Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-04-27 (Sunday)

On 4/28/25 9:24 AM, Arthur Lipscomb wrote:

I watched
  Ant-Man (4K disc) 2015 movie set in the MCU.  The screenplay was co- written by Edgar Wright, who was also supposed to direct, but he was replaced by Peyton Reed, who would go on to direct all the movies.  Paul Rudd (who also co-wrote the screenplay this one and the sequel) stars as Scott Lang, a small time criminal who gets out of jail and finds himself manipulated by Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), the original Ant-Man into becoming the new Ant-Man so he can team up with Pym's daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) to prevent Corey Stoll from using Pym's shrinking technology.
  Ant-Man and the Wasp (4K disc) 2018 sequel which picks up after the events of "Captain America: Civil War" to find Ant-Man under house arrest.  But thanks to the events of the first movie Scott now has a link with Hank Pym's wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) who is trapped in the Quantum Realm.  Hank and Hope guilt Scott into breaking his house arrest to help them rescue Hope, but first they have to get pass a phase shifting villain (or maybe antihero) named Ghost.
  Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (4K disc) 2023 sequel which picks up after the events of "Avengers: Endgame."  Scott is now a minor celebrity, and thanks to the "blip" his daughter Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton) is now a teenager.  Cassie decides to secretly investigate the quantum realm where Hope lived.  Let's just ignore the fact Hope was there for three decades and apparently no one asked her any questions about how she survived!  Anyway, Cassie sends a signal which allows Kang the Conqueror to kidnap them and bring them into the Quantum Realm. This one is probably the best of the three, but it has one major problem in that it is pretty obvious that there's *no* way Ant-Man defeats Kang! That's just not happening!  On the commentary they talked a lot about Johnathan Majors and setting him up to be the main villain of the franchise going forward.

It is by far the worst of the three. While it's visually "pretty" (it's one of the first movies I watched after I got my 4k OLED TV), I find it abysmal, sharing none of the charm of the first two films.
It was watching this film that convinced me that the MCU had pretty much lost it, post-"Endgame".