one, but I can't say that with certainty. If you liked the first one, there's no reason you shouldn't like this one and, if you haven't seen the first one, you don't quite need to to see this one, though I would say you should anyway, just for the FUN of it. Oh, and, yes, there is a bit of lead up and crossover with Infinity War, which is not quite a spoiler, but it's something to be aware of if you're into the Avengers but dissed on Ant-Man. It's not like you'll need to see this one before the next Avengers movie, but, again, you probably should. Just for the fun of it.

To Infinity (War) and Beyond! (more thoughts)

Okay, actually, not beyond. We're gonna stop right here and talk some more about this movie.

Or, more precisely, we're going to talk about stupid things people keep saying.
And, yes, I'm not going to be wary of spoilers, so you've had all the warning you're going to get.

Look, I understand if you're upset by all the deaths.You should be upset by all the deaths. Death is upsetting. BUT!
1. They're fictional characters.
2. There's another movie coming. Oh, wait, you didn't realize this was just the first part of two movies? Well...

• A. Where have you been?
• B. This is just the first movie of two.
• C. Even if you didn't know that, the end-credit scene should have clued you in that something was going on.
• D. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?

In regards to all the death and the general bleakness of the ending, I have seen people protesting that it's a violation of the genre.

Wait... What?

What genre? The super hero genre? Because if that's what you're saying, you're obviously not very familiar with the actual super hero genre and only know about super heroes from movies. Comics have dark endings (and dark stories) all the time. ALL THE TIME! This movie doesn't stand out as an exception in that respect. Now, if you're saying it doesn't have the typical happy Hollywood ending, well, that's true. But, then, Marvel hasn't been doing anything the typical Hollywood way from the beginning. If they had been, we would never have arrived at this movie juncture. In fact, we would never have had Iron Man, either. Or Thor. And certainly not Ant-Man. Hollywood wisdom also said Black Panther was a movie that would never succeed. There's been a push for a Black Panther movie since the 90s and, even now, with all of the other Marvel successes, "Hollywood" believed the movie wouldn't succeed.

But as for genres, make sure you know what you're talking about before you open your mouth.

Speaking of genres, though, can we even call "super heroes" a genre anymore? Like sci-fi, I think it has to be more like a broad category in which you can write other genres of stories. Marvel's movies alone should show that. Hulk is a monster movie. Ant-Man is a heist flick. Captain America is World War II movie. None of them are really what you would call "super hero" films; they just happen to have super heroes in them. It's like Asimov said about sci-fi: It's just a framework to allow you to tell whatever kind of story you want to tell, whatever kind of genre you want to use.

So, no, Infinity War is no violation of genre.

But, yes, it has a sad, even depressing, ending. Heroes die. Because, you know what? The good guys don't always win. Our current political situation, with a wannabe dictator as president, should show you that evil sometimes, even frequently, wins. So, yeah, the bad guy wins. Thanos wins. And the movie ends with him enjoying his victory. You think Trump (#fakepresident) didn't enjoy his victory? You think he didn't go around pissing (figuratively, I hope, though with him it's hard to tell) in every corner of the White House?

I do understand that people are not used to movies where the antagonist wins and we haven't had a movie like this since, probably, The Empire Strikes Back, but people are acting as if this is it. The end of the story. The end of the franchise. No more movies from Marvel. BAM! All your heroes are dead, Suckers! So suck on that! It's the fucking end of the world!

Really?

I mean, really?

Haven't you learned from watching the... how many Marvel movies are there now? 18? Haven't you learned that they're all connected and that there are more movies coming? Wait and see what happens. IT'S NOT THE END OF THE STORY!

geez

And speaking of Thanos, I've heard people complain about the attempt to make Thanos a sympathetic character... What the fuck? What attempt to make Thanos a sympathetic character? Because he cried when he killed Gamora? That makes him sympathetic? Because he cried?

No! It makes him an asshole.

Let's look at this a moment:

Thanos lives on Titan, and Titan is on the verge of environmental collapse. Thanos tries warning everyone and even has a solution: put half of the population to death. Needless to say, the population doesn't like that idea and, evidently, they never figure out anything better. The planet ends up a lifeless husk with Thanos as its only survivor with a, "Well, I told you so," attitude about it. That's as constructive as he gets over the situation.
Except for then deciding that he'll put his "extinguish half the population" plan into effect on the entire universe.
NONE of this makes Thanos a sympathetic character. It makes him a conceited, small-minded asshole who can't think outside of his own box for other, more workable, solutions.

Then!
To get the Soul Gem, he has to sacrifice the thing he loves, which he happened to have with him: Gamora. The one thing Thanos loves. So he has an option, the Soul Gem or Gamora. Let's put this another way:
He can choose the good of himself by throwing Gamora in the pit and taking the Gem, or he can choose the good of Gamora by letting her live. That would be actual love, by the way, choosing the good of someone else over yourself. But what Thanos shows is that what he really loves above all is himself, so he throws Gamora in the pit. Asshole. There's nothing sympathetic in that action, either. And I just have to say, if that scene causes you to feel sympathy for Thanos, you need to do some soul-searching of your own.

There is nothing in this movie to make Thanos any kind of sympathetic character. He shows that he himself has no empathy or sympathy for anyone else, and I'm not really sure how anyone could arrive at the conclusion that anything shown about him was meant to do anything other than show just what a monster he is.

All of that said, I don't care whether you liked the movie or not, just have a valid reason for it, even if that valid reason is your emotional reaction to, say, Spider-Man dying and blowing away in the end (man, that one hurt, especially since there were little piece of Peter-ash all over Tony afterward). What you should not do is try to rationalize your reason by making shit up. It's fine for you to say, "I didn't like it. They killed everyone." And it's also fine for the rest of us to tell you you're crazy.

The Martian (a movie review post)

The Martian is not the movie I expected it to be. Not that I can tell you what I expected it to be because I tend to avoid too much about movies that I want to see, these days. I suppose I expected it to be more of a story that focused on Mark Watney, himself, and the struggle of being stranded alone on a planet, like Cast Away but on Mars. Rather, it's more like Apollo 13. It's not a bad thing, just not the thing I expected.

The next thing I would say is that the movie is better than it is. What I mean by that is that it a very enjoyable movie despite the rather numerous issues it has. I'm going to chalk the issues up to Ridley Scott who has a name that means more than it should. Seriously, if you actually look at his track record, he hasn't made a whole lot of actually good movies. I say that as someone who loves Blade Runner. Basically, Scott went for flash over substance in a number of places in The Martian. It's not stuff you'll probably notice when you're watching the movie, but you probably don't want to think too hard about it after the fact.

What you do want to see the movie for -- or, I should say, who you want to see the movie for -- is Matt Damon. Damon carries the movie with an ease that appears effortless. Despite the lack of focus in the movie (remember, blaming Ridley) on the actual stranded nature of Watney, Damon allows the desperation to seep through in key scenes. But the thing that will catch you about the movie and Damon's performance is the humor and, really, good-natured-ness of the character. It's a nice contrast to his character in Interstellar, last year's space drama with both him and Jessica Chastain. Best line: "I'm going to have to science the shit out of this."

Sean Bean is also really good. It's almost worth the whole movie for the scene with him and the "Council of Elrond" and each of them arguing over whom they're going to be. So funny.

The rest of the cast was mostly as you'd expect. All good but no one pushed beyond the kind of thing they normally do. I enjoyed seeing Michael Pena again so soon after Ant-Man, but, honestly, he was under used. Not that he should have had more screen time, but his potential was wasted. As was Kristen Wiig's. Seriously, why was she even in that role? All she did was stand around and look concerned. Anyone could have done that role so why put someone with Wiig's talent in it and not use that talent?

The other standout performance was by Donald Glover. He was great as the absent-minded science guy... astrophysicist? I forget, actually, what kind of science he did, but he was great. Dumping the coffee into the wire mesh trashcan was classic, but it was the look on his face that made it work.

Basically, The Martian is a good and enjoyable movie. You should see it. I'd even watch it again, mostly for Damon's performance; however, it didn't make me at all interested in the book and, bottom line, that's actually how I judge the success of any kind of adaptation: Does it make me want to take a look at the source material? If, after having seen it, I am completely uninterested in the source material, the adaptation has failed on some level to engage me. In the end, The Martian is a "happy" movie. It's feel-good, and there's nothing wrong with that. I don't know if the book is the same, but the movie leaves me with the feeling that there's nothing deeper to explore. Again, I blame it on Ridley.

Ant-Man (a movie review post)

Decades ago, Isaac Asimov asserted that science fiction wasn't so much as its own genre as it was a vehicle for other genres. As there was much dissent, he set out to write a sci-fi detective novel which became the first of his robot novels, The Caves of Steel. It seems that Marvel has set out to prove the same thing about the super hero genre. Sure, there's the pure super hero stuff like The Avengers, but we've also seen a war movie, an espionage movie, and, now, a heist movie, among others.

So, yeah, Ant-Man is structured as a heist movie, which is pretty clever. It's not a straight heist, though, there's a little, I don't know, rom-com(?) added in. You know, whatever kind of movie it is where the guy who has messed up and alienated his family has to put it back together again. At any rate, as Scott Lang says in the movie, "It's not just a heist."

Speaking of Scott Lang, Lang was one of my few worries about the movie going into it. As I've noted in previous reviews of Marvel movies (especially Iron Man 3), I do understand that the universe of the Marvel movies is not the same as the one for the comics, but I couldn't understand why they weren't having Hank Pym be Ant-Man when he was going to be in the movie. It was baffling. BUT! I think they did an excellent job of threading the Ant-Man origin story into what they did in the movie. Actually, I really like what they did with that. It adds some extra layers to the movie than just doing an "origin story."

Also speaking of Scott Lang, Paul Rudd was great. Okay, so, I already really like Paul Rudd, but he was great in this role. This is another case of Marvel finding an actor who would really own the part and make it his, because that's what Rudd did. However, it was Michael Pena as Luis who almost stole the show. He was brilliant, and the voice-over stuff they did with him was hilarious.

Michael Douglas and Evangeline Lily were both very good. Douglas probably about what you'd expect since he's always really solid. Lily was better than I expected because my main exposure to her has been in the horrible Hobbit movies, and, though those weren't her fault, her inclusion in those has been a sore point. I was also glad to see Wood Harris in the movie. His performance wasn't extraordinary or anything, but I like him as an actor, so it was good to see him in a high profile movie.

The only weak link was Corey Stoll who came off more as an over enthusiastic used car salesman trying to sell you a bad car than as a real villain. Fortunately, the movie didn't focus so much on him.

Also, the scene with the Falcon was awesome. I love Anthony Mackie in that role, so I was glad they included him. "It's really important to me that Cap never finds out about this."

Basically, this is another really solid Marvel movie and, while I would quite put it as high as Captain America or Iron Man on quality, it's close. Guardians of the Galaxy close. I would have gone right back in to watch it again if I could have.