On Thanos’ ass

On May 22, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, movies1 Comment

My wife just showed me this tweet:

And I horribly disappointed her by not having the slightest idea what the hell could possibly be going on. Apparently– and you’re just going to have to believe me on this, as I refuse to look for it– there has recently been a discussion on The Twitter about why Ant-Man didn’t simply defeat Thanos by crawling inside his asshole and then growing.

Look, damn it, I need something more ridiculous than British money to talk about around here. These are the posts. 🙂

It is unclear exactly how much force Ant-Man is able to exert while growing. In fact, two damn near successive images from this trailer make the problem pretty clear:

You only need about the first thirty seconds, but you see two things here associated with growth: first, whatever system they have built inside the van is strong enough to fling another van off of its wheels and into the air. However, the system in Ant-Man’s actual suit isn’t able to put out enough force to break either the drop ceiling above him or the drywall around him. One assumes that you could use Pym particles to generate quite a bit of force, then, but that capability doesn’t seem to exist in Ant-Man’s suit, no doubt because his actual flesh is weaker than the metal frame of the van.

For the sake of argument, I’m willing to accept that Ant-Man or the Wasp are both able to shrink down enough to get inside Thanos’ suit of armor, and from there, provided that he is not actively clenching, one assumes they could work their way into his asshole if it were absolutely necessary. However, any suit that can’t grow Ant-Man with enough force to break drywall is surely not going to be able to overcome the pressure that the rectal wall of a man able to box the Hulk into unconsciousness could exert.

The good news for Ant-Man is that his suit does appear to have some sort of failsafe in it so that he can’t accidentally grow beyond the point where he hurts himself, or he would surely be larger than the room in the scene above, which I’m pretty sure is from a part of the movie where the suit was actively malfunctioning. I therefore posit that Ant-Man is only able to grow large enough, once ensconced in Thanos’ rectum, for Thanos to notice him, at which point one assumes that Thanos would clench, and things end poorly for Ant-Man, who has no particular level of enhanced strength or invulnerability, especially at that size. If his suit does not have the failsafe built in, Thanos clenches anyway, and one way or another the big purple dude is gonna need an oversized bidet to clean up the mess, which isn’t gonna be pretty.

The correct way, by the way, for Ant-Man or the Wasp to defeat a being on the level of Thanos is not to fly into his ass, but to fly into his ear. I’m pretty certain that the Wasp dropped the Hulk himself at least once by flying into his ear and directing an energy blast directly into his eardrum. Or, in a worst-case scenario, shrink down a bit more and head for his brain, which I’m pretty sure she did to the Red Hulk at one point.

Or, y’know, there’s always distraction. Yeah, this happened. God, The Ultimates was terrible:

#REVIEW: ANT-MAN AND THE WASP

On July 13, 2018July 13, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn movies, Reviews5 Comments

ant_man_wasp_poster I wasn’t super excited to see the first Ant-Man movie when it came out back in 2015 and generally found it to be a pretty pleasant surprise. Three years later, I was actually quite a bit more excited to see Ant-Man and the Wasp, but somehow it managed to be one of the very few Marvel films that I didn’t see on opening weekend. Life basically intervened last weekend and I didn’t have time.

Here’s the thing, though: I’ve always loved the Wasp as a character, much much more than Hank Pym, and although I’d have preferred to have the classic Janet van Dyne version of the character I can’t really get upset about using Hope instead. Scott Lang as a character has really never even registered. But the Ghost? The Ghost has always been an Iron Man villain– and a dude, to boot– but he’s one of my favorite Iron Man villains, so if you tell me the Ghost is gonna be the bad guy in a movie I’m gonna be there to see it.

tl;dr: Go see it. It’s got some flaws but in general I think I liked it more than the first one and it’s a pleasant palate-cleanser for the unrelenting misery and horror that was Avengers Infinity Wars. Mostly, anyway.

That’s long enough for the Facebook people, right? Okay. Spoilers ho!

And bullet points. This is gonna be a random stream-of-consciousness bullet-point style review.

Let’s start with the Ghost, actually. She’s awesome, and a fascinating character, even if this version has little to do with the canonical Ghost other than look (which is amazing) and powers. That said, she’s ultimately kind of unnecessary to the movie as a whole and her part actually could probably have been cut and still left us with a decent movie. But that’s the script’s fault, not the character’s or the actress’ fault. I’ve never seen Hannah John-Kamen in anything before and I want more of her.
Actually, let’s just get all of the griping out of the way first: every problem with this movie is a problem with the script. In particular, the movie could really have used a couple of science advisors. Hank Pym and Hope van Dyne and Bill Foster are supposed to be geniuses; this movie is stuffed with them, and at one point they actually let Scott say “Are you guys just putting the word quantum in front of everything?” and unfortunately it’s supposed to be a joke but the answer is yes. The science is Star Trek-level bad; at one point they literally reverse the polarity of something and Janet van Dyne takes over Scott’s brain for a moment to “rewrite an algorithm.” Don’t ask, just understand that lazy-ass writers use “algorithm” to mean “sciencey thing that we don’t understand and don’t want to explain.” It’s terrible.
On to the good stuff! The actors across the board are great, even the ones with clearly bit parts, like the thug with no name who was always chewing on his rosary, or Truth Serum Guy. Everyone seems to be having a lot of fun and they all made the movie really fun to watch.
The de-aging special effects, this time used on Laurence Fishburne, Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer, continues to be fucking amazing. It’s going to be a big part of Captain Marvel since like half the cast will need to look 30 years younger than they are, and they’re getting creepily good at it.
When Fishburne’s Bill Foster turned out to be a sorta-bad-guy, I really wanted him to somehow end up being Lex Luthor, but it didn’t happen.
This is my favorite Evangeline Lilly role ever. I liked her in the last movie but this one actually made me a fan of hers. She can have her own movie anytime.
The fight sequences across the board, but especially anytime the Wasp or the Ghost were on-screen, were spectacular. Very, very nicely choreographed action.
The repeated theme of dads and daughters throughout this movie, especially Foster and the Ghost’s pseudo-parental relationship, was really neat. Much like the last one, this is a movie with much lower stakes than the rest of the Marvel films, and focusing on all the familial relationships everywhere was great. The first few minutes, where a clearly out-of-his-mind Lang has constructed an apartment-sized amusement park for his daughter because he has nothing else to do, was great.
There were hints that I was going to get much more of my favorite version of Hank Pym (the gadget-obsessed, white-lab-coat wearing whacko of the West Coast Avengers) in this movie than in the last one and it absolutely came through for me. The fact that the Macguffin for half of the movie was a literal multi-story office building shrunk down to the size of a piece of carry-on luggage was fantastic.
It also led to one of my favorite visual moments of the movie, where they shrink down the office building to reveal an army of FBI guys sneaking up on them behind it.
There were only one or two moments where the CGI was wonky, mostly in the scene where they’re infiltrating the elementary school (don’t ask) and Scott gets stuck at about three and a half feet tall. They were using a lot of practical effects for that bit and it actually didn’t work very well.
And then, after all that good shit throughout the movie, that ending. You bastards.

So. Yeah. Go see it! We’re one movie closer to Captain Marvel!

REVIEW: “Ant-Man”

On July 19, 2015July 19, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews13 Comments

images tl;dr version: You should go see this, even (and perhaps especially) you were skeptical about the idea of Ant-Man getting a movie.

I’ve seen every Marvel movie in theaters, and I think I’ve seen all of them opening weekend, although it’s possible I’ve missed one or two first weekend. I feel like Thor: The Dark World may have taken a few minutes for some reason. Ant-Man is the movie I’ve come closest to actually skipping; if it hadn’t been for my wife wanting to see it I can’t guarantee I would have ever prioritized it. I’m not a fan of the character, really, and I would have survived without seeing it.

I have learned to follow my wife’s lead in these things, as she’s always right, because Ant-Man is great, and it’s possible I enjoyed it more than Age of Ultron, which I also liked a lot. AoU had the disadvantage of being a sequel, and there’s a lot going on in Ant-Man that you haven’t seen on screen before. Evangeline Lilly’s hair, for example.

Also notable, although I can’t for the life of me find a still of this anywhere, is whatever sorcery they used for the brief 1989 portion of the film, where they appear to have traveled back in goddamn time to capture Michael Douglas and bring him forward to act in this movie. I don’t know if that’s CGI or a body double with CGI or insanely good makeup or a combination of the three but it is creepy as hell because however they did it it looks completely perfect. I remember what Michael Douglas looked like 26 years ago, guys; that’s him.

Anyway. On to the observations part:

Good stuff:

Paul Rudd. I’m not a huge fan of Mr. Rudd’s; he’s one of those actors where I’m absolutely certain I’ve seen him in other movies but hell if he was memorable enough that I can tell you who he was. But he nails this role and fulfills the number one thing actors have to do to make me enjoy your movie: make it seem like you enjoyed playing the role.
The action. Watching a guy fight who can miniaturize himself on command led to some great fight scenes, particularly the one with <spoiler> at the <spoiler> base.
The effects. The ant stuff was awesome.
Actually, all of the actors, with the exception of the guy playing Yellowjacket, were pretty damn good. Douglas is no slouch, obviously; Evangeline Lilly was great, and the three comic relief guys were funny. I’ve seen some reviews that complained that the familial relationships between Hank and Hope and Scott Lang and his daughter felt forced; I didn’t feel that way at all.
The bit with the tank, which I swear was a throwback to my favorite incarnation of the Hank Pym character– the lab-coated West Coast Avengers version.
Bug zappers. ‘Nuff said.
Both of the reveals at the end. The end reveals in this film were my favorite ones since the end of Captain America.

Less good stuff:

I could do without ever hearing another male character say the words “I was just trying to protect you!” to a female character again. (Note that this led to a good scene or two, I’m just really tired of the trope.)
The plot is basically Iron Man crossed with Ghostbusters. Perfectly serviceable but a bit fill-in-the-numbers, especially since…
…Yellowjacket was not great, and in fact I think he seems to have broken a couple of the movie’s rules along the way. Hope van Dyne seems to think that the Pym particles were affecting his mind, which would be a good idea, except for the part where he was wearing the suit for the first time at the end of the movie. That said, for someone wearing said suit for the first time, he was pretty darn good at it.
The whole don’t-cross-the-streams bit wasn’t well-used. It’s good that Sony still controls the X-Men, because who knows how many people would have died had anyone had access to adamantium.

Make sure to see this, guys. It won’t be the end of the world if you don’t see it in the theater– although I’d like the movie’s box office to be better than expected– but don’t sleep. It’s well worth seeing.