where I Watched it: Disney Plus
English Audio description? Provided By: Deluxe
Narrated By: Jedidiah Barton
Marvel has been getting a little raked over the coals ever since we snapped back to reality. if you don’t move too far, you can find someone complaining about the state of Marvel films. is it a fair comparison? Debatable. I think two of my least favorite films have been released in the last few years, with Black Widow and Eternals being very underwhelming. The latter took an interesting villain in Taskmaster and somehow made them boring, but thought gender flipping them would make up the difference. The other is just a hot mess, a ton of new cast thrown together in a film that needs tons of exposition, and has large scale battles that apparently went unnoticed by every other Marvel hero.
But, while Shang Chi could have been better, it was a solid start. Dr Strange and the Multiverse Of Madness is deeply underappreciated, despite a strong Elisabeth Olsen performance and direction from Sam Raimi. And while Thor Love and Thunder wasn’t Ragnarok, it still had the humor of Ragnarok that just was oddly channeled through an emotional journey about loss. Then, we experienced loss in its most tangible form when the MCU said goodbye to Black Panther, and gave its leading ladies some amazing material to work with.I don’t think Marvel is broken, i just think at some point, they were bound to make films people didn’t like.
Here enters the third Ant man film, still directed by not Edgar Wright, and still pretty true to form despite the absence of Michael Pena, Bobby Cannavale, and Judy Greer. this one is all about the Quantum Realm, and it doesn’t waste time. While it feels like its just getting started, it almost immediately pivots into a new three act structure that has our main cast sucked into the Quantum Realm. I do believe Ant man was here, though the film will act like only Janet was here. Speaking of Scott Lang, Cassie is now grown up, and she’s got a costume of her own. This whole “everyone is a hero” thing makes it confusing when everyone is just a variation on Ant man or Wasp. They need new names.
But, while the Quantum Realm is nuts, including a sequence about probabilities that worked rather well, it also has the emo version of Kang (Jonathan Majors) who feels like he’s in an entirely different film. Everyone else is in on the joke, including new additions played by William Jackson Harper and Bill Murray. Everyone gets the joke but majors, who feels like he’s in a very different film. many people cited Majors as the only thing they liked, he was the standout of things I didn’t like. because, the film already creates a wacky villain that feels so appropriate here, and that’s MODOK.
Really, Kang is unnecessary, because he never feeels like a Loki or Thanos level villain, but rather the fact that he can be fought by this motley insect crew makes it mor likely he’ll be less compelling than Thanos in the future. He’s already been defeated by Loki, now Ant-Man? I’m not concerned.
I think the reveal of who MODOK is, as well as his presence in the film was enough. If there’s one film he works in, it’s this batty CG nonsense. I wanted more MODOK, not less, and if he had been the lone villain, the film might have been better.
It’s a weird film, and it doesn’t quite answer all the questions it poses. it also doesn’t feel like you could watch this without having seen anything else. While I’m a fan of the franchise, especially Paul Rudd as Scott Lang, and more so even the Baskin Robbins loving Scott Lang, this one falls short of the first two. It’s not nearly as awful as many have suggested, because it still has that same charm as the first two, but it does lack the finesse.
On the audio description scale, since everything is basically a visual effect, and things don’t exist in reality, I could always use more definition of this world, and these characters. I had a hard time figuring out which wasp was doing what, and I almost would have avoided using Wasp as a name at all. It became a problem in Spider-Man no Way Home, and here it would have made more sense to stick with Janet/Hope/Cassie/
Decide for yourself. I think it’s worth a look. If you love MODOK then you owe it to yourself. If not, and you have no idea who I’m talking about, watch teh series on hulu first, and then decide if you want more. I’d do a whole series on him, or film franchise. he’s endlessly entertaining, possibly for all the wrong reasons.
Final Grade: B-
