Ant-Man, I Shrunk The Kids. But More Importantly, It's KANGdom Come

After every non life-threatening medical issue ever to start off 2023 and some work travel, we are back baby.  Back on your podcast airwaves, back with season 4, and Nick Nack is indeed back to theater for some movies.  We ended last season with a Marvel movie so now we have to start this one with, you guessed it, another Marvel and specifically MCU movie.  A ton of fun movies came out at the end of 2022, but I had to talk about the start of Phase 5 with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.  Ant-Man has been the franchise of fun in the MCU up to this point.  Does this third entry continue that trend?  Does Jonathan Majors bring something special for the future as the next long-standing big bad?  Find out all of that and more on this episode of Nick Nack Goes To The Movies.  Make sure to let us know your take on this and the rest of the MCU up to this point on social at either @NickNackMovies or @NickNack_IC on Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, and yes, especially Letterboxd, where you can find my entire rankings list for the MCU.

Transcript

Nick Nack Goes to the Movies Pod S4E1

-Intro/Jingle

-Well folks, we are back with a new episode for a new year and season of Nick Nack Goes to the Movies.  It was a shorter season last and a late start to this one, but we are back better than ever.  Every medical nonsense issue of the past and being a literal stone factory could only keep me down for so long.  So now, it is time to talk some movies now that we are back on the airwaves and back to the theaters.  Now which of these movies post Black Panther 2 are we talking about.  While I had a blast with both M3gan and Violent Night, both which are getting sequels, I actually am talking about one of the first big name pictures of 2023.  

-That is of course Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, one of the longest titled movies of the MCU that we will be mostly referring to from here on out as Ant-Man 3.  Look there have been over 30 movies, a handful of shows and specials, and we are now in the beginning of Phase 5.  The cries are out there for quantity over quality.  Some out there may even be saying you could just stop after Endgame.  But if you know anything about me, I am a big completionist for franchises, and I have a big soft spot for both super hero and horror movies.  While this is the former of course, you may want to know if you should take a watch to continue your MCU journey, and this is the starting point, so let’s find out together.

-Actors

-Ant-Man has his cast of characters was introduced way back in the Summer of 2015 at the end of Phase 2.  This was kind of the start of more lesser-known properties with both Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man, both of which could be coming closer to the end of their solo franchise with most of these topping out at 3.  But while some of the characters are lesser know, the stars have been here with this franchise including the likes of Paul Rudd and Michael Douglas.  Almost all of the main cast is here and back including Evangeline Lilly and a thankfully more pronounced role for Michelle Pfeiffer after her brief roles in Ant-Man and the Wasp and Avengers: Endgame.  

-One of the bigger changes was aging up and changing the actor behind Ant-Man’s daughter for the second time.  She was played by one actor for the first two solo movies, she was aged up for a brief Endgame role, and she was changed once again for this movie for a more prominent role.  Now it is Kathryn Newton who you may remember from the much better than it had any right to be Pokemon live-action Detective Pikachu movie.

-With this being the third movie, you have had some staple characters and actors in this franchise.  Now in Thor’s case, they killed of a ton of them including the Warriors Three, his dad, and his mom.  Here they just kind of decided one of the more interesting things of the parental struggle would kind of be used more for grandparents and not include Judy Greer or Bobby Cannavale anymore as the other set of parents.  They also got rid of his friend group, even if one of them is a voice actor in another role, I can’t be the only one who missed out on Michael Pena as one of the more fun parts of the whole franchise.

-It’s funny how this movie goes hard in the beginning with a ton of relations and characters of the past but fails to include others.  Like having the Baskin Robbins manager and moment from the first one and including Randall Park and Paul Rudd hanging out doing magic tricks, there was some super fun attention to detail stuff, but also some of it was missing.  

-We will get to the not as hidden surprise as they did for Black Panther 2, but before that, Jonathan Majors.

-Jonathan Majors came to my attention with the very weird and very good HBO Show Lovecraft Country.  That was all I needed, he had a brief stint tease role in Loki, but like the rest of you, I really wanted to see how he would do as a variant of Kang in this one who could fully come out to play and be seen.  And let me tell you, if you are looking for one reason to watch this movie, it is him.  Jonathan Majors as every Kang out there who looks to be the new big bad of the MCU for a while, he steals the show and you could and should watch this movie for him alone.

-This is also a note to myself and to you, I really have to get around to seeing both him and Chadwick Boseman in Da 5 Bloods on Netflix.

-Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

- So off to the beginning, anytime we see Kang, I am enthralled, and we knew there was eventually gonna be a flashback to the time Pfeiffer spend in the Quantum realm.  Getting her out was such a plot point in the second one, even with Lawrence Fishburne and Hannah John-Kamen who were important with that stuff also not being back here, that we knew she was gonna have a bigger role in this movie.  And at times she takes a guiding role where Douglas had that in the first two, also she is a parallel to the whole notion of raising your kids, which has been a staple part of these movies, which once again, weird that they took two of those parent characters out of this movie.  

-Look, I did not know what I wanted out of an Ant-Man movie, I enjoyed the first movie, it was good and fun, but did not blow the doors off like other Marvel movies.  The second was close to the first one, maybe a little worse in some ways and a little better in other ways.  But the tone was good for me.  This movie at times kind of felt a bit lost to me.  The Kang intro was fun and these flashbacks early on seemed like the exciting add to the franchise for newer things to not just be a rehash of the first ones.  But I was really digging this movie early on with the attention to detail of bringing back Randall Park for a short scene with Scott who has been through a lot post fighting the law and the Baskin Robbins stuff with the initial owner.  You really expected something with some of the other mainstays from the franchise, and it is just not there in its entirety.

-While all 3 movies relate to family, this one puts the grandparents in the role of helping raise Rudd’s daughter.  There is something fun about his newfound life, and that of all the main immediate family members.  Now this new actor daughter is kind of the inciting accident of wanting to do something to save people with her life, and her dad does not help, and Lilly does not get that same treatment from her mom who was gone for so long, and like all my horror watches, dealing with some sort of trauma she did not want to share.  But all these things combined into family drama, and a forced getting things off your chest as everyone gets dragged back into this Quantum realm that we have only scratched the surface on so far.

-Here is where the movie loses a bit of steam for me.  We have been talking so much about the Multiverse and the buildup of that being the next looming threat.  But while this is a whole civilization, just much smaller, in the grand scheme of things, like Paul Rudd even says in the movie early on, it just does not matter to him and his family.  We wanted to learn stuff about this quantum realm, but by the end of it, did it really matter if we will never be back here.  This feels no more than a vehicle to introduce Kang, well a more intimidating version over the Loki one, which is important.

-There are all sorts of local people and wacky characters, the cantina scene is not unlike what we are used to in Star Wars, I think people really wished this movie was more akin to that and it just was not that.  Like I said, I just don’t think they will matter in the long run and this eventual victory did not change things that we will notice in the MCU more likely than not. 

-The groups are split up in two so they can have collective character growth by making Rudd spend time with his daughter and the Douglas, Pfeifer, Lilly family are together too.  The pairings are good and make sense, and we love that Pfeifer has so much more to do in this movie.  We meet Bill Murray in one as he is an aristocrat type that has sided with Kang who doesn’t add much to the overall story, he did more in his Zombieland role, also short but let us have the fun that is Bill Murray in a movie.  The other Ant-Man group meets this resistance group that once again, I never really vibed with.  Apparently, David Dastmalchian was the voice of that blob creature where there was some terrible weird humor dialogue.  Never would have realized that, which is tough because he is great in the first two and in general he is good and can be funny, the script or whatever was not here for him.  Remember how good he was in The Suicide Squad as Polka Dot Man?  Gosh what a good movie!  And while it is not pertinent, I am once again thinking it all, I wish we could get the full DCEU that was initially laid out with the other Snyder Justice League movies, The Deathstroke Batman movie with Afleck, and the Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad.  It all feels impossible now and we will see what James Gunn does with all this, but pour one out for that.  

-So now comes the big surprise.  MODOK is always going to be a weird character, not that that is super strange, this is an over the topic comic book franchise where weird thing can and probably do happen all the time being translated to media for the common enough viewer and still being comic accurate to a degree for those hardcore fans.  There was probably always the question of how this zany creature would adapt to the MCU.  It could have gone great like Groot, or it could have gone terrible like Galactus in the second Fantastic Four live-action movie from 2007, that went so wrong so quickly and so badly.

-There has been some MODOK stuff recently enough, the adult animated Hulu show among other things and when we first saw the mechanical more robot version, I was kind of digging it.  That looked at least close to comic accurate.  Not that that is the most important thing to me, my comic reading is very limited in scope, pretty much being The Walking Dead, but having a recognition to comic stuff is a cool touch while shaping it to the MCU look and feel would be the balance.  

-But under that MODOK metal mask, was this super weird version of Corey Stoll.  Once again, an actor I really like.  Now they had to make him different from the first movie but still somewhat the same.  But what we got under the mask, was a stretched-out version of the character we remember but nothing else.  The CGI looks like something out of a bad 90’s or early 2000’s movie.  Spawn, The Mummy sequel, the Spy Kids movies, the 2003 Ang Lee hulk movie, among other things.  But there was this one villain from either the Spy Kids, or Shark Boy and Lava Girl, or something like that.  Like this guy looks like a big old mirror zoomed in version of his face was put in-front of us, but the texture got messed up along the way, it is wayyy too soft.  Maybe this will grow on me overtime, but I am kind of doubting that.

-Once we do meet Kang and try and think less about the MODOK face textures, he is actually super cool and menacing.  Beating up his own guys, Rudd, and his daughter to get the thing he wants.  Gosh Majors is so good in this movie and in this role.  And this does lead to one of the cooler visual parts of the whole movie and it has a really interesting idea.

-The Schrödinger’s Cat principle, I promise this science thought experiment is relevant to this episode, is in short that a cat in a box has equal probability chance to be alive or dead.  Rick & Morty did an episode on this, no surprise with the whole Sci-Fi vibe of that show.  And Ant-Man 3 did one here as well.  Rudd has to fix this time mechanic that Pfeiffer broke earlier on, and this leads us to this visually cool probability zone thing.  These variants of him continue to pop up, including a Baskin Robins one, and there was something cool about this Sci-fi element and eventually having all of the Rudd’s, look at us, look at us, all going on the same version and goal to save his daughter, and the eventual reuniting of him and Lilly in that zone, equally cool to see how they both handle these probability variations.  Easily the coolest set piece moment of this movie.

-Now after this, the ants that got pulled into the Quantum verse have a cool moment of being hyper evolved and helping in the end, and it gives Michael Douglas a bit more to do as well controlling them well in this eventual final fight.  Now this big CGI fight for the Quantum realm, once again, it does not feel like it really this battle matters, or honestly at times, even feel earned.  Where there was a big fight for Asgard in Ragnarok, it felt like it was earned, here it was just a bunch of stuff happening that did not always make sense or even matter.  Sorry, that is just how I feel.

-When Kang gets involved in the fight, stuff is cool and crazy with his power on display, and I actually like the massive smart ants overpowering him and ruining his day a bit.  It just took a weird set-piece battle to get us to that point.  And somewhere along the way MODOK redeems himself in a way that also does not feel super earned and more of a strange about face.  There could have been time in this movie for these more pronounced character things, but it was all taken up but this uninteresting Quantum verse stuff.  I get the idea of Cassie making her dad be a hero again and not just living off on his new fame, but it all just feels wrong and missing something.

-Now once the day seems saved and everyone comes back to the normal world, Kang actually almost gets out.  And this fight is amazing.  A one on one battle between him and Rudd.  And yes, Majors is once again really cool, and he kind of kicks the crap out of Rudd and it is a super cool scene.  And I honestly would have been curious what this movie would have looked like if he died saving all of reality and stranding Kang here again.  Now that is not what we got.

-Instead Lilly comes back to save the day, and they almost defeat Kang by accident, and in the process lock themselves away in this strange realm.  Which feels like a problem, until their smart daughter easily makes a portal back for them to come back to.  Now imagine if she did this and Kang won?  That would have been brutal and honestly a little funny.

-There is a circle story of Scott once again doing his normal routine, now all the family is closer after this, which this movie could have started off with the end of the last one, but I did like the end of this making it all seem like it is fine but foreshadowing the whole problem bound to come up in the future MCU.  You would hope he tells others in the Avenger group, it is all super different with new members, but you kind of expect it to be a thing with the post credit from Shang-Chi so you can kind of see who is in the group these days.

-And yes, the post credit scenes, one was really just a Loki teaser, but the other one, oh man!  Seeing all of the Kang’s and the big problem they will totally cause, that was super exciting, especially knowing what Jonathan Majors can bring.  It will be cool to see all of the different ones he will play and be able to flex his acting chops with the variants.  And while we still wait to see who play Mr. Fantastic, I did like Krasinsky in Multiverse of Madness, whoever they pick, his portal entrance in that movie was the same all the Kang’s used in the post credit scene, which tentatively leads to the fact that they are related.  So to this up and down movie with pieces I liked, and some other ones, let’s look at the old Letterboxd rating with some subtle adjustments with it being a MCU project.

-Letterboxd ratings:

- And while the rating is important on its own, this is the 31st movie in the franchise and there has to be some notion of ranking all of these with my Letterboxd list.  So, the first two Ant-Man movies sit right around 2/3rds down the list, just on the cusp of 3.5 stars.

- Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania– 3 Stars

-So, I gave this one a little bit under the other two, it is at the top of the 3-star ones, just under the first Thor and Incredible Hulk movies, both which I like much more than others do with either interesting villains or just they are different and fun compared to some other MCU things that feel a bit too similar.  I just have it right before Age of Ultron, which has some fun stuff, but some of the dialogue and the Ultron point in the plot just have aged poorly with some much better solo MCU hero movies.  So, it is at 23rd and if you want to see the full list, make sure to take a look at it on Letterboxd to see all my lists and what I have been watching these days.  And the 3 stars for this one pretty much relate to Jonathan Majors as Kang.  He is cool, menacing, and a chemistry vacuum.  There are some cool visuals, great fight choreography when it involves Kang, and the Ant-Man fam, even with missing some key pieces of it, have some good character development with the family coming closer angle.  

-The problem really stems from the Quantum Realm in the grand scheme of things really just does not matter.  And I think the Corey Stoll MODOK thing was half good at best.  I said it before, but the in-machine costume is good, once the mask is removed, Corey Stoll looks like something out of Spy Kids, which is not a compliment, some of that CGI is abysmal and makes half-scorpion The Rock seem, well not good, but it feels like that The Mummy Returns thing is comparable to this.  I thought it was Spy Kids, but upon research, while that has some bad stuff, MODOK actually looks like the villain in Sharkboy and Lavagirl played by George Lopez, Mr. Electric, all the way back in 2005.  It is a weird stretched face that looks like someone put a big magnifying glass over his face, and that is it.  This and the Heimdall son CGI in Thor Love and Thunder, some of the later MCU stuff has gotten a bit weak, sloppy, or bad.

-wrap/call to action

-So, is this the second coming of MCU greatness or something that will live in the annuls of the history of this record-breaking illustrious franchise?  Probably not no.  The villain was really good and the hope is Jonathan Majors as all these Kang variants gives us something unique and fun for the future.  This movie is not perfect, only a few are really really good overall, but this movie is fine.  Not amazing, not terrible, you could totally watch it again.  It is a coming out party for Majors, and there is some fine Paul Rudd stuff along the way with his family; there were just some weird choices that at times made this feel like a generic weird sci-fi movie and not as much of a true Ant-Man movie in the vein of the other ones.  Another cool villain is trapped and introduced in a less than serious movie sadly.  It is just not as bad or painful of a watch as Thor Love & Thunder.

-But what did you think of the latest Ant-Man movie and the kick off of Phase 5?  Did it do it for you, partly do it for you, or just disappoint?  Let us know on social at either @NickNackMovies or @NickNack_IC on Twitter, Instagram, Letterboxd, Tik Tok and so many more.  Well that is all the time we have today or tonight or whatever you are listening to this.  So cheers, and as always, until next time cinephiles.