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Ant-Man
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This week, Perry is joined by video editor and writer Eddie Thomson of Why We Watch to discuss 2015's Ant-Man! We discuss the long road this movie took to getting made, from Edgar Wright's long involvement in the project, switching over to Adam McKay and eventually landing in the hands of Peyton Reed. We also talk about how the heist film aspect helps set this apart from the rest of the MCU and why not every movie needs to end in some world-ending threat.
Visit Why We Watch for more on Eddie's work.
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Transcript
00:00:13
Speaker
Here's
Art Museum Reflections
00:00:14
Speaker
the deal. Just give me the facts. Just the facts. Only the facts. Breathe. Focus. Keep it simple. No, no, no. No doubt. No doubt. Okay. So I'm at this art museum with my cousin Ignacio, right? And there was this like abstract expressionism exhibit. But you know me, I'm more like a neo-cubic kind of guy, right? But there was this one Rothko that was sublime, bro. Oh my God. Luis.
00:00:33
Speaker
Okay, sorry, sorry. You know, I just get excited and stuff. But anyway, anyway, an Ignacio tells me, yo, I met this crazy fine writer chick at the spot last night. Like, fine, fine. Crazy stupid fine. And he goes up to the bartender and goes, look at the girl I'm with. You know what I'm saying? She's crazy stupid fine, right? The bartenders are all like...
00:00:49
Speaker
Yeah, crazy, stupid, fine. So this writer chick tells Ignacio, yo, I'm like a boss in the world of guerilla journalism, and I got mad connects with the peeps behind the curtains, you know what I'm saying? Ignacio's like, for real? And she's like, yeah. You know what? I can't tell you who my contact is because he works with the Avengers.
00:01:05
Speaker
Oh, no. Yeah, and this dude sounds like a badass, man. Like, he comes up to him and says, no, I'm looking for this dude who's new I've seen, who's like flashing his fresh attack, who's got, like, bomb moves, right? Who you got? She's like, well, we got everything nowadays. We got a guy who jumps. We got a guy who swings. We got a guy who crawls up the walls. You got to be more specific. And he's like, I'm looking for a guy that shrinks.
00:01:25
Speaker
And I'm like, damn, I got all nervous because I keep mad secrets for you, bro. So I ask you not so. Is it the badass or the stupefied writer chance to tell you to tell me because I'm tight with that man that he's looking for? And? What'd he say? He said yes.
00:01:48
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. I'm your host, Perry Constantine, and welcoming the new guest today, and that is Edward Thompson. Ed, how you doing today? Doing
Meet Edwards Thompson: Movie Aficionado
00:01:57
Speaker
pretty good. So what I like to do with new guests is I like to have you guys tell people a little bit about yourself. So tell us about yourself. Who are you? What do you do? All that fun stuff. Okay, so let's see. I have been reviewing movies since
00:02:17
Speaker
2010, just as a hobby, just as a way to kind of keep busy during times like, well, especially like during lockdown. I do a lot of stuff related to comic book movies and animation. And the other thing over lockdown is I started learning video editing, playing around with that, making a YouTube channel and just kind of just seeing where that all goes.
00:02:43
Speaker
Okay, and do you write for any specific websites or is it just kind of like your own blog type thing? My own website, whywewatch.com, a dash between each word. Okay, cool. And what's the video editing like? Tell me a little bit about what you do with video editing. Yeah, so what I figured out since I usually do movie reviews is I did try to do like filming, like the YouTube reviews.
00:03:13
Speaker
but I'm not great on camera. What I figured out that I could do instead is just kind of re-edit movies and make like fake trailers usually. And sometimes along with that, sometimes fake posters. Okay. So what kind of fake trailers have you made so far? Let's see off top of my head. Well, I've made that many, but off top of my head I did. Cause they're usually like those ones where it's a style trailer where you take something and just use
00:03:42
Speaker
different trailers presentation. So I've done The Devil's Advocate in the style of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I've done two Hitman trailers, one for each of the remakes that actually try to be true to the actual games, like actually stealthy and all that stuff. One for Iron Man 3, trying to do something to one of the songs in it.
00:04:12
Speaker
and also a horror style one for Birds of Prey.
Creative Ventures: Fake Trailers and Re-edits
00:04:18
Speaker
Okay, very cool. So is it just mainly the fake trailers? Have you done like any alternate versions of movies? Like, you know, stuff like, there's like alternate cuts of like Superman II, there have been alternate cuts of Iron Man III is another one and a lot of fan edits and that kind of stuff. Have you done anything, any big scale projects like that or no?
00:04:41
Speaker
but way too advanced for me, because of how much you have to do audio editing, which I do not have the training in, well actually I'll have the training in just about any of it, but especially now. And how long have you been doing the YouTube channel so far now? Let's see, the YouTube channel started a little bit before lockdown. So 2019, oh, also I did a Spiderman trailer
00:05:10
Speaker
Okay. I did The Amazing Spider-Man in the style of Homecoming. That's actually the first one I did. Oh, okay. Nice, nice. So yeah, so you've been doing it for about a little over two years then, I guess. Two-ish. Very, very on and off. Right, right. A couple of fake commercials too, just like kind of whatever I can come up with. Okay, cool. And is that also why we watch on YouTube? So that if anybody wants to look you up,
00:05:36
Speaker
I believe so. I'll probably email you a bunch of that stuff. Okay, yeah, well, we'll have the correct links for all that stuff in the show
Unpacking Ant-Man: Cast and MCU Ties
00:05:44
Speaker
notes then. But today, the movie you wanted to talk about today was Ant-Man from 2015 directed by Peyton Reed, starring of course Paul Rudd as Scott Lang and
00:05:57
Speaker
Evangeline Lilly as Hope Van Dyne, Corey Stahl as Darren Cross, Yellow Jacket, Michael Douglas as Hank Pym, and I think probably everyone's favorite character, Michael Pena as Luis, and also Cameo from Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson as the Falcon.
00:06:16
Speaker
So before we jump into the movie, and I know you've read some of the comics before, we talked about the Nick Spencer run, but were you very familiar with comics before the MCU? What was kind of like your gateway into superheroes and comics and all that stuff? Yeah, so my gateway was definitely a little bit of the movies as a kid, you know, like the
00:06:41
Speaker
early Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, some X-Men, but mainly those. Then what really kicked things off was the MCU itself, The Dark Knight. And then it was a comic book club at New Pulse, which really got me going, got me to really read the books quite a bit. And that's really where it started. What's that comic book club you said?
00:07:07
Speaker
Yeah, comic books united at New Paulson. What's that? Is that a podcast? That a community? Oh no, that's, oh yeah, it's my college's comic book club. Oh, okay, okay, okay, cool. All right. Yeah, I just wanted to see what we were talking about there. Okay, so what were kind of the comics that you first got into then? Was it just like MCU type stuff, stuff that related to like Iron Man and the Avengers and or Spider-Man and all that kind of stuff? Or what was your first like comic reading experience like?
00:07:38
Speaker
Yeah, it was definitely anything on both Marvel and DC side related to movie, just any, you know, characters I was really familiar with. And then from there, it's like slowly expanded. It was, you know, a little bit of like, let's see, Spider-Woman here and there, Ms. Marvel here and there, like, you know, years ago. Okay, so the show, yeah. Was that the Carol Danvers, Ms. Marvel, or the Kamala Khan one? Kamala.
00:08:07
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Yeah. Just wanted to make sure what timeframe we're talking because I think Carol Danvers was still Ms. Marvel around the time the movies, the MCU movies started. I think that was like right around the time when she was right before she made the switch. I think it was like around 2010 was when she finally made the switch over to Captain Marvel. Yeah, that sounds right. And then because my reading, this would have been around 20, 2014 when I really like started reading stuff.
00:08:36
Speaker
Okay, okay. Yeah, that sounds about right for Kamala then. Okay. And so, like I said, we're talking about Ant-Man today. Did you have much familiarity with Ant-Man before this movie came out? No, I probably started reading the Nick Spencer run. Almost definitely, yeah.
00:08:58
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. After the movie came out. Yeah yeah the run came out after the movie I believe. I think that was one of the impetus is because I think when the movie actually came out Scott Lang was still dead in the comics so then once the movie became popular then they decided to bring him back in the comics and bring him back as Ant-Man.
00:09:18
Speaker
But my familiar, well, of course I remember, you know, reading stories with Hank Pym as the original Ant-Man, but I'd always found Scott Link to be a really, a really interesting character when he popped up in different times throughout my comic reading. He was, he wasn't an Avenger proper for a long time. He was just kind of like on the edges. We had done recently,
00:09:43
Speaker
An episode for my Patreon show where we talked about the Avengers under siege story arc. He appears in that. He appeared in a really great issue with Hawkeye where, if you remember the scene in Civil War where Hawkeye shoots an arrow with Ant-Man on it, that comes from this old Avengers issue. And that was Scott Lang in that issue too.
00:10:06
Speaker
And he was a member of Heroes for Hire, he was a member of Fantastic Four, and I think it was during
00:10:14
Speaker
Jeff Johns' run in the early 2000s. That's when he joined the Avengers team fairly briefly before he ended up getting killed off. But yeah, I always found him to be a really cool character. So when they said they were gonna do an Ant-Man movie, I was kind of surprised to find out that they were going to go with the Scott Lang version instead of Hank Pym or Eric O'Grady, who was Ant-Man in the comics at the time. So I was really pleased that they had kept him and that they had,
00:10:43
Speaker
they'd found a way to work Hank into it as well. Yeah. Let me think.
00:10:55
Speaker
Yeah, I'm actually really glad they went with Scott too. They went with the cast they did. And I mean, the big thing with why they probably went with Scott is because of the controversies surrounding Pym, which I'm sure we'll get into. Yeah, so that was, and that's something that's been largely blown out of proportion, I think, just over the years. I mean, it's not defending it or anything like that, but it was,
00:11:25
Speaker
So for anyone who doesn't know, there was a famous issue of the Avengers when Hank was having a nervous breakdown and Jan was talking to him and he like kind of reacts and he gets angry and he reacts and he accidentally smacks her. Like it wasn't in it, but it's been played up in the years since that he was beating her like continuously when that wasn't really what had happened.
00:11:51
Speaker
He had gone to prison, not because of that, obviously, but because of other reasons. And he had reformed and made amends to that. But it became such a key part of his character in the consciousness. And so much so that when Mark Miller did the Ultimates, he went full on and made Hank a spousal abuser, which was just disgusting depiction of it.
00:12:20
Speaker
And I understand why they wanted to avoid Hank Pym for that reason, but I think they'd found, I'm glad they didn't avoid him completely. And I'm glad that they had, they'd found a way to, you know, just completely ignore that aspect of him. Yeah. Well, yeah. And like, cause I read, it was like an editorial problem with how it was, how it was drawn, how it was depicted and all that stuff. So it was one of those things. Okay. Again, not defending the action, but just,
00:12:50
Speaker
how, how it happened. Right. Yeah, it wasn't actually supposed to be like that. It just ended up being and then and then how they had to run with it. Yeah, it was probably once it once, you know, it was drawn, you know, the best thing I could do. Yeah, that was a it was a really weird time. There's a whole there's a whole story. If anyone's interested in it, you just look up.
00:13:11
Speaker
history of Hank Pym. And I think it was Jim Shooter was the was the writer or the editor at the time, and there'd been a lot of miscommunication at the time, and the artists had drawn it a certain way. And then I think they're on deadline, like you were saying, and they just had to kind of stick with it type of thing. Yeah.
00:13:27
Speaker
See, it was a messy time in the Avengers comics. But yeah, bringing in Scott Lang was definitely a good choice. And I like that they had worked Hank into, because this is one of the first movies that kind of establishes
00:13:47
Speaker
a bigger superhero universe before Iron Man, but after Captain America. So, because when we first were presented with the MCU, we basically kind of had this idea that, well, we had Iron Man, we had Captain America in World War II, and then we had decades of nothing. And then all of a sudden in 2008, we've got Iron Man. But what I liked that this movie did is it kind of filled in some of those gaps. Like, no, there were other superheroes before Iron Man in that time period.
00:14:17
Speaker
Yeah. And they did that really well with a person on a technical level with the de-aging of Michael Douglas and all that. Yeah. Yeah. The de-aging of Michael Douglas, the aging up of... Oh crap. The actress who plays Peggy Carter. I'm blanking on her name. Haley Atwell. Haley Atwell. Thank you. Thank you. I hate when that happens.
00:14:40
Speaker
Wait, was that makeup or was that also visual? That was, that was also, I believe that was also CGI. That was the, so they, they aged her up, not as extreme as they did in winter soldier, obviously, but they did age her up a little bit in that. Yeah. And, um, Michael Douglas, uh, they basically, they based his appearance in that scene. Um, cause it takes place in 1989. So they based it on how he looked in, uh, in wall street. Yeah. Yeah.
Ant-Man's Unique Blend: Heist Meets Superhero
00:15:06
Speaker
Yeah. I actually did a paper on, uh, on wall street. Oh, really? Oh, cool.
00:15:10
Speaker
Yeah, and how it created a bunch of stockbrokers, which was not intended. Yeah, it was talking about people completely missing the point of that movie. Yeah. And so some other things they did in this. This is also one of the first MCU movies, one of the really first MCU movies that I think really leaned into the idea of
00:15:32
Speaker
superhero, not so much as a genre in and of itself, but as kind of a trope you put on other genres. So in that case, so in this case, it was the whole conceit of this is it's basically a heist movie, but it's got superhero elements worked into it. And I thought that was a really clever thing to do and a really good way to make use of Scott's background and to kind of set the movie apart from the other MCU stuff. Because if you're going with
00:16:00
Speaker
Hank Pym, and he's developing this technology, he's got this suit, then he has his own company, he's got dealings with Shield. You can very easily run into the problem of him being kind of like a second rate Iron Man. And I think by going with Scott and going with the heist angle, that was another reason why they had chosen Scott instead, because it really allowed them to find a way to do something that the MCU hadn't really seen before.
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah. Although also Winter Soldier has a similar thing where it was very much what do they call it, the 70s spy thriller. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. There were other movies that did it before. I think by the time Ant-Man came around, though, I think this is when it, at least in my mind, this is when it really kind of cemented what Marvel was doing with their movies. And it's like, oh, OK, now they're taking these concepts, but they're putting them on other type of genre films.
00:16:56
Speaker
Okay, yeah, solidifying it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, and you know, this is, it's a movie that it had some, it took a while to get off the ground. I think you had mentioned that you had some knowledge of what happened behind the scenes with Edgar Wright and all that. Yeah, I didn't want to read too much into it because I wanted to keep some stuff
00:17:22
Speaker
I just don't want to overwhelm myself with what was going on behind the scenes. What do you know about what happened with Edgar Wright and his initial? I understand that Edgar Wright had this pitch. It was supposed to come out a while ago. They were developing it back around the time of the first Iron Man movie.
00:17:49
Speaker
And it was even announced at 2011 Comic Con. And they had, I think they had talked about how they were gonna be using all three, I think they were gonna be using all three Ant-Man, but I mean, I wasn't exactly sure, 100%. I don't know about that, but it does line up with like one piece of something I heard where they did want, you know, like whoever Ant-Man was, maybe it was Scott, maybe it was Eric to,
00:18:19
Speaker
very much be like, just like unlikable, like more unlikable than just simply a burglar. Right. So that was probably Eric, thanks. He was the Ant-Man at the time in the comics, unless they were trying to merge aspects of Eric and Scott's character together. But they had, the movie, it had taken a while. And I think because I'm not sure 100%, but I believe that when they were originally starting to develop it,
00:18:46
Speaker
The hope was that they would have an Ant-Man movie to kind of be a companion.
00:18:51
Speaker
with all these other pre-Avengers movies like Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, so that they would be able to work Ant-Man into the Avengers as well. That obviously didn't end up happening. And this movie didn't come out until after Age of Ultron. Which is a real shame because I wish Hank had been a part of Ultron. Yeah,
Creative Clashes: Edgar Wright's Departure
00:19:12
Speaker
there was. And I think there was, I had mentioned this before way back when we talked about Age of Ultron on the show, but there was,
00:19:21
Speaker
Some description I had read before Age of Ultron came out that said that
00:19:28
Speaker
Ultron, the idea for Ultron, it came from like this old Defense Department proposal project or something that Tony had found and he dusted off. And then when they said that, you know, Hank, Michael Douglas was gonna be playing an older Hank Pym who had worked with S.H.I.E.L.D. and all that, my thought was, oh, that's how they're gonna connect it. Hank Pym had done this Ultron proposal and that was either rejected or buried for whatever reason, or maybe it wasn't feasible at the time, and then,
00:19:55
Speaker
in the Age of Ultron movie, Tony finds it, he dusts it off. And there's even a slight brief mention of it in Age of Ultron because when they're first talking about it,
00:20:07
Speaker
Tony says, you know, I think this could be the key to creating Ultron. And then Bruce says, well, I thought Ultron was just a fantasy, right? There was no lead up to that at all. And there's no explanation further about what, so I think that was something that was maybe left over from a previous script or something. Or just cut because that movie was kind of chopped to hell.
00:20:29
Speaker
Right, right. Or just cut out because there were a lot of issues behind the scenes with that. And so, yeah, I was also a little bit disappointed with that, that they didn't find some way to work Hank Pym into Ultron's creation, because even if you don't have him directly involved with the creation of Ultron, there's still a lot of ways that you can have some connection to him involved in it. Yeah. And my thing is, I think it would be better to not put it all on Tony.
00:20:54
Speaker
Mm hmm. Because that's kind of I think the blame should have been shared. That would have helped with his continued character development and this kind of evolution, the evolution, just that cycle he was going through for his entire. All of it. It also would have helped to tie Hank in a little bit more closely with his animosity towards the Starks, because he's got a lot of animosity towards the Starks in this movie and
00:21:23
Speaker
And, you know, Scott says the famous line in civil war, you know, Hank Pym always said, never trust a Stark and all that kind of stuff. So I think if you would have some connection with Ultron as well in there and like, you know, maybe Hank decided, maybe Hank decided that Ultron was too dangerous or something and that's why he buried it. And then Tony kind of resurrected it. So I think there's a lot of stuff you could have done that could have tied them a little bit more closely together. Yeah. Especially since they were only, they were one movie apart, one to three months apart, all that.
00:21:55
Speaker
Right, and they're so closely tied in another way with, you know, Scott going into the Avengers compound and meeting up with Falcon who's just recently joined the Avengers at the end of Age of Ultron 2. Yeah, so I'm not sure exactly 100% what happened with Edgar Wright, but there's, in 2014, they jointly announced that there were differences in their vision of the film.
00:22:25
Speaker
And Wright said, I wanted to make a Marvel movie, but I don't think they really wanted to make an Edgar Wright movie. And also they wanted to have a little bit more control over the writing process where Wright is very heavily involved in the writing of all the movies that he does. And he said, suddenly becoming a director for hire on it, you're sort of less emotionally invested and you start to wonder why you're there recently.
00:22:54
Speaker
And surprisingly, Adam McKay was also involved in talks to possibly take over at 1.2, which would have been really interesting, especially in light of the films he's done more recently, like The Big Short and Vice, and now Don't Look Up. Yeah. I forgot, even though I just saw it. Did he have a final story or writing credit or anything on this? I'm not sure. I think he probably has some, like,
00:23:25
Speaker
maybe some writing credit because he was involved in so many drafts of it. So just based on, you know, writer's WGA rules and all that, I think he might have a credit, but I'm not sure how much of his writing actually made it into the final product.
00:23:41
Speaker
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if it was mostly some kind of overall because from what I read so far, it was the speculation on how far they want to take Scott or Eric. Yeah. So the writing credits, we've got Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam McKay and Paul Rudd. So I think
00:24:04
Speaker
And the story was by Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish. So I think they probably had done a lot of, they probably use a lot of the basics that Wright had used, and then they just, you know, changed a lot of stuff. Yeah, with Paul Rudd probably doing a lot of rewriting on it. And McKay also reworked parts of the script as well, it says here. And looks like he,
00:24:30
Speaker
Peyton Reed also had pretty big input on the script as well once he finally came in. And McKay had done a lot of his writing, it looks like with Paul Rudd. And he said, McKay said that Rudd was really great with dialogue, which explains a lot of the dialogue that ends up in this movie because the dialogue
Behind the Comedy: Paul Rudd's Script Influence
00:24:48
Speaker
is just, it's probably next to James Gunn's movies, I think the dialogue in Ant-Man is probably some of the best in the whole MCU.
00:24:59
Speaker
It makes sense also with, you know, obviously very improv heavy or at least most likely. Right, yeah. So yeah, the whole Edgar Wright thing. I know a lot of people at the time were really kind of annoyed with Marvel at that. I think I'm of two minds of it myself. On the one hand,
00:25:23
Speaker
I think about Shane Black on Iron Man 3 and how it became much more of a Shane Black movie and much less of an Iron Man movie in the end. And I think if Edgar Wright had stayed on, I wonder if it would have been more of a Edgar Wright movie and less of an Ant-Man movie, if that might've been the end result. I'm not sure, do you have any ideas, any thoughts on that? Yeah, I think it would have been
00:25:51
Speaker
I think it would have been pretty well split if he had been able to stay on for the most part. And what it is, is the other thing is, I guess he didn't want to have it tied in as little as possible. He really wanted a standalone feature, it seems. Yeah, which is also, if you're playing in the MCU sandbox, you kind of have to play in the sandbox.
00:26:20
Speaker
Yeah. And he started work like pre-MCU, so he had to kind of get dropped into all this. Yeah, that's a good point. And in fact, even in 2000, I found this out where I'm looking at this. Howard Stern was actually in talks with Marvel at one point to purchase the film rights, which would have been, thank God that didn't happen, because I don't know how that would have ended up. Probably not great. Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:46
Speaker
So what do you think of the cast in this movie? What are some of the standouts, do you think? I think, well, obviously we mentioned Rod and
Character Spotlight: Yellow Jacket's Motivations
00:26:59
Speaker
Douglas. I think the standout for me is actually Corey Stoll, Yellow Jacket.
00:27:08
Speaker
Yeah, he was another, he was another interesting choice when they said that Yellow Jacket was going to be the film villain because they had Yellow Jacket in the comics is obviously just another one of Hank Pym's identities, but that was the identity when he had, you know, quote unquote abused his wife. That was when he'd had his mental breakdown. So he had always associated that with
00:27:29
Speaker
a very dark time in his life, although he eventually came around to it and kind of reconciled the two. And Corey Stoll, Darren Cross was another, was more of a Scott Lang villain, although he wasn't a costume super villain, although his cousin ends up becoming a costume super villain.
00:27:48
Speaker
So they had, I thought it was, it was a really clever way to work in the yellow jacket idea and to tie it into the movie and kind of combine it with this villain from Scott Lang's past in the comics. Yeah. And I think because they definitely run the risk of doing, and I think you mentioned this, the idea of like a copycat villain, like an iron monger, let's see, a kill monger type of thing. And I think they,
00:28:18
Speaker
did the best they could with avoiding that with him, at least in every way possible, or maybe not, or at least Corey Stoll's performance, I think elevate to pass that. Right. I think having him be a
00:28:35
Speaker
a foil to Hank who initially comes on as Hank's protege. And then he eventually, you know, turns against him. I thought that was a really, that was another way that it kind of helped to, it was kind of an inversion of the Tony-Stain relationship in that way because, you know, Stain was kind of more of the mentor role and Tony was more of the protege role. So they kind of flipped that in this one instead. And it looks like so much of Stole's motivation isn't
00:29:04
Speaker
is just that validation from Hank, which I thought was really interesting. Plus there's how the particles are affecting him with him going the route of both Hank and the comics to a certain extent, all that. Right. I never really realized that until you just said that now, but I just picked up on it, that point when
00:29:33
Speaker
when Scott asks Hank why he doesn't just wear the suit himself and Hank says that, you know, the suit takes a toll on you. And so I think that was kind of a hint to kind of like the psychological problems that Hank had in the comics. Yeah. That's a weird thing, Hal.
00:29:52
Speaker
because they haven't really addressed it since. Is Scott gonna have to deal with that at some point? Yeah, I'm wondering if, well, I mean, we do have another movie coming out soon. We've got Quantum Mania coming out, I think next year, if I'm not mistaken. Sound right. Yeah. So it'll be interesting if they play with that at all. What did you think of Evangeline Lilly as Hope? Because I thought this
Hope and the Wasp: Development and Controversies
00:30:18
Speaker
was an interesting way to work in the Wasp aspect
00:30:22
Speaker
where you had Hank and Jan as the precursors and then they created this new character Hope for the movie. Yeah, I like her. Actually, I liked her more in this one than the next one. Yeah, I thought she was really good. I liked the training stuff.
00:30:48
Speaker
Like, that was definitely the best thing they could do with Hank is creating hope, reworking everything with him. So yeah, just to start. But that was all really well done. Yeah, I thought it was a good way to work in the WASP aspect because, you know, Jan is such a big part of the Avengers in the comics, which
00:31:11
Speaker
Hope hasn't gotten into that point yet, but, and now that Evangeline Lilly has some anti-vax stuff going on, who knows if she actually will be, but. Probably, Latisha Ryan, I think is still working on Black Panther. Yeah, so far, I mean, but yeah, we'll see how things shake out with that, but whatever the case, I thought she was really good in this movie,
00:31:40
Speaker
And I love the post-credit stinger when we see her, when Hank shows her the new Wasp outfit. And I love when they announced that the next one will be Ant-Man and the Wasp. So I thought, I loved all that. I know a lot of people don't like the sequel. I enjoyed it. It definitely isn't as good as this one though. I definitely would say that. Yeah, I just have a weird thing with it where it's just kind of like,
00:32:06
Speaker
because of how they have to tie it into civil war. Like my main thing with it, I remember I wrote, was there just so mean to Scott? Yeah, yeah, that was, I mean, at some point I understood it to a certain extent, but I think they kind of leaned in a little bit too heavy to that. Oh, I will say one of the things I liked in this movie is,
00:32:31
Speaker
Scott's acknowledgement that he kind of knows why he's actually here, right? So when he tells Hope, you know, when Hope's all upset about that she doesn't get to wear the suit and Scott tells her, don't you realize why they got me? It's because I'm expendable and you're not. And I kind of like that he knows that and he acknowledges that as opposed to, and it
00:32:55
Speaker
as opposed to it being kind of like something that Hank is trying to hide from him or somewhere, or Hank is trying to pretty it up. And it's like, they're both clear on what this relationship is, where they stand, why Scott's here. And I thought that was, it was a really nice touch to the movie. It was, and I guess like Hank really kind of balances it out with being pretty,
00:33:17
Speaker
No, nurturing is the right word. Michael Douglas says nurturing. No, definitely not. You got the idea? No, and I liked him in it. Michael Douglas, when they said that he was cast as Hank Pam, it was one of those picks that I wasn't really sure what to make of it, although now having to see how it worked out, I can't think of anyone who would have been able to do a better job in that role. Yeah, I thought it was good too. Rod, when I initially heard about that,
00:33:47
Speaker
It was, and how much of a comedy that was my, like, this is kind of like my weird turning point with the MCU where it starts to feel it goes a little up and down, like on paper. It's like, they're, they're really going for like kind of my initial kind of thing with this movie is it feels like it's very like safe on paper. You know, Paul Rudd, Paul Rudd in a comedy. Yeah. And that, I was, I liked the casting idea of Paul Rudd when I heard it. I thought,
00:34:16
Speaker
he'd make a good choice because Scott has always been a little bit more laid back than Hank in the comics. So I thought that was a nice choice. And then it did, you're right, on paper, it seemed like they would be leaning a lot more heavily into the comedy aspect. I mean, they had an actor famous for comedies in it. They had a director who'd also mostly done comedies, but I was really surprised at how well
00:34:45
Speaker
and the dramatic aspects of it. And, you know, he's come out and doing some other things since that he's got to stretch his dramatic muscles a little bit more. And it's been really, really fun to watch that. I don't think I've seen any of those. Do you have any recommendations? There was, it was, I think it was a Netflix TV show he did where it was like, it was like a cloning type thing. It was, I can't remember the name. I heard of that one. Living With Yourself, I think it was called. That was really good. Okay. Yeah. I've heard of that one. Yeah.
00:35:14
Speaker
I think that's what it was called. But yeah, he was great in that. And I love the relationship with his family in it. I thought you've got his ex-wife played amazingly by Judy Greer, but also you've got Bobby Cannavale playing the stepfather, Paxton. And I thought that was another, I really liked what they did with Paxton because
00:35:42
Speaker
At the beginning, it seems like they're going the stereotypical route of the new husband's an asshole type of thing. And he's just going to give the hero a tough time.
00:35:57
Speaker
both the ex-wife and the stepfather are gonna kind of conspire to make things, to make, to, you know, poison Scott's relationship with his daughter. And they don't do that. And I was really happy that they didn't go that route. You know, especially at the end when we see that, you know, Paxton is, you know, he's really,
00:36:23
Speaker
you know, him and Scott have friction, but you know, at the end of the day, he really does care about Cassie and he does, you know, to a certain extent, he cares about Scott as well. And I thought that was, I like that. I like that they had a really mature take on that kind of family dynamic. And they continue that to the second one. Oh, that is the one thing I noted is like, it is all in good faith, although I do think it does take
00:36:53
Speaker
a little bit of time to warm up to Scott. I think he, there is a little bit of probably just better if he's in prison for Cassie, you know, for the family, like the faith that's looking out. Right, right. But I do, I like that they give him a good faith motivation for it, right? It's not just, he's not doing this just because I don't want you near my family type of thing. He's like, he's doing it because he's like, I really,
00:37:21
Speaker
you know, and you understand that too, with him being a cop, there's a certain amount of institutionalization mindset that kind of sets in. So, you know, ex-con cop, there's obviously gonna be, and I think that they show the growth that he has over the movie, I think is handled really well. Yeah, and movie in general is pretty good. I mean, they don't go into it too much, but it's good with the, like the depiction of prison,
00:37:49
Speaker
rehabilitation type stuff, which is actually one of my weird things when I was watching it, taking notes that the one person who doesn't get redeemed, who I think could have gotten some form of minor redemption was actually a cross. Okay, okay. Why do you say that?
00:38:10
Speaker
I just think because I saw that his motivation wasn't really the money. So much of it was like the validation from Hank. So much of it was mental illness. And then the way he goes out is just especially gruesome. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. There was some opportunities there. But also you mentioned the aspects of prison and rehabilitation and
00:38:36
Speaker
That's a good point, too. The movie does show that, you know, in our society, rehabilitating yourself is not that easy. Like, the system does a really, it does all it can to make it as hard as possible to encourage you to go back to crime. And I thought that was, I mean, like, he gets fired from Baskin Robbins because he is the next cop. I thought,
00:39:00
Speaker
Because of like corporate policy, not even the manager really wanted to do it. Right, exactly. Yeah, the manager's like, you know, and, and the, the kicker is like he's not like a violent criminal right he had, he had done this crime which was, you know, I mean not victimless but the but the victims were
00:39:17
Speaker
were, you know, were criminals to begin with. So it's not that yeah, there's, and it really shows like the lack of understanding in the criminal justice system, the lack of accountability for, you know, people who, who are like, who are the rich criminals and all that kind of stuff, and how the system is just, it's just so set up to make things like once you get a prison sentence, if
00:39:43
Speaker
whether it's a violent crime or a non-violent crime, like once you get out of prison, once you've done your time, you're still doing your time. We don't
Scott Lang and the Criminal Justice System
00:39:51
Speaker
let you really go through a rehabilitation. And I like that the movie touched on that in some ways. Yeah. And then like, it's weird because it's, and this isn't something the movie goes into at all, but it's a victimless crime that becomes full of victims when the company that feels wronged or,
00:40:13
Speaker
like loses profits, just charges their consumers, lays off a bunch of people, all that kind of crap. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, they break up a family, they, you know, they, you know, condemn this guy for life to, to, you know, low wage jobs or no jobs. And basically, you know, he only, and it's, it's the thing, like he only goes back to crime because he's got no other choice because he can't even get a minimum wage job. And I thought, yeah, that's, there's so much in there in that movie. And I, and I think that's a,
00:40:43
Speaker
I mean, that's not really the point of the movie, but I liked that they had worked that stuff in there. Yeah. Yeah. And I like the, I love the supporting cast of like his crew. So we have Luis, obviously, Michael Pena, but we've also got David Dasmalchain as Kurt and T.I. Harris as Dave. What did you think of those guys? I thought they were great.
00:41:07
Speaker
What I was surprised by, because I looked at some behind the scenes stuff, is that that wasn't David's natural accent. Yeah, I was surprised at that too. Because he's one of those guys who's been in so many different things. And I didn't realize it until I had seen him in the Suicide Squad. And then I looked him up. And what other stuff he's been in, find out he had been in The Dark Knight. He had been in Ant-Man.
00:41:35
Speaker
What was the other one? He was on the, he was on the, he was part of the flash TV show too. Oh, nice. Yeah. That was good. And still like the movie luckily keeps like a very, you know, like tight cast for the most part, which is great. Cause now that's been expanding rapidly too across all this stuff. Right. And yeah. And I liked how they worked in
00:42:06
Speaker
integrating the crew with Hank Pym and Hope. I thought that was a, and it shows that Scott's trying to bring something to this and he's trying to make it kind of his own. It shows him taking some more initiative and kind of standing up a little bit. And I like that as well. Yeah. And, you know, it gives,
00:42:28
Speaker
tank more redemption to give. Right. I also like that we see the fight with Falcon is great because, and this kind of goes to the training montage as well, because one of the issues in a lot of superhero movies up until the MCU, and even some of the MCU movies are guilty of this too, is that once the character puts on the costume, it's like they magically know how to do all this stuff.
00:42:56
Speaker
And I like that we see Scott going through the training of it. And I like that when he goes up against an Avenger, he's doing things like he's revealing his identity. And I thought that was all really well done.
00:43:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it was a really good fight scene trying to think because, well, this is something that we've been dealing with more lately is fight scenes that cut a lot, feel really like just really sloppily edited all that stuff. And this one seemed, let me add some quick edits, but it was for most part really solid. One of the things too, I thought they did a good job was showcasing just how, cause when you think about,
00:43:41
Speaker
the idea of someone being able to shrink down to size. It doesn't sound like an impressive superpower on paper. And the movie does a really good job of showing you just how dangerous someone with that power can actually be. Yeah, true. Yeah, they explain it really well. I think Pope said in the force of a bullet in that punch.
00:44:06
Speaker
Right, yeah, because when you, the whole idea of when you shrink down, you still have all the density and all that. It's just in a much more condensed package. So it does make sense. I mean, I'm not sure scientifically if it makes sense, but for the average viewer, you can logically connect those things together. And the other stuff is they make it in a couple of like small scenes, they really do
00:44:34
Speaker
like making a spectacle as well. So the initial flight from the prison, the fly-through of Pymtech, a couple of fly-throughs of Pymtech, stuff like that. Well, also using the ants to such great effect too. That was something I was not expecting them to bring in from the comics. I figured that was the whole idea of Ant-Man being able to control ants that seemed
00:45:01
Speaker
almost ludicrous. It seemed almost too ridiculous for something that they could make work in a live action movie. And I thought they did a really good job with it. What did you think of that? One detail I noticed that was nice was it was like different ant farms for each of the kinds of ants that he was working with. So yeah, I thought that stuff was really well done. I'm trying to think.
00:45:31
Speaker
I guess maybe there could have been a little more. We really only see one group at a time, right? Yeah, pretty much. And it's just those three groups, really. You got the flying ants, you got the carbon dorans, and you've got the electricity generating ones. Two, three. There might be one more, but I think it might be similar to the first group.
00:45:55
Speaker
I think so, yeah. But they've worked them in really well. And even so much that you have Anthony, right? When he dies at the end, I thought that was, I remember there were so many memes going around after the movie came out about like RIP Anthony. Yeah. Yeah. They made us care. They successfully made us care. That's the thing. I mean, they made people care about a flying ant, CGI generated flying ant. I thought that was great.
00:46:22
Speaker
And if anything, I think my one disappointment is that it seems like the ant aspect of it has kind of been left behind in the other movies, because we haven't really, we haven't seen it at all happen in any of the team up movies he's been in. And I can't really remember any big instances of it in Ant-Man and the Wasp, can you? Let me think, there was that one scene where they kept getting kicked off by a bird.
00:46:47
Speaker
when he was trying to call on them being used to keep his ankle longer on. Those are the ones that might just be those. Yeah, so that's pretty much it. And then they haven't appeared in any of the, like in Civil War and Infinity War and Endgame, they didn't have any of that in there.
00:47:09
Speaker
So if anything, that's a I mean, when you're in an ensemble movie, it's kind of tough to to give showcase to all those different things. But I think it was a little disappointing that they'd use the ants to such great effect in this movie, and they haven't really done it in successive films. Yeah. And. Yeah, that could I'm trying to think because I show. Crosses tech and gripped apart by them, which could have worked on Tony.
00:47:37
Speaker
Right. We're only a few people, actually, now I think about it. Right. We're even just like, you know, simple reconnaissance or even just like having him, you know, transportation wise, like having him fly around on the edge. We haven't seen any of that in the in the other movies. Yeah, it's surprising, I think. But one of the things I do like about Paul Rudd in this role, too, is just how starstruck he gets around the other Avengers. And that's been like a consistent theme throughout all these movies he's been in, like,
00:48:06
Speaker
you know, first with Falcon in this movie and then in Civil War where he's just battling the first time he meets Captain America and then in Endgame too, right? It's
Avenger Interactions: Scott Lang's Excitement
00:48:17
Speaker
just, it's this great use of showcasing that Scott really feels out of his depth when he's around all these other characters.
00:48:25
Speaker
That's one of the things I'm looking forward to with like all the Ms. Marvel stuff. Yeah, same here. Is Kamala going crazy? Yeah, I've only seen the first episode so far, but man, she was so great in that first episode and I've seen like some of the interviews that actress has done and I'm really looking forward to seeing how she works with the other actors in the series.
00:48:47
Speaker
Yeah, she's a super fan, she doesn't drive a nut. Yeah, yeah, that's what I love about it. I saw the one that she did where she was trying to name all the Marvel movies in like one minute and then she couldn't remember Captain Marvel and Incredible Hope. Yeah, I think the Guardians might have been two of them too. The Guardians, yeah, she also forgot those too. Yeah. But yeah, anyway, back to this movie.
00:49:13
Speaker
There any other big things you wanted to know? I did think one of the things I thought that I just thought of now is I like tying it into the universe a little bit more. They have like the Hydra stuff in there. I like the shield stuff at the beginning. This movie does a really good job of of tying itself to the MCU without making it feel
00:49:34
Speaker
because I think that was some of the criticism of like Iron Man 2 was it felt like they were devoting too much time to building up the rest of the MCU. Same thing with Age of Ultron. It was all about like setting all these other pieces in motion. I did not get that sense with this movie. I think they struck a right balance between connecting it to the MCU, making it feel like it's part of the MCU without making it feel like it's just a staging area for a future film.
00:50:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. This is definitely very much like the standalone. I did think of one place where they could have added some more. It would have been nice right after that 1989 sequence that we could have seen kind of the advancements of everything like shield and Hank and all that have been working on. I think that would have been a good like credits montage. Yeah. Showing like, you know, the comparison of where they're going. That would have been nice too.
00:50:35
Speaker
And also kind of seeing, you know, there was that guy who's working for Hydra. Yeah, he's still out there, but also I think it would have been, I understand it's because of what happened in Winter Soldier, like obviously he was one of the Hydra moles and all that, but I think having at least one more scene in there, I think would have been good to kind of have a callback to Winter Soldier to kind of remind people that, oh yeah, Hydra was still festering within SHIELD at that point.
00:51:04
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, that's the one thing I read. There was a like tie-in comic they did. They showed, it wasn't on Bucky, but it was Bucky's brainwashing or some brainwashing. So there is a tie-in somewhere. Okay. What was it that involved Bucky? Well, it was Hank.
00:51:31
Speaker
Hank's first mission basically was like infiltrating some Hydra thing in Berlin and be as far as MCU is concerned. Oh, okay. Yeah, I would have liked to see a little bit more of Hank and Jan's time with S.H.I.E.L.D. I found myself I found myself really interested in that in that period where you've got this and it really leaves the door open for some interesting movies if they ever or TV show or something if they get into it would like
00:51:57
Speaker
you know, some cold war superhero stuff that they could play around with. And I'm hoping we get some of that at some point, because I think there's an interesting, there's a lot of interesting things you can do there with, you know, you have Ant-Man and the Wasp, and it makes you wonder what other things would shield up to, because, you know, if they have, it makes me think that this probably wasn't the only superhero that they were trying to bring out, because we had also gotten
00:52:25
Speaker
you know, we had seen now because of Falcon and Winter Soldier, we found out about Isaiah Bradley after World War II. He had been like kind of a super soldier type. It seems like he was involved in the shield at some point or in some fashion or something like that. So, and then we get Captain Marvel and then we get Ant-Man and the Wasp. And it makes me think like there's probably some other stuff that was going on that we haven't seen yet. And I would really like to touch on some of those aspects. Sees like some period pieces like
00:52:55
Speaker
a 60s Cold War thriller set in the MCU would be really cool. And that would be nice. I think the best chance, depending on how they bring in some of the old Fox stuff, that could probably be set in probably one of those periods. Yeah, I know they've been talking about, there's been a lot of fan speculation and like fan wishes that they would set the Fantastic Four in the 1960s. I feel like
00:53:21
Speaker
Fantastic Four, though, I think is a little bit too big to have it set and make it a secret thing in the past. Whereas something like Ant-Man and the Wasp, it's much easier to kind of work into the fabric of the past. And because when they tried that with Captain Marvel, the first thing they had to do was they had to figure out a way to get her out for the planet for the next 20 years. That's true. And there's no issue with that.
00:53:51
Speaker
maybe if they can work and they probably don't want to do too much time travel, but obviously we're going to get something like that. Right. Right. There could be something with time travel. But even like, you know, if we get like a Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. You know, series or something like that. But some more, some more stuff I think would be really interesting. And they're like, there are a lot of characters I'm having trouble
00:54:15
Speaker
it off the top of my head. There are a lot of different, you know, spy type Marvel characters that could easily be used in those types of contexts. Yeah. We're getting, I can't remember if this was confirmed or just one of those crazy sites. Thunderbolts? Yeah, it's rumored. And it's not, I don't think it's been confirmed yet, but the
00:54:40
Speaker
Some of the sites that have been talking about the rumor are usually more legit. So I think it is in the works. And I think it's... Hey guys, Perry here. I just wanted to jump in with a quick correction or not so much correction, but more clarification. So I've been recording a lot of these episodes way in advance because I've had a lot of requests for people to come on the show. So even though you're listening to this episode now and August 29th at the earliest,
00:55:09
Speaker
Um, it actually, we actually recorded this back in June. So at that time, there had been no confirmation about the Thunderbolts movie yet. Uh, obviously now that has been confirmed. Uh, so just wanted to quickly drop in with that note, just, you know, so, you know, I'm not completely out of touch. I do want to keep up with the news and stuff like that. Um, but anyway, sorry, just wanted to drop that note in there and now back to the episode.
00:55:36
Speaker
We've kind of seen hints of it in the MCU already with Valbean involved with US agent and Elena. And now we have Baron Zemo back in custody. So I think there's, and we even saw in, you know, in Shang-Chi, you know, abomination was in custody there. Cause we see after Wong fights him, he opens up a portal. And if you look closely, it looks like he's leading him back into like a cell block area.
00:56:01
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, and he's going to be in She-Hulk. Right. He's going to be in She-Hulk as well. So yeah. I think Thunderbolt is definitely coming. I think it's, you know, you'll probably have Zemo involved. U.S. agent, Yelena and Abomination I think are the, are definite to be involved in some way. Yeah, that's, that's good. I'm looking forward to seeing that. And it looks like my guess is they probably lean in more towards the
00:56:26
Speaker
the post-Civil War dark rain era of the Thunderbolts, which was a really fun era when there was more kind of like a Suicide Squad take. And I think that would work much better for the MCU. I think the whole idea of villains redeeming themselves angle, which while I love that in the comic books, I don't think they've got enough villains to be redeemed to really make up a team that would logically make sense.
00:56:51
Speaker
Yeah, and just treading that, marketing it even for Marvel would be, yeah, I see. Right, yeah, yeah. Were there any other things you wanted to talk about with Ant-Man? I think those are the main points I wanted to hit on. Let me see, let me check my notes.
00:57:21
Speaker
Uh, I guess, I guess the main thing was kind of my, uh, my thing I was saying about how it like initially like kind of felt like a safe movie, how it felt like this was the start of them. So you kind of going up and down, uh, would like to get your thoughts on that. Cause now things are definitely like very, you never know what you're going to get with, uh, with the MCU. Um, yeah, I mean, well, with, with, with, with a baseline. Right. Um,
00:57:53
Speaker
I think this movie did a really good job of, like I said, you know, kind of setting itself apart, and it, it's like I was looking forward to it I look forward to all the Marvel movies so that was, but it wasn't one I was excited about.
00:58:08
Speaker
When I saw the trailers in the same way that I was excited about, you know, say Guardians of the Galaxy, which is another property that I wasn't really familiar that super familiar with in the comics. But I knew enough about it. It was kind of the same thing with that man. Like I'd known a decent enough about him, but I wasn't expecting it to be.
00:58:27
Speaker
To be honest, when it came out, I thought it felt like it was a little bit late to do Ant-Man, because it felt like, you know, we'd already done the Avengers, we'd already done all the buildup to them, and it felt like they had kind of, I was worried that they had missed the boat on Ant-Man, and this probably wouldn't have, and this was trying to play catch-up, but I ended up being really impressed with what they did with it overall. Yeah. Well, it does also make sense to go back to basics. I mean, that's what they did with Iron Man 3, post-Avengers, so.
00:58:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. Um, although I didn't like eight Ironman three that much. So that's not the best example from, from my, from my taste, but, but I get your point and it.
00:59:10
Speaker
it is a nice way to show that they can, I think if that's the one lesson I would take from Ant-Man is it shows that you can go back to basics, right? Not everything does have to be an escalation. And I think that's probably the best thing that it's done. Yeah. And like, I think that's maybe where far from home gets dicey because it doesn't go as much back to basics as I could have.
00:59:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think far from home, it got a little bit, it went a little bit too big towards the end, I thought. But now it looks like we're going very back to basics at the end of no way home. So we'll see what happens there. And I think that's, I really wish, that's another good point. One of the things I love about this movie is that it is so small in scale. Like there is no world ending threat. There's no giant space portal. There's no,
01:00:07
Speaker
huge army battle. Like that was one of the things that kind of disappointed me about Shan Chi was, you know, it's so good. And then we get this, you know, this army battle at the end that just kind of feels like, okay, we have to do this now. When really I wanted to see more of just the physical confrontation between Shan Chi and his father. That was what interested me a lot more than the two groups teaming up to fight, you know, these dragon creatures.
01:00:34
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, this one was all just about just basic.
01:00:42
Speaker
business bad guy stuff, but still, even that was elevated pretty well. Right. They did a good job of making it work. Right. The action was very personal in this. And I thought, I love that aspect of it. And just
Finale Showdown: Shrinking Tech and Humor
01:00:55
Speaker
that that final flight between Ant-Man and Yellow Jacket was just so well-constructed, like, you know, talk about making good use of the shrinking technology. I thought that was wonderful when they show, like,
01:01:04
Speaker
Although some of the physics of it, it's questionable when you see like these guys have the power to they're they've got the same densities. They've got the power to like punch bullets and all that. But then you see when he's worried about the toy train coming, I thought that was a little bit. I'm like, OK, now you're obviously just playing that for gags. Yeah. But I did like some other stuff like when they the this I like changing the scale of it where they show it like, you know, it's like the train barreling down and they show it regular size like, oh, it's just toy.
01:01:33
Speaker
or when the tank engine gets thrown and then it ends up growing to become giant size when it smashes through the wall of the house. Oh, that's one of the things I looked up that the tank smashing through the building was partially practical. Oh, really? They put, it was a bunch of blue screen stuff put over like a practical wall and practical like
01:02:01
Speaker
Well, not an entire tank, but over something. Right, right. So they could get like the dust and just some of the debris and all that. Oh, okay, cool. So that was really great. Yeah, I wasn't referring to that tank though. I was talking about the Thomas the Tank Engine.
01:02:18
Speaker
But yeah, I do. That was another great use of the shrinking technology. And it's set up so well because we keep seeing his key chain with the tank key chain on it. And then he's just like, when the time comes, it's like, it's not a key chain. Yeah. Oh, I thought you were talking about one than the other since you just said tank. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. I meant to say tank engine. Yeah.
01:02:42
Speaker
But yeah, overall, I like this movie. It's so much fun. I love Louise's explanations in it. And I wish they would get it. I remember they were talking about this in, I think, Infinity War, like they just wanted to get, they should get Louise to just recap the entire MCU. And I would love to see them do that at some point. Yeah, that's, I think I'm gonna have them go for an hour. Yeah.
01:03:12
Speaker
Don't tilt it up enough. And Paul Rudd, just he's he's just such a great addition to to this group. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens now going forward, because we didn't see Judy Greer at all in, you know, Infinity War or Endgame. So I don't know if she was part of the blip as well, or if they'll try to what they'll try to do with that. But I think that was
01:03:39
Speaker
It's a little bit disappointing that, you know, well, that's something to play with, right? The fact that, you know, Scott basically missed his daughter's childhood. I think that's, you know, being a father myself, I mean, that scene in Endgame is heartbreaking to me when he meets her again and she's a teenager now. Yeah, and heartbreaking for us because switching actresses, no offense to the current actress.
01:04:05
Speaker
But yeah, that's pretty much everything we have to say about Ant-Man, I think. Any final words on it? When he's fighting and all that stuff being Ant-Man, a surprising thing I picked up on this time was Run isn't much of a wise-cracker, which looking at it through all this is actually really interesting. Yeah, that's a good point. You'd expect him to be very Spider-Man-esque.
01:04:32
Speaker
Right. That's a good one. I mean, you know, he's got a lot of, you know, great witty lines in throughout the rest of the movie, but you're right. He doesn't, he, when he's in the, when he's in the mode of, I think this is another good thing about his character is they show him as being a professional. Like when it's, when it's time to do the job, he's all business, he's all professional. And I think that's a, that's a, that's a subtle aspect of his character that I hadn't really picked up on until you mentioned that, but yeah, that's a really good point, I think. Yeah.
01:04:59
Speaker
I do have to, I think that's probably maintained in the next one, but also something I have to double check. Right. I have to go back and rewatch. It's been a while since I've seen it. Yeah. Like this, this movie really is kind of in the, in the details. Cause like I said, I was a little iffy on it going in just from the basic structure. Yeah. Um, but yeah, they, they show him as very confident, very knowledgeable about what he's doing. Like the scene, when he breaks into Hank's place, I thought that was,
01:05:30
Speaker
It really showcased how resourceful he is, like being able to pull off the fingerprint, you know, creating the fake handprint and all that kind of stuff. All of that was really well done. Yeah. Although the handprint thing is now like going to constantly, because I think Captain Marvel had a handprint, right? Oh, did they? I didn't remember. It's been a while since you've seen that movie, too. I think so. I've just been kind of background watching a lot of them. And the X-Men movies, it's just kind of
01:06:00
Speaker
background. Okay. Was that also the stuff with him in the regulator, which I thought was really interesting, because that must have kept him from, that must have kept him from growing, right? I'm not sure exactly how I think it's supposed to, maybe it kept him from growing as well. I know it was supposed to stop him from shrinking down too far. So maybe it also worked in the growing way as well.
01:06:29
Speaker
Um, because they do say in, uh, the next movie that, well, and also in civil war, right? He says that he had grown giant one size, but it was, it was in a lab and he passed out afterwards. And then they also referenced it in quantum mania with Bill Foster. And he talks about, you know, using the technology too. Um, so yeah, I do think there was, um,
01:06:52
Speaker
I think that was an aspect of it that they hadn't really known how to do very well in terms of within the world of the story. Yeah. Because the thing I picked up on is the first button he pushes is nothing happened. So it must have been the growth button. It must have been like the regulator stopping him. Yeah. And also I liked, that's another example of the resourcefulness, right? Figuring out that if you put the,
01:07:19
Speaker
I'm not sure, again, I'm not sure what the science actually holds up in it, but putting the growing disk in the belt instead and using that. I thought that another good example of using Scott's resourcefulness to kind of figure out a way out of things. Yeah, and Hank didn't have those at the time. Right, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, I think that about does it for our discussion on Ant-Man. Ed, you wanna tell people once again where they can find you?
01:07:48
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm at why we watch.com there's a dash between each word. Let's see. I guess for social media Twitter at why we watch.
01:08:01
Speaker
I believe there's no dashes or anything like that in there. And then from the site, I have a bunch of social media links all over the place. Okay. And we'll have links to all that stuff in the show notes as well. Okay. Ed, thanks so much for coming on. And for those of you who are listening, well, I think by the time this episode comes out, actually, just the way the scheduling has worked out, people who are on the Patreon feed, they've
01:08:27
Speaker
they'll probably already hear Ed because we're going to be talking about the um the Ant-Man comic book for the Patreon exclusive uh pretty soon um but depending on when you listen to these if you're part of the Patreon show that may be out already or it may not be out so I'm not quite sure exactly how the schedule is working out.
01:08:43
Speaker
But that does it for this episode of Superhero Cinephiles. Thanks so much for listening. And as always, SuperheroCinephiles.com is the website, SuperCinemapod on Twitter and Facebook. And as I said, if you're a Patreon subscriber, you get these episodes a week early, plus you also get access to the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club episodes where we talk about different comic books and stuff like that. Sometimes with the guests, sometimes just me solo. But thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.
01:09:14
Speaker
If you enjoy the Superhero Cinephiles, then you'll also love my companion podcast, the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club. All my Patreon subscribers get access to this exclusive podcast where I review superhero comics and graphic novels. Not sure what comics you want to read next or what you should dive into? I've got you covered on that. I'll be doing reviews, recommendations, and also talking to you about useful entry points.
01:09:34
Speaker
If you're interested in reading some comments and don't know where you should start, plus you'll get access to all episodes of the main show a week before everyone else. On all of this, for as little as just a dollar a month, all you have to do is go to patreon.com slash SuperCinemaPod and you can sign up at any subscription amount to get started. Thanks so much for your support and please don't forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:10:18
Speaker
Thank you for listening and as always good night. Good evening. God bless.