The last time I tried do a Cinema Sunday post about Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, I wrote "Damn! The reviews for Ant Man & the Wasp - Quantumania were just so bad. I mean BAD!"
"So after lunch on Sunday last week, Andrea and I went back home to the Fortress of Ineptitude, booted up Disney+ and watched Black Panther: Wakanda Forever which we somehow missed when it came out last November."
Well, a couple of weeks ago, history sort of repeated itself. Andrea and I were out to Sunday lunch with the intention of seeing The Marvels.
We couldn't bring ourselves to do it.
Andrea and I went back home to the Fortress of Ineptitude, booted up Disney+ and watched Ant Man & the Wasp - Quantumania.
Now before I write about that movie, let me talk about The Marvels.
The bad word on that movie was that it was projected to achieve a record and not a good record either. It was projected The Marvels would get the lowest box office ever for a Marvel movie.
Which it did.
The reviews of the movie itself were not bad. No one was gushing this movie was a great achievement in cinema or anything but the general consensus I was seeing it was a solid effort with sufficient action, humor and heart.
So what was driving those low box office numbers? There was the usual speculation about super hero fatigue in general and tiredness with the Marvel formula in particular.
The successes of this year's Spider Verse and Guardians of the Galaxy movies shows there is still an appetite for this sort of thing if you're giving the people what they want.
Regarding The Marvels, it's hard to get excited about the return of Captain Marvel when we've never really met her in the first place.
Yes, I will explain.
In Captain Marvel, as I wrote on March 12, 2019, Brie Larsen has to bring to life a character who is not fully formed. She spends half the movie with no memory of her past and when she finally collects all her marbles and powers up as the still unnamed Captain Marvel, the movie is over.
For her 2nd appearance in Avengers: Endgame, she shows up for the 1st act, disappears for the rest of the movie until the climatic battle with Thanos as a veritable deux ex machina. We are given very little to be anxious to see her return.
I think the character of Captain Marvel may have been better served with a new Avengers entry that just happened to be mostly female. Ant Man Scott Lang shows up for an Avengers meeting and sees Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Kate Bishop as Hawkeye and Shuri as Black Panther and realizes, "Am I the only dude here?"
Speaking of Ant-Man...
So how was Ant Man & the Wasp - Quantumania?
Yeah, it's a mess.
Jesus, where do I start?
OK, let me start on a positive note: it's always good to see Paul Rudd in almost anything and he still charms as Scott Lang. In the intervening years after the last battle with Thanos, Scott has written a memoir and does seem to be coasting a bit on his fame as an Avenger.
Meanwhile, Hope Van Dyne, the Wasp, is busy running the family business.
Scott's teenage daughter Cassie has become a political activist, helping people displaced by the Blip and she's a bit put off that her father isn't doing more to help people instead of doing bookstore appearances.
Cassie also has science smarts and is working with Hank Pym on a device to contact the Quantum Realm.
Hank's wife, Janet Van Dyne, is super stressed about this and demands the experiment be shut down.
But too late! The science doohickey sucks Scott, Cassie, Hank, Janet and Hope into the Quantum Realm where we now discover Janet's big secret.
There is a friggin' civilization down there that is dominated by a world destroyer known as Kang the Conqueror.
In the intervening YEARS since Janet was rescued from the Quantum Realm, she never thought to mention this to her husband whose jam is researching the Quantum Realm? Really?!?
There's a lot of rushing about in different directions with lots of violence for the purpose of keeping things moving for... reasons.
Basically, the gist is that if Kang escapes the Quantum Realm, he's going to destroy bunches and bunches of worlds through out the multiverse.
If Kang is stuck in the Quantum Realm, he's just gonna oppress, torture and fuck with the people who live there.
Kang is played by Jonathan Majors, the same guy who is He Who Remains in Loki. (A post credit scene is Loki and Moebius discovering Kang variant Victor Timely in the 1890's.)
Major devours the role of Kang like it's a honey baked ham and I hope he enjoyed the meal because apparently some bad real life fuckery Majors is knee deep in is jeopardizing his continued involvement in the Marvel cinematic universe.
Cory Stoll is back. After being lost to the Quantum Realm at the end of the first Ant-Man movie, Darren Cross fell into the clutches of Kang where Cross was transformed into M.O.D.O.K.. Yep, that weird dude from the comics who is 95% head with little bitty arms and legs attached.
William Jackson Harper (yep, Chidi from The Good Place) is Quaz, a telepathic humanoid.
I did not know Bill Murray was in this! He plays a smarmy political leader in the Quantum Realm who sells out Janet and Hank to Kang.
As a companion piece to season 2 of Loki, Ant Man & the Wasp - Quantumania is an OK diversion to watch on TV.
But Andrea and I made the right decision to not spend money tio see this in a theater.
Next week on Cinema Sunday, after a month of movies from the 1990's and this week's film from this year, we go back to see a black and white classic from 1960!
No comments:
Post a Comment