I missed where Garret Morris was in the movie, but the Spider-Man reference is during Michael Pena’s story at the end of the movie, about how the Falcon is trying to find Scott. There’s a scene of Falcon on a park bench, asking a woman about super-powered people she knows, and she rattles off a bunch of powers that, taken together, described Spider-Man’s power set.
The Avengers alarm system may be just a tad hypersensitive if any time a bug lands on the roof the alarms go off.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing - they have Falcon go check out the roof every time a moth - or, heaven forbid, a sparrow – lands on the building?
Garrett Morris was the guy in the car that Scott landed in after first miniaturizing and then de-miniaturizing.
They probably detected the electronics in the suit.
Saw it this weekend and I rather enjoyed myself, but I don’ think to the extent that a lot of ya’ll did.
I actually thought that the acting role choices were pretty poor. Rudd and Douglas were great, everyone else…meh. I thought Evangaline Lily was cardboard cutout the whole movie (and her wig was terrible), and I thought that the baddie (who’s name I can’t remember and am too lazy to look up) looked like the movie was trying too hard to make him look bad.
That was actually my biggest complaint overall is that I think the movie tried a bit too hard. It tried too hard for Darren Cross (didn’t he write Sex and the City?) to look like a bad guy, tried a bit too hard to be funny (it felt forced at times to me), tried a bit too hard to scream “This is an Avengers movie! look!”. Each little bit in and of itself wasn’t bad, but combined they were noticeable.
Those minor complaints aside it was a fun movie for what it was. It must have been insanely hard for Paul Rudd and Adam McKay to just sit in Rudds trailer and write this thing in like, a weekend, and have it be this good.
Before you read on we need a moment of silence
for Antony
Ok thanks. Random stupid thing about the movie for me: I’m totally afraid of ants. So watching a movie that involved the little bastards all swarmy and together ::shudder::.
The Spider-man reference was subtle. When someone was talking about all the amazing things that were happening in the world they said, “We have people who can walk up walls”.
It’s a bug that may or may not weigh as much as an adult human. Scott was just unlucky that the pseudoscience was going the other way for him in that scene.
I think the multiple hands on the script thing is definitely a blessing and a curse with this movie. All the hands are REALLY talented… but it showed that it went through so many.
I think there’s some under-developed and/or brushed off elements that may be left over from different takes on the script.
It’s not really too fair to critique a superhero film for not having realistic physics–pretty much all of the heroes, including the unpowered human ones–regularly do things that completely violate physics as we know it on a routine basis. (There is no way the Falcon could generate any significant amount of lift on his tiny folding wings, or Hawkeye can crash through a plate glass window after falling many stories and be uninjured, or Tony Stark could survive the massive g-loads and impacts regardless of how well padded his suit may be.) However, the introdution of the “Pym Particle”–which not only compresses the space between matter but apparently allows the user to shrink into domains below that of fundamental particles–offers a convenient conceit in which the interaction of matter with other matter or spacetime may be mediated. In other words, Pym particles may allow for relative scales between regions to be expanded or compressed (with apparently infinite scaling, at least in the small direction) and perhaps allows gravitational mass and inertial mass to differ, hence why Lang may retain the momentum of a 200 lb man but the weight of an insect.
Given that the next film after Captain America: Civil War is Doctor Strange (already easter egged in the previous Captain America film) who in the comic continuity is a magician but in the (marginally) more grounded cinematic universe will have to have at least some physical explanation for his mystical abilities, the whole “entering the quantum realm” technobabble was probably not just a convenient fiction to explain away the Ant-Man/Pym particle device but may well be a more fundamental explanation for how to get superhumanity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe sufficiently powerful to take on a Titan like Thanos. Though to make a critical observation, Thanos has done a whole lot of pretty much nothing so far; his Chitauri and Sakaaran legions are pretty much like stormtrooper-lite soldiers which exist to give a vague sense of opposition through which the heroes can wade like wet tissue. (When Drax says, “I think of the Sakaarans as paper people,” he’s not breaking the continuity that he doesn’t understand the use of metaphor; he actually thinks they’re made out of paper because they come apart like papier mâché.) Anyway, at some point the Earth-bound Avengers are going to have to be able to travel through space, so having some technomagical Pym particle that allows the wielder to alter the relationship of matter to space and time certainly allows a ready conceit.
Anyway, Ant-Man was more or less the movie I was hoping for, and it did a good job of skewering its own diminished scope compared to the more grandious entries with some pretty clever genre bending set pieces (the scale model of Cross Industies being destroyed, the battle finale on the train set). Aside from a few clunkily inserted hooks for future MCU films (the entire sequence to steal the jamming device from the new Avengers headquarters was totally unnecessary except to introduce Scott Lang into the Avengers) it actually carried pretty well, although some of the secondary characters were criminally underused. (Why have an actress like Judy Greer play a totally humorless side role of no significance whatsoever?)
As for another stand-alone Ant-Man film it would be unnecessary but frankly isn’t very likely at this point. The majority of Phase 3 films exist just to introduce (supposedly) important characters and their backstories, but the only character-specific sequels (Captain America: Civil War and Thor: Ragnarok) both exist more as either group films that happen to be centered around one character or feeders into the ultimate MCU story arc. More than likely they’ll integrate Ant-Man and his powers into future, post-Civil War films just as they will the other newly introduced characters. The bigger trick is coping with the increasingly burgening pantheon of heroes without just dismissing the weaker characters entirely.
Stranger
I was really surprised how much I liked it. It’s not going to get an Oscar but it’s a really fun light hearted heist movie. The theater I saw it in was cracking up. The action was really well done, on par with most MCU films.
I’m surprised how poorly this movie is being marketed. The trailers and ads don’t give you a sense of the comedy at all.
This is what I’m wondering about most of all.
How are they going to fit the entire Avengers team, Ant-Man, Spider man, the Entire Guardians of the Galaxy team, Ms. Marvel and Dr. Strange into just two movies.
I mean, they could cut Spidey since I know he’s important in Civil War and probably not much else, but there is probably a reason they are having a Ms. Marvel, Dr Strange, Inhumans (plus the TV series’) all BEFORE Avengers.
Is this why they announced the writing team for the last two movies this early? To actually allow them 3+ years to write it?
For some reason, the thing that bothered me wasn’t the shrinking, but the growing. I accept that when Lang shrinks, he gets super-dense (or whatever) so that he can act like a bullet. Even though that doesn’t make a lick of sense, I can just roll with it, since I’m seeing a movie called “Ant-Man.” But what bothered me is that, now that you’ve established when someone shrinks they become powerful, when something expands, it has to become less so. You can’t have it both ways! So when a Thomas the Train becomes the size of a real locomotive, it has to feel like it is made out of Styrofoam – no way it can break through a roof and crash into a car.
Honestly Avengers 2 is showing signs that things are getting a little top heavy. It was a Miracle the first Avengers was able to do what it did and look so effortless. It is actually very hard to write a script that services so many characters well.
I thought they did a very good job of showing how dangerous the Pym technology could be in the wrong hands. Everyone did a solid job acting, though I’m tired of Lily in stuff. It just feels like they’re trying to make her happen, and I don’t see it. Stoll had a weird shift from bald greedy executive to bald crazy supervillain (and he acclimated to the shrinking really fast-are we meant to assume he’d used it before?), but it’s a job that lots of people could have done as well or better, and it would have been fun to have Marvel have the first POC supervillain. Not accusing the studio of anything, just making an observation. I was disappointed at no Giant-man reference, but I suppose that can show up later. Also, when Hope kinda lost it with the ants? Surprisingly creepy.
The first Avengers film worked so well because while Loki was the ostensible villain (and Tom Hiddleston did a great job of playing him to the hilt) the real conflict was between the characters themselves, and the payoff was their finally agreeing to put their differences aside (ior in the case of Banner, to accept his role–“That’s my secret; I’m always angry.”) The attempt of the second film to try to capitalize on that felt kind of forced. I mean, they all know what kind of a dick Tony Stark could be, and yet Thor still allows him unfettered and unsupervised access delve into the secrets of Loki’s staff?
Also, how is Tony Stark not on trial for crimes against humanity at this point? Not withstanding his efforts to stop Ultron, he is ultimately responsible for basically destroying two cities, and while the battles were apparently bloodless, there is no practical way that dozens or hundreds of people didn’t die. And the logical problems are just going to get worse the bigger and more significant each film becomes. For that matter, Hank Pym just blew up a bullding after driving a tank through it. How is he not immediately arrested and charged with multiple acts of terrorism?
Even with the acceptance that these films can’t really take place in anything like the real world (aside from the ludicrous physics) it is going to be difficult to manage the merging of so many characters and storylines in a way that will be satisfied in two or three 200 minute films. I’ll be impressed if it doesn’t kind of collapse in on itself at some point, but at least Ant-Man was more or less allowed to be its own story without having to immediately tie into the rest of the narrative.
Stranger
Didn’t Jamie Foxx already get there as Electro?
And Michael Clarke Duncan even earlier as Kingpin?
Neither films were made by Marvel Studios.
On the other hand, are we sure the villain in Ant-Man wasn’t played by Cory Booker?
Quoth Love Rhombus, “it would have been fun to have Marvel have the first POC supervillain.” Not its first POC supervillain or their first POC supervillain, but the.
(I nitpick your nitpick of my nitpick!)