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Seeing the people standing there holding their kids. Then... Explosion. Gone.

 LunarSol wrote:
I felt like we got quite a bit as they were escaping.

Great. I obliviously didn't.

Saw it last night. All I can say is if you've just lost a beloved family pet and you want to see a GotG movie to help cheer yourself up a bit, this is not that movie.

Looks like Seth Rollins is following in the footsteps of Dwayne Johnson, Jonn Cena and Batista:

WWE's Seth Rollins Has Apparently Been Cast In Captain America 4

I am always in favor of more wrestlers in entertainment.

It's not like they are switching fields, after all.

Wrestling has never been other than "entertainment".

True. But I guess it’s a natural shift. Due to the literal impact of the Wrasslin’ it’s something you can only do effectively and regularly for so long.

A shift to movies brings some existing level of acting, a familiarity with long periods of work (practice bouts, training etc) and a commitment to the gimmick etc. So provided nobody is expecting Shakespeare, you’re most of the way there to being easy to work with.

16 WWE Stars That Tried Acting... But Failed - The Thing

It's not as easy a jump from wrestling to acting as one would think.

 Ghaz wrote:
Looks like Seth Rollins is following in the footsteps of Dwayne Johnson, Jonn Cena and Batista:

WWE's Seth Rollins Has Apparently Been Cast In Captain America 4

Serpent Society!

Also really digging the new falcon cap suit from what we can see of it.

Watched Quantumania.

The visuals of the quantum realm were really impressive...
The story was indifferent.

Kang was at his most interesting when he wasn't Kang, as then I could just pretend he had motivations that weren't 'raaaar!'

I honestly have no idea why Kang didn't just take the ball and give Cassie back to Scott, or why they rebels didn't just... let him leave.

But at least they definitely know they aren't prepared for what's coming... (Wait, isn't that Blizzard's cliche?)


And wow the council of kangs was an utter gonzo clownshow. In a 'be more insane than Johnny Depp in Davy Jones' Locker' sort of way.

Ant Man 3

The MCU and I haven't been getting on for a while now and this total template effort was yet another disappointment 3/10

The mcu stuff has always been little more than just moving wallpaper for me.

I don't know enough of the minutiae of the comics to get most of the references (nor do I care to know them). They're flashy, fun, spectacles. If I want depressing realism, I can look out my front door. 95% of what I know about marvel characters came tangentially from friends who WERE huge nerds about them. Some of it osmotically found its way into my head.

But even my meagre comics knowledge has heard of "MODOK" (aka "the floating head guy").

I saw it elsewhere (maybe even here?) and I think I agree the movie might have been better had they not advertised Kang being in it. Set it up as MODAK as the villain in the ads and the beginning, and reveal their boss half/two-thirds thru.

@ Chromedog, oh aye but the hit rate is seemingly falling, out of the newer stuff I've only liked Moon Knight and Spidey 3, and a few of the What If's ?

Maybe I should take my comic reading approach and follow writers over characters but given the MCU is by committee the fall back of "has purty ladies" might be the way, or a What If...1602

 AduroT wrote:
I saw it elsewhere (maybe even here?) and I think I agree the movie might have been better had they not advertised Kang being in it. Set it up as MODAK as the villain in the ads and the beginning, and reveal their boss half/two-thirds thru.

I don't know. There's so little here. The environment is pretty (well, the first half is pretty, the second half is generic sci-fi grey brutalist, which is hopefully a deliberate thematic choice), but...there isn't any story or arc. Just a setup.

Cassie wants her dad to care about something other than their adopted family (he does not)
Hope (when she exists) wants her mom to be more open (she isn't)
Mom (I don't even remember her name) is a basically a camera for scenes the main characters don't personally see and a secondary exposition dump
Hank is a homing beacon for deus ex ants (that don't actually matter, but fill the CGI budget for the final conflict).
Kang wants to not be here, and is ragey about it (for reasons to be revealed later).

Irrelevant rebels are irrelevant. Literally faceless minions minion.
Tune in next time for.... hopefully something better?

 AduroT wrote:
I saw it elsewhere (maybe even here?) and I think I agree the movie might have been better had they not advertised Kang being in it. Set it up as MODAK as the villain in the ads and the beginning, and reveal their boss half/two-thirds thru.

This was my immediate assumption while watching the film. The rebels present MODOK as the big bad in several scenes and Johnathan Majors is introduced in a way that would make it very easy to hide him as the secret bad guy. It feels like that's supposed to be the big shocker just based on how the early scenes are framed. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was not suppposed to know who that guy was playing until he donned the helmet.

The pandemic really messed with the production schedule on these things and shuffled around their order quite a bit. I've heard Quantumania was supposed to be a very early Phase 4 film originally and I suspect it got pushed back to stall for time for theaters to return while the TV content was a lot easier to wrap up. Certainly didn't help that its basically a pure CGI film during a time when the studio was bleeding its VFX team dry.

It takes remarkably little to make both work the other way around. Kang gets his big reveal in Quantumania. Loki goes after "Immortus" instead with the more important reveal being how different Immortus is compared to the conquerer. I'd bet in that instance the big reveal is the Council of Kangs rather than Kang himself, which honestly makes a lot more sense given the focus of Loki was less about time travel and more about variants.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:
And wow the council of kangs was an utter gonzo clownshow. In a 'be more insane than Johnny Depp in Davy Jones' Locker' sort of way.

Yeah... that's Kang for you. He's largely just a giant ball of retcons and plot contrivances. Half of his variants are attempts to make villains of the week important in hindsight and the rest are attempts to add weight to boring stories by making it part of this nebulous but ill defined master plan. Honestly, the closest I have ever gotten to being excited about the character is in Loki and Quantumania and that's solely on the back of Majors's performance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:

Irrelevant rebels are irrelevant. Literally faceless minions minion.
Tune in next time for.... hopefully something better?

FWIW, the plot structure of this film is startlingly similar to the outline of Trevorrow's original script for SW Episode 9. Notably how the finale plays out.

 LunarSol wrote:

Voss wrote:
And wow the council of kangs was an utter gonzo clownshow. In a 'be more insane than Johnny Depp in Davy Jones' Locker' sort of way.

Yeah... that's Kang for you. He's largely just a giant ball of retcons and plot contrivances. Half of his variants are attempts to make villains of the week important in hindsight and the rest are attempts to add weight to boring stories by making it part of this nebulous but ill defined master plan. Honestly, the closest I have ever gotten to being excited about the character is in Loki and Quantumania and that's solely on the back of Majors's performance.

Honestly had I seen this before Loki I would've completely panned Majors as an actor. Though the Loki version was a touch too manic for my taste, there was a fair amount of depth. This one seemed to have a different emotion for every scene, and half the time it didn't make sense or made things worse for himself (particularly as the movie went on). About the only time he was coherent and relatable was the flashback promising the mom that she would be there when Hope opened the door, and casually threatening Scott and Cassie. After that he was just... gone.

Basically every Kang story ever is some variation of him doing something evil, the good guys stopping him, but then him gloating about how making that happen causes future events that one let him TAKE OVER THE WORLD! Not that more than half the time, the latter point is revealed at the start of the next Kang story as a sloppy retcon.

At best, he's just absurd piles of Xanatos gambits. At worst, he's an absurd pile of retcons. I honestly cannot think of a single Kang centric story I really like, but he's notably at the center of several of the all time worst.

 LunarSol wrote:
At best, he's just absurd piles of Xanatos gambits. At worst, he's an absurd pile of retcons. I honestly cannot think of a single Kang centric story I really like, but he's notably at the center of several of the all time worst.

This. Johnathan Majors was fun to watch but the character is just to much everything, everywhere, all at once. The shtick of "but it was I, Kang, the whole time!" gets really tired really fast.

 LunarSol wrote:
Basically every Kang story ever is some variation of him doing something evil, the good guys stopping him, but then him gloating about how making that happen causes future events that one let him TAKE OVER THE WORLD! Not that more than half the time, the latter point is revealed at the start of the next Kang story as a sloppy retcon.

At best, he's just absurd piles of Xanatos gambits. At worst, he's an absurd pile of retcons. I honestly cannot think of a single Kang centric story I really like, but he's notably at the center of several of the all time worst.

Yep, you can pretty much take any amount of crap & attach some variation of Kang to it. Either directly or retroactively.....

I’ve not read much Kang but the couple things I’ve seen them in I enjoyed. Namely Symbiote Spider-Man and Savage Avengers. They just popped up for a last page reveal in the new Avengers run this past week now so see how that plays out.

Finally saw Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania last night on D+. It was no cost beyond my existing subscription and I had absolutely nothing planned for the evening. It still felt like I wasted my time. Hope barely featured so the "and the Wasp" part of the title was misleading. Bill Murry was wasted, Michael Douglas probably didn't know what the hell was going on and Kang failed to make an impression as the new 'big bad'.

Definitely the worst MCU movie. By some margin. And I've seen Iron Man 3 and Thor: Love and Thunder.

Iron Man 3 isn't even the worst Iron Man movie

I liked Quantumania better than Ant Man 2, though neither really sits on a lofty perch. Definitely preferred it to Thor 4, but really we're just arguing over participation ribbons.

MarkNorfolk wrote:
Finally saw Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania last night on D+. It was no cost beyond my existing subscription and I had absolutely nothing planned for the evening. It still felt like I wasted my time. Hope barely featured so the "and the Wasp" part of the title was misleading. Bill Murry was wasted, Michael Douglas probably didn't know what the hell was going on and Kang failed to make an impression as the new 'big bad'.

Douglas didn't have much of a role in the film, he felt more wasted than Murray, who honestly... hasn't done well in cameos in years. His charm and spark burnt out and it feels like he's just going through the motions because 'charming jackass' was his thing for so long.

Used the "has purty lady" fall back to watch New Mutants and yes for a gelfling Ms Taylor-Joy is very easy on the eye, the film sadly is a jumnled mishmash that smacks of re-re-rewrite and editing forkwittery

Was New Mutants MCU? I thought it was part of the, now defunct, Fox X-men films.

 Ahtman wrote:
Was New Mutants MCU? I thought it was part of the, now defunct, Fox X-men films.

It was originally a Fox film, but was released by Disney after their acquisition of Fox.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Mutants_(film)#Disney_acquisition

In January 2020, Disney's official fan club website D23 described the film as a "new addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe", a statement that was quickly picked up by fans and reporters. Soon after, all mentions of the film were removed from the website, while Disney identified this as an error and stated that the film would not be part of the MCU.

If I recall, Disney refused to allow the standard reshoots to make the film work and just wanted it out as cheaply as possible. Then the Dark Phoenix movie was cut and reshot to remove the big, climactic space battle and put the action on a train, so viewers wouldn’t get it confused for Captain Marvel or something.

Marvel Announces ‘Captain America 4’ Retitled as ‘Brave New World’ - The Hollwood Reporter

The release date has been set for May 3, 2024.

Should have renamed it "A Whole New World" with Sam riding a vibranium carpet rather than using his Wakandan wings.