Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — Diminishing returns

Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for mild profanity and relentless action violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.17.23 

Yeesh. What a mess.

 

This newest Marvel Cinematic Universe entry is a classic “kitchen sink” movie: Scripter Jeff Loveness has thrown everything on the wall, in the feverish, desperate hope that something will stick.

 

Kang (Jonathan Majors, right) makes it clear that if Scott (Paul Rudd) refuses to cooperate,
something very bad will happen to his daughter ... which he then will be forced to
re-live for eternity.

Paul Rudd’s Ant Man always has been a bad joke in his own series: a smug, defensive, self-deprecating bumbler cast adrift in adventures that suffer from a clumsy blend of smash-’em-up special effects and forced humor. They’re silly children’s films, completely at odds with the more traditionally heroic stance he displayed as a supporting character in Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: End Game.

(I still wince at the memory of the ill-advised tabletop toy train battle that climaxed 2015’s Ant Man. Ouch.)

 

Director Peyton Reed, determined to maintain the style of Ant Man’s two previous starring outings, has made this third adventure another silly children’s film.

 

Events begin with this family unit happily reunited, in the wake of Avengers End Game: Scott Lang (Rudd), his sweetie-pie Hope (Evangeline Lilly), their now-teenage daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton), Hope’s mother Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) and father Hank (Michael Douglas).

 

Cassie has matured into an 18-year-old social activist: a timely nod to current events in this San Francisco setting. She also possesses her grandfather’s passion for science and technology, and — unbeknownst to Scott, Hope and particularly Janet — has been working with Hank to establish a connection to the molecular level of the microscopic Quantum Realm.

 

When Janet does find out, she’s horrified … because, well, y’see, she never explained what happened during the 30 years she was stuck in the Quantum Realm, or why it’s so dangerous.

 

(Yes, this is one of those contrived calamities that wouldn’t exist if characters actually talked to each other.)

 

Ah, but too late! Just as Janet frantically demands that Hank and Cassie cease their efforts, all five — along with the contents of Hank’s lab — are sucked into the weird landscapes and even weirder creatures of the Quantum Realm.

 

Which, sad to say, looks an awful lot like last November’s Strange World. Given that both films emerged under the Disney banner, one suspects a serious case of Looking Over Each Other’s Shoulders.

 

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Diminutive delight

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for sci-fi action violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.6.18

OK, this character is growing on me.

If only a bit.

With FBI agents and criminal mercenaries determined to snatch her father's technology,
Hope (Evangeline Lilly) prepares for battle as the Wasp, while Scott (Paul Rudd)
reluctantly suits up as Ant-Man.

2015’s Ant-Man was a train wreck, due to its insufferably smug tone and an over-reliance on Three Stooges-style farce: a rare miscalculation in the carefully plotted Marvel Universe franchise.

This sequel, having nowhere to go but up, wisely executed a course correction. Star Paul Rudd is less haughty, and therefore more sympathetic; co-star Evangeline Lilly’s considerably expanded role is a welcome change; the characters’ size-shifting abilities are put to much better use; returning director Peyton Reed toned down the gratuitous slapstick; and — definitely a relief — the core plot is grounded in a manner wholly removed from the universe-shattering consequences of recent Marvel entries.

The villains here have sensible real-world motives: greed and self-preservation.

Best of all, the script — fine-tuned by no fewer than five credited writers, along with (no doubt) more behind the scenes — blends the obligatory action with plenty of larkish banter, all well delivered at a slow-burn tempo.

Points, as well, to whoever thought to reference 1954’s Them!

All this said, there’s still a sense that The Powers That Be don’t quite know what to do with this character: that he’s a second-string joke not granted the respect that his abilities should demand. Again, this may be down to Rudd — a credited co-scripter — who rarely looks like he’s taking any of this seriously.

The same could be said of Chris Pratt’s handling of Peter Quill, in the adjacent Guardians of the Galaxy series … but Pratt has a better acting range, and is a helluva lot more charming.

Anyway…

The “busted” Scott Lang (Rudd) remains under house arrest, thanks to his illegal alliance with Captain America, in 2016’s Civil War. Scott is a mere three days away from being freed from the ankle monitor that prevents outer-world quality time with beloved daughter Cassie (cute-as-a-button Abby Ryder Fortson). Happily, relations with ex-wife Maggie (Judy Greer) and her new companion Paxton (Bobby Cannavale) have improved; they’re now sympathetic to Scott’s plight.

Ant-Man: A huge disappointment

Ant-Man (2015) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for action violence and some rather nasty peril
By Derrick Bang

Well, it was inevitable: Mighty Marvel finally stumbled.

This film’s problems are numerous, but the largest issue is one of tone; director Peyton Reed, apparently adopting 1989’s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids as his template, has emphasized slapstick sight gags and comic relief supporting characters to a point that pretty well destroys any of this story’s potential drama.

Scott Lang (Paul Rudd, center) listens attentively as Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) explains
the many hazards likely to be encountered during a clandestine assault on his own
company's research labs. For these reasons and many others, Hank's daughter, Hope
(Evangeline Lilly), believes Scott wholly wrong for the task.

The nadir is a climactic duel to the death between miniscule characters, which takes place within a child’s tabletop train set: a sequence that absolutely, positively doesn’t work on any level. And then, just to make a bad idea even worse, Reed punctuates this clash with an unexpectedly gigantic Thomas the Tank Engine, its enormous plastic eyes bouncing back and forth in dismay.

Just as mine were doing.

Reed’s sledge-hammer efforts at comedy are bothersome, but — in fairness — he can’t be blamed for trying to make the best of a bad situation. Ant-Man has been a troubled production for years, during a lengthy gestation in the hands of British writer/director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead and The World’s End, among others), whose sly, subversive brand of humor certainly would have been better than what we wound up with here.

But the project was ripped from his hands at the last moment, the script subsequently re-written by Adam McKay and star Paul Rudd. McKay is responsible for numerous Will Ferrell projects, notably Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and its sequel, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and this year’s Get Hard. I submit that Ferrell’s favorite scripter can’t, by definition, be right for anything taking place in Marvel’s ambitious film universe.

So: What were Marvel and Disney thinking?

Rudd’s meddlesome hand is equally evident. The star clearly shaped the script to fit the insufferable smugness that has become his go-to screen persona, rather than — as always should be the case — modulating his performance to suit the character’s needs. But the latter undoubtedly would require a level of acting beyond Rudd’s capabilities, and thus we’re stuck with his usual lackadaisical swanning from one scene to the next.

Rudd simply doesn’t seem to care about this character, or indeed the entire film. Ergo, why should we?

The core story follows the broad strokes established during several decades in the Marvel comic book universe, with genius scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) having perfected a process that allows him to shrink to ant-size, while maintaining his molecular density in order to (among other things) deliver full-strength punches. Along the way, he also developed the means to communicate with ants, and thus can command massive insect armies to help take out nefarious villains in his guise as Ant-Man.

But all that was years ago. Wary of the military applications contemplated by Howard Stark (John Slattery) and his weasel corporate associate Mitchell Carson (Martin Donovan, suitably smarmy), Pym retreats into seclusion. And since Ant-Man’s brief “career” remained under the public radar, the very notion of such a superhero has become little more than an urban myth.

The Hobbit, The Battle of the Five Armies: At long last, the grand finale!

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for intense fantasy action violence and some truly scary monsters
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.19.14

Peter Jackson certainly knows how to stage a spectacle.

He’d have had a great time during Hollywood’s Golden Age, choreographing the fabled casts of thousands.

As a massive battle between elves, dwarves, humans and nasty orcs rages about them,
Gandalf (Ian McKellen, left) and Bard (Luke Evans) realize that the ghastly orc armies are
being directed by the orc lord Azog the Defiler, standing on a nearby hilltop. Clearly, he
must be stopped ... but how?

That said, he has become a poor judge of narrative structure. Although this final installment of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit builds to a rousing, suspenseful, crowd-pleasing climax, this cinematic saga definitely didn’t deserve the three-part presentation that seems to have been dictated entirely by commerce.

Consider the irony: We couldn’t get enough of Jackson’s three-part adaptation of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and fans eagerly snapped up the extended-edition DVDs, to savor all the additional scenes left on the cutting-room floor. That adulation was entirely warranted, because those three books are extremely dense.

But The Hobbit lacks that complexity; it’s a shorter, single book, and — more significantly — is aimed at a much younger audience. Granted, Jackson and his fellow scripters — Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and horror maestro Guillermo del Toro — drew from the 125 pages of notes and appendices included with modern editions of The Lord of the Ring ... but, even so, this newest trilogy has suffered from bloat since its first installment. (I still haven’t recovered from the slapstick, Disney-esque dwarf songs in Bilbo’s dining room.)

Although the major plot points have been impressively realized, there’s a definite sense of treading water along the way, and extraneous characters we’d be better off without. Notable case in point: the Master of Laketown (Stephen Fry) and his weaselly aide (Mikael Persbrandt), who popped up in the middle installment and return here. They’re no more than stunt casting, particularly in Fry’s case, and their characters seem to have wandered in from a Blackadder installment. Very poor judgment, on Jackson’s part.

More disappointing, though, is the fact that — in this third and final installment — Martin Freeman’s Bilbo Baggins has become a bystander in his own story. That’s a shame on all sorts of levels, not the least of which is the lessened degree to which we’re able to enjoy Freeman’s marvelously subtle performance. I just love the way he twitches his nose, or starts to say something, checks himself, and then decides that silence is the better part of wisdom.

Freeman gets more mileage out of Bilbo’s double-take decisions not to speak, than many of these supporting characters deliver via pages of dialogue.

The Hobbit, The Desolation of Smaug: More Middle-Earth magic

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for intense fantasy action violence and frightening images
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.13.13

Let’s get the important stuff out of the way.

Yes, Orlando Bloom’s Legolas makes a vibrant return during this second chapter in director Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, under circumstances that will raise the eyebrows of J.R.R. Tolkien purists. No matter; It’s hard to complain when Jackson and co-scripters Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Guillermo del Toro integrate this fan-favorite character with such verve.

As Thorin (Richard Armitage, right) explains what Bilbo (Martin Freeman, left) is to do,
once he gets inside the Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, the little hobbit finally, truly realizes
the danger involved. How in the world will he be able to find a single magical gem, amid
a veritable mountain of treasure, without disturbing the ferocious dragon rumored to
sleep beneath all that gold?

We’ve not seen swash so well buckled since the 1987 adaptation of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride.

On the other hand, there’s nary a glimmer of the brooding, owl-eyed Gollum, not even a whispered “My precious” in the soundtrack. The gnarly, nasty little goblin is sorely missed, but — again — it’s hard to complain when his place has been taken by the largest, most impressive fire-breathing dragon ever brought to the big screen. (That would be Smaug.)

Jackson’s Tolkien films never do things in a small way, and that continues to be true here. You’ll once again be amazed by the size and scope of these many settings, whether the forest community of the Wood-elves, or the immense underground Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, deep within Lonely Mountain.

Production designer Dan Hennah continues to have a field day with details large and small, aided and abetted by visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri and the army of talented artists at Weta Digital. The finished work is seamless; it’s truly impossible to determine where physical set design leaves off, and the computer-enhanced magic takes over.

We truly live in an age of cinematic wonder, to see a book this vividly, imaginatively rich brought so successfully to the big screen.

Acting verisimilitude also plays a major role, of course, and Martin Freeman remains the pluperfect hobbit: His Bilbo Baggins experiences (endures?) one of the best character arcs in fantasy fiction. No longer frightened by his own shadow, Bilbo has found his courage but also carries an increasingly dangerous secret: the powerful golden ring that grants its wearer invisibility, while inexorably sucking the soul from that same owner.

Freeman’s Bilbo spends much of this story at war with himself: all too aware of the psychic damage he’s enduring, and yet forced — by increasingly dangerous circumstances — to don the ring again, and again, and again.

Alternatively, Freeman is equally precise with comic timing, as with Bilbo’s fiddly hands and suddenly stricken expression, having engineered a perfect getaway plan for his dwarf friends, when he realizes that he has no means of escape. Despite the scene’s tension, we can’t help but laugh. That’s clever writing, deft direction and subtle acting.

Real Steel: A knock-out

Real Steel (2011) • View trailer for Real Steel
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for action, brief violence and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.7.11


Well, color me surprised.

Previews for Real Steel made it look like an unholy marriage between Rocky and Transformers, with the worst qualities of both.

Unable to control their robot via the usual headset or touchpad interface, Charlie
(Hugh Jackman, left) activates its "shadow" mode, which allows the machine to
mimic every move it sees. Young Max (Dakota Goyo) understands the
significance of this decision: It means that Charlie will rely on his own boxing
skills. But will they be enough?

And, true enough, this new robot boxing film does resemble a mash-up of those two elements, with dollops of The Champ thrown in for good measure ... not to mention a rather clever nod to the original Richard Matheson story.

The patchwork result shouldn’t work ... but it does. Real Steel is hokey and cornier than a Frank Capra melodrama, but it’s a crowd-pleasing delight nonetheless. Tuesday evening’s preview audience cheered in all the right spots; the enthusiasm level was so high, rolling into the third act, that folks couldn’t wait to see what would happen next.

Stars Hugh Jackman and Dakota Goyo deserve a lot of credit. So does John Rosengrant, for his smashing animatronic robot designs.

But the real star is director Shawn Levy, who has moved beyond his usual broad slapstick — Night at the Museum, Date Night and the Pink Panther revival — to put genuine heart into this crazy-quilt flick. Levy deftly avoids the overstated farce that characterizes (and often ruined) most of his previous films, and coaxes heartfelt performances while maintaining the proper atmosphere for the hybrid narrative scripted by John Gatins, from a story by Dan Gilroy and Jeremy Leven (based on the aforementioned Matheson piece).

Like Cowboys and Aliens, Real Steel is a blend of disparate elements, in this case futuristic robotics and contemporary working-class angst. That was true of Matheson’s original short story, as well, which was made into a nifty 1963 episode of Rod Serling’s original Twilight Zone, with Lee Marvin in the role more or less inhabited here by Jackman.

The “near future” 2020 setting is an odd mix of technology and old-fashioned rodeos, carnivals and inner-city training gyms. The vehicles, clothes, social behavior and architecture feel quite contemporary, but the sport of boxing has been declared off-limits for human beings, who’ve been replaced in the ring by 8-foot battling ’bots.

No more loss of life or permanent brain damage ... and besides, as any kid who ever owned a set of Mattel’s Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots knows full well, watching ’bots bash each other is way cool.

Even so, washed-up former prizefighter Charlie Kenton (Jackman) hasn’t adjusted to the change. Now reduced to touring the underground boxing circuit, trying to secure matches for dilapidated rejects from the World Robot Boxing League, Charlie is forever one step ahead of various creditors who’d cheerfully break his legs in lieu of cash.

Worse yet, Charlie isn’t very adept at the robot remote controls. Unable to translate his hard-learned skills to joysticks and touchpads, he has the sad habit of coming out a loser.