SPOILER ALERT for Deadpool 2.
Last chance to back away...
Okay, here we go.
Deadpool 2 is not a movie that relies on twists for its narrative. It's a straight-up action comedy that is practically predictable by design and doesn't really go for any emotional punches, nor does it particularly mess with its audience. In short, it doesn't really go for any of the usual beats that characterize a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, almost as if to emphasize just how different Deadpool is from his estranged cousins at Disney.
One thing this movie does traffic quite a bit in, however, is cameos, and I'm not just talking about regulars, or people who would normally show their faces in a superhero/comic book based movie. The cameos here are so wild and wacky, in fact, that I've taken the liberty of categorizing them according to type. In order of appearance, they are:
1) The "We've Arrived" cameo: As before, Deadpool is joined by X-men Colossus (again played by Stefan Kapicic and terrible CGI) and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), and as before, Deadpool makes one of his patented 4th-wall breaking quips about how "the studio" can't even spare more X-Men. Behind him, however, quietly closing the door is no other than Hank McCoy, aka the Beast, played by Nicholas Hoult. Beside him are virtually the entire cast of the last X-Men movie, including James MacAvoy as Professor X, Tye Sheridan as Cyclops and Evan Peters as Quicksilver to name a few. This is their only appearance in the film, but it is a nice nod from Fox to acknowledge the simple mathematical fact that Deadpool is, hands-down, their most financially successful property, and by God they can certainly spare some X-men for him. They just won't, because Deadpool is an idiot.
2) The "HOLY COW, THAT WAS HIM?!?" cameo: When Josh Brolin's Cable teleports to the past from the future, he lands near two rednecks who are discussing, of all things, toilet paper. It's a moment that stands out for its bizarre but genuinely funny dialogue about which brand of toilet paper offers maximum comfort, and is cut short when Cable tranquilizes the two rednecks and steals their pickup truck. One of them, it turns out, the guy with a lot to say about quality toilet paper, was Matt Damon, under heavy make-up. The other one, with less dialogue was character actor Alan Tudyk. I watched the whole movie without knowing this and basically only found out when I Google-searched another cameo in this film. This may not have been one of the flashier cameos, but in retrospect it was, for me anyway, the funniest. So Matt Damon's got two Marvel movie cameos under his belt (having had a much more visible cameo in Thor: Ragnarok), albeit not from the same studio, and it'd be interesting to see if this becomes a semi-regular thing for him.
3) The "I Was Expecting to See More of This Guy" cameo: comedian/character actor Terry Crews is perhaps best known to audiences for lip-syncing to Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" in the Wayans Brothers' comedy film White Chicks. Personally my favorite Crews role is his little-seen turn as the wrestler-turned-president Camacho in Mike Judge's tragically prophetic Idiocracy. Either way, he featured heavily in the marketing materials and so I figured I'd be seeing quite a lot of him. As it turns out, the film's very best scene, when he and the other members of Deadpool's newly-assembled team X-Force parachute into heavy wind, turns out to be his last as nearly every member of the newly formed team dies horribly: the preposterous-looking Shatterstar is shredded by helicopter rotors, splattering green blood, with his only remains being his ridiculous braid, the acid-vomiting Zeitgeist is sucked into a wood cutter and pulped, and Crews' Bedlam smashes headlong into a bus. It was completely out of left field and an utter laugh riot, so even though Crews had no further participation in the film, his cameo was a damned good one, but it wasn't even the most striking one in that madcap sequence, which brings me to...
4) The "IS THAT WHO I THINK IT WAS?" cameo: when the members of X-Force who aren't named Deadpool or Domino meet their grisly demise, one member, the Vanisher, who up until this point has, well, basically vanished, lands on some electric wires and is predictably fried to death, at which point he is, for a split-second, revealed to be Brad Pitt. Now, when I saw this, at first I thought I was seeing a lookalike, like Karl Urban or something, but later the end credits revealed that it was, actually, Brad Pitt, and a quick Google search (which also turned up the aforementioned Damon cameo) confirmed it. It was quite a coup; Pitt may not be quite the A-lister he once was, but he's never appeared in a comic-book based movie before and considering that he was one of the actors approached for the role of Cable but had to turn it down, it was nice that Fox was able to at least get an entertaining cameo out of him.
5) The "Best Use of Recycled Footage" cameo: By now, I think Fox has all but given up on their X-Men timeline making any sense, so when Deadpool walks onto the climactic scene of X-Men Origins: Wolverine in which Hugh Jackman's Wolverine meets the 'Dead Pool' for the first time, and shoots the godawful version of himself in the head, there's no point in asking if it makes any sense. What matters is that it's hilarious, though it was a shame they couldn't have filmed any new footage with Hugh Jackman.
6) The "Erasing Bad Decisions" cameo: It's certainly a stretch to call an appearance by Ryan Reynolds in a movie starring (and written by) Ryan Reynolds a cameo, but really, when "Ryan Reynolds" eagerly sits down to read a little script called "Green Lantern" only to be shot through the head by none other than Deadpool, it's a truly epic moment, on par with Thor arriving in Wakanda in Avengers: Infinity War (Well, not really, but it was really funny).
Truth be told, Deadpool 2 may have waxed cliche on more than one occasion, but it really was a brilliant move to work all those cameos into the film; they gave it yet another bit of quirkiness that no other superhero/comic-book based movie can claim to have.
Sunday, May 20, 2018
Bigger, More Violent, More Infantile and...More Prosaic: A Review of Deadpool 2
directed by David Leitch
written by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Ryan Reynolds
After the relatively micro-budgeted, ultraviolent superhero...errr...superantihero movie Deadpool managed to make nearly three quarters of a billion dollars in global box office (without China!) two years ago, a sequel was all but guaranteed. It was guaranteed that they would come back with a bigger budget, more violence and even more superhero-movie lampooning than you could shake a bundle of MAD magazines at.
What wasn't entirely expected was that the sequel a movie so fond of skewering narrative cliches would turn up with quite a few of its own.
After the events of the first movie, Wade Wilson aka Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds, gamely donning the red tights and human raisin makeup again), spends his days gleefully killing the scum of the earth such as human traffickers and his nights romancing the love his life Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), who wants to start a family with him.
When tragedy strikes (more on that in a minute) Wade finds himself in a funk, but the X-Man Colossus (Stefan Kapicic and a lot of really bad CGI) isn't about to let him lie around feeling sorry for himself; he tries (again) to recruit him for the X-Men, and their first mission is to rescue a young mutant, Russell Collins (Julian Dennison) an orphan who is currently in a standoff with the police. When Deadpool learns that Russell has been suffering abuse at the hands of his caregivers, including the headmaster (Eddie Marsan), he reacts violently and as a result both he and Russell are sent to a prison for mutants known as the "Ice Box." While they are there, the prison is invaded by the time-traveling cyborg Cable (Josh Brolin) whose sole mission is to kill Russell, who only just escapes with his life as Deadpool takes on Cable. Deadpool then finds new purpose in his life: to save that of Russell, and recruits a whole crew of super-powered people, including mutants Bedlam (Terry Crews), Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgaard), Shatterstar (Lewis Tan), Vanisher (it's a surprise!), Domino (Zazie Beetz) and the non-super-powered Peter (Rob Delaney) whom he dubs "X-Force" to help him in his newly-adopted mission. But Cable, whose grudge against the future version of Russell is deeply personal, will be extremely tough to stop.
It's hard to elaborate on how I feel about this movie without going into spoiler territory, but suffice it to say that in their efforts to put more "heart" into the movie, the film's writers have become guilty of some of the very cliches they ridicule. That said, the movie has plenty of the things made its predecessor enjoyable, most notably the humor, though a lot of the gags feel like retreads of old jokes, like the severed/regenerating hand joke from the first movie, which gets a somewhat more disturbing update for this edition. I found one particular series of jokes particularly enjoyable but I won't spoil it for anyone.
As for the action, this film is a bit like last year's John Wick 2 in that there was really only so much neck-snapping, bullet-riddling wanton murder, I could watch before I started feeling a little queasy. Violence porn was never really my thing, and nowadays, even less so with school shootings in the United States becoming a startlingly regular thing and extra-judicial killings here on my home soil continuing almost unabated. Additionally disappointing was the fact that Leitch, who, with John Wick co-director Chad Stahelski actually started reintroducing well-choreographed, well-shot fight sequences into action movies, is surprisingly guilty of the rapid-cut editing style that obscures actual fighting and which has been a bane on action cinema since Paul Greengrass popularized it over ten years ago with the Bourne movies. I would not have expected this from a champion of old-school movie fighting like Leitch. It's not nearly as bad as the Taken movies, but definitely not up to John Wick standards.
The good news is that the film is pretty solid on the acting front; Reynolds is still as charming in the role as ever, and new additions to the cast Julian Dennison, Zazie Beetz and Josh Brolin turn in some truly entertaining performances, with Beetz being the standout for me, even though Brolin's obviously the most high-profile addition to the cast. There are a couple of hilarious cameos that help spice things up. Overall, despite its flaws and the inevitable pitfalls of being a sequel, the film still manages to entertain.
I just hope they use a little more imagination next time around.
6.5/10
written by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Ryan Reynolds
After the relatively micro-budgeted, ultraviolent superhero...errr...superantihero movie Deadpool managed to make nearly three quarters of a billion dollars in global box office (without China!) two years ago, a sequel was all but guaranteed. It was guaranteed that they would come back with a bigger budget, more violence and even more superhero-movie lampooning than you could shake a bundle of MAD magazines at.
What wasn't entirely expected was that the sequel a movie so fond of skewering narrative cliches would turn up with quite a few of its own.
After the events of the first movie, Wade Wilson aka Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds, gamely donning the red tights and human raisin makeup again), spends his days gleefully killing the scum of the earth such as human traffickers and his nights romancing the love his life Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), who wants to start a family with him.
When tragedy strikes (more on that in a minute) Wade finds himself in a funk, but the X-Man Colossus (Stefan Kapicic and a lot of really bad CGI) isn't about to let him lie around feeling sorry for himself; he tries (again) to recruit him for the X-Men, and their first mission is to rescue a young mutant, Russell Collins (Julian Dennison) an orphan who is currently in a standoff with the police. When Deadpool learns that Russell has been suffering abuse at the hands of his caregivers, including the headmaster (Eddie Marsan), he reacts violently and as a result both he and Russell are sent to a prison for mutants known as the "Ice Box." While they are there, the prison is invaded by the time-traveling cyborg Cable (Josh Brolin) whose sole mission is to kill Russell, who only just escapes with his life as Deadpool takes on Cable. Deadpool then finds new purpose in his life: to save that of Russell, and recruits a whole crew of super-powered people, including mutants Bedlam (Terry Crews), Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgaard), Shatterstar (Lewis Tan), Vanisher (it's a surprise!), Domino (Zazie Beetz) and the non-super-powered Peter (Rob Delaney) whom he dubs "X-Force" to help him in his newly-adopted mission. But Cable, whose grudge against the future version of Russell is deeply personal, will be extremely tough to stop.
It's hard to elaborate on how I feel about this movie without going into spoiler territory, but suffice it to say that in their efforts to put more "heart" into the movie, the film's writers have become guilty of some of the very cliches they ridicule. That said, the movie has plenty of the things made its predecessor enjoyable, most notably the humor, though a lot of the gags feel like retreads of old jokes, like the severed/regenerating hand joke from the first movie, which gets a somewhat more disturbing update for this edition. I found one particular series of jokes particularly enjoyable but I won't spoil it for anyone.
As for the action, this film is a bit like last year's John Wick 2 in that there was really only so much neck-snapping, bullet-riddling wanton murder, I could watch before I started feeling a little queasy. Violence porn was never really my thing, and nowadays, even less so with school shootings in the United States becoming a startlingly regular thing and extra-judicial killings here on my home soil continuing almost unabated. Additionally disappointing was the fact that Leitch, who, with John Wick co-director Chad Stahelski actually started reintroducing well-choreographed, well-shot fight sequences into action movies, is surprisingly guilty of the rapid-cut editing style that obscures actual fighting and which has been a bane on action cinema since Paul Greengrass popularized it over ten years ago with the Bourne movies. I would not have expected this from a champion of old-school movie fighting like Leitch. It's not nearly as bad as the Taken movies, but definitely not up to John Wick standards.
The good news is that the film is pretty solid on the acting front; Reynolds is still as charming in the role as ever, and new additions to the cast Julian Dennison, Zazie Beetz and Josh Brolin turn in some truly entertaining performances, with Beetz being the standout for me, even though Brolin's obviously the most high-profile addition to the cast. There are a couple of hilarious cameos that help spice things up. Overall, despite its flaws and the inevitable pitfalls of being a sequel, the film still manages to entertain.
I just hope they use a little more imagination next time around.
6.5/10
Thursday, May 3, 2018
(SPOILER ALERT) So Who's Getting the "Logan Treatment" in Avengers 4? (MAJOR SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR)
SPOILER ALERT FOR AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
Last chance...
Okay, let's go.
Let's be honest; right after Thanos snapped his fingers in Avengers: Infinity War and caused half of the population of the universe to disintegrate, including most of the Marvel superheroes gathered in the film, I'm fairly certain only the members of the audience who had never picked up a comic book in their lives, or had never seen a single Marvel Cinematic Universe film truly believed that they were dead for good. The rest of us knew better. With respect to the four characters who died before then, however, even some seasoned comic-book veterans may not be quite so sure about their eventual return, and we all have one movie to thank for that: Twentieth Century Fox's Logan, in which a major Hollywood studio killed off arguably one of their most valuable intellectual properties, played by a bona fide superstar in Hugh Jackman, all in the service of a genuinely moving story.
While Marvel and Disney rattled off one box-office hit after another, they could never quite escape the criticism that their films had no real consequences or stakes, and that people would always be back for the next installment. It was even the case after they had quite clearly killed off Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron. For some reason, some people thought that Superman's death in Batman vs. Superman, which was going to quite obviously be undone in Justice League, carried more weight than the ideological and emotional rift that had torn apart the Avengers in Captain America: Civil War. Such was the reputation Marvel had garnered for itself.
It might have remained that way, as well, had Logan not shown us what was possible. Sure, it was produced not by the family-friendly Marvel but by Twentieth Century Fox, who also brought us the potty-mouthed, ultra-violent Deadpool, but it showed us that even studio execs could have the balls to put the kibosh on cash-cow characters. As a result, while there are a number of deaths which will undoubtedly be undone in next year's as-yet untitled Avengers sequel, it's now treated as an inevitability that there will be definitive casualties, most likely from among the original six Avengers.
And so, as we await the final chapter in the ongoing saga of Thanos, I can't help but wonder aloud who will get the "Logan" treatment from among the six original team members.
Conveniently, just about all of the original Avengers live in, or come from extremely dysfunctional situations. Captain America is a man out of time, Iron Man had his parents murdered by a brainwashed assassin, and he was held hostage by terrorists, Hulk has a nine-foot, super strong monster living inside him, Black Widow has an extremely checkered past as a former Soviet assassin (though I honestly have a hard time doing the math on that one, considering that the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, when her character was still seven years old, according to Captain America: The Winter Soldier), and Thor's lost his mom, dad, brother AND the evil, murderous sister he only just met one movie ago, as well as most of his people in a huge fireball. The closest thing they have to a "normal" character is Hawkeye, who's also got quite a bit of blood on his hands, though at least he's got a family.
Of the six, only Thor and Hawkeye have several people in their lives who need them. Thor is now King of what's left of Asgard, while Hawkeye has a wife and three kids. By no means does this mean they're safe from getting "Logan"ed (and in fact it might for even more compelling drama if Hawkeye gives his life to save his kids from the ultimate destruction of the world, or if Thor lays down his life to save what remains of his people), but it does give the filmmakers some incentive to have them survive the carnage ahead. If it were up to me, Thor and Hawkeye would live, though Thor would "retire" from superheroing to help his people rebuild. Hawkeye's already sort of "retired" to take care of his family, so he could go back to that, especially since Avengers 4 will introduce a freakin' cosmic superhero and a guy with a bow and arrow will just be a little too out-of-place.
For my money, I'd say Iron Man, Cap and Black Widow are basically toast. In the first Avengers, Iron Man seals his bona fide hero credentials by showing willingness to make the supreme sacrifice and blow himself up along with the Chitauri fleet. There'd be something fitting about giving him the chance to make that sacrifice one more time, and for him to take it. Cap is a lonely, old man whose old flame died two years ago and who basically doesn't have anyone or anything left in his life to fight for except "what's right." Black Widow, who will never be able to settle down and have kids, having been sterilized (as was established in Avengers: Age of Ultron), and who has a lifetime of bloodshed she'd probably like to redeem herself for, was all ready and set to bite the big one in A:AoU, and, I'm guessing, has been for some time.
I'm not sure Marvel would want to kiss Bruce Banner goodbye, considering that there has yet to be a definitive, truly satisfactory standalone Hulk movie, but at minimum I suspect this is the last time Mark Ruffalo will be playing this character.
So I'm betting at least two, with an outside shot of three, of the original Avengers will get to ride off into the sunset come May 2019, though really, thanks to Logan you can't really be sure of anything.
On an unrelated note: one major upside to all the death in Avengers: Infinity War is that for the first time in the whole series, the team's name actually makes sense, as they now have people to avenge.
Last chance...
Okay, let's go.
Let's be honest; right after Thanos snapped his fingers in Avengers: Infinity War and caused half of the population of the universe to disintegrate, including most of the Marvel superheroes gathered in the film, I'm fairly certain only the members of the audience who had never picked up a comic book in their lives, or had never seen a single Marvel Cinematic Universe film truly believed that they were dead for good. The rest of us knew better. With respect to the four characters who died before then, however, even some seasoned comic-book veterans may not be quite so sure about their eventual return, and we all have one movie to thank for that: Twentieth Century Fox's Logan, in which a major Hollywood studio killed off arguably one of their most valuable intellectual properties, played by a bona fide superstar in Hugh Jackman, all in the service of a genuinely moving story.
While Marvel and Disney rattled off one box-office hit after another, they could never quite escape the criticism that their films had no real consequences or stakes, and that people would always be back for the next installment. It was even the case after they had quite clearly killed off Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron. For some reason, some people thought that Superman's death in Batman vs. Superman, which was going to quite obviously be undone in Justice League, carried more weight than the ideological and emotional rift that had torn apart the Avengers in Captain America: Civil War. Such was the reputation Marvel had garnered for itself.
It might have remained that way, as well, had Logan not shown us what was possible. Sure, it was produced not by the family-friendly Marvel but by Twentieth Century Fox, who also brought us the potty-mouthed, ultra-violent Deadpool, but it showed us that even studio execs could have the balls to put the kibosh on cash-cow characters. As a result, while there are a number of deaths which will undoubtedly be undone in next year's as-yet untitled Avengers sequel, it's now treated as an inevitability that there will be definitive casualties, most likely from among the original six Avengers.
And so, as we await the final chapter in the ongoing saga of Thanos, I can't help but wonder aloud who will get the "Logan" treatment from among the six original team members.
Conveniently, just about all of the original Avengers live in, or come from extremely dysfunctional situations. Captain America is a man out of time, Iron Man had his parents murdered by a brainwashed assassin, and he was held hostage by terrorists, Hulk has a nine-foot, super strong monster living inside him, Black Widow has an extremely checkered past as a former Soviet assassin (though I honestly have a hard time doing the math on that one, considering that the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, when her character was still seven years old, according to Captain America: The Winter Soldier), and Thor's lost his mom, dad, brother AND the evil, murderous sister he only just met one movie ago, as well as most of his people in a huge fireball. The closest thing they have to a "normal" character is Hawkeye, who's also got quite a bit of blood on his hands, though at least he's got a family.
Of the six, only Thor and Hawkeye have several people in their lives who need them. Thor is now King of what's left of Asgard, while Hawkeye has a wife and three kids. By no means does this mean they're safe from getting "Logan"ed (and in fact it might for even more compelling drama if Hawkeye gives his life to save his kids from the ultimate destruction of the world, or if Thor lays down his life to save what remains of his people), but it does give the filmmakers some incentive to have them survive the carnage ahead. If it were up to me, Thor and Hawkeye would live, though Thor would "retire" from superheroing to help his people rebuild. Hawkeye's already sort of "retired" to take care of his family, so he could go back to that, especially since Avengers 4 will introduce a freakin' cosmic superhero and a guy with a bow and arrow will just be a little too out-of-place.
For my money, I'd say Iron Man, Cap and Black Widow are basically toast. In the first Avengers, Iron Man seals his bona fide hero credentials by showing willingness to make the supreme sacrifice and blow himself up along with the Chitauri fleet. There'd be something fitting about giving him the chance to make that sacrifice one more time, and for him to take it. Cap is a lonely, old man whose old flame died two years ago and who basically doesn't have anyone or anything left in his life to fight for except "what's right." Black Widow, who will never be able to settle down and have kids, having been sterilized (as was established in Avengers: Age of Ultron), and who has a lifetime of bloodshed she'd probably like to redeem herself for, was all ready and set to bite the big one in A:AoU, and, I'm guessing, has been for some time.
I'm not sure Marvel would want to kiss Bruce Banner goodbye, considering that there has yet to be a definitive, truly satisfactory standalone Hulk movie, but at minimum I suspect this is the last time Mark Ruffalo will be playing this character.
So I'm betting at least two, with an outside shot of three, of the original Avengers will get to ride off into the sunset come May 2019, though really, thanks to Logan you can't really be sure of anything.
On an unrelated note: one major upside to all the death in Avengers: Infinity War is that for the first time in the whole series, the team's name actually makes sense, as they now have people to avenge.
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
(SPOILER ALERT) How "Avengers: Infinity War" May Have Hurt "Ant-Man and the Wasp" Even as It's Given Another Upcoming Film a Huge Boost (SPOILER ALERT)
MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR
LAST CHANCE!
Okay, anyone who's seen Avengers: Infinity War knows by now that the film begins (and ends) with the death and apparent death of several characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including four deaths at the hands of Thanos and/or his henchmen and nearly a dozen deaths that happen instantaneously when Thanos, having assembled all of the Infinity Stones, snaps his fingers and extinguishes half of all life in the universe. The film ends with Marvel's beloved end-credits stinger, with a crumbling-to-dust Nick Fury using an old-school pager to make an emergency call, the recipient of which is identified solely by a symbol that flashes on the tiny display of the pager.
Marvel Comics geeks will instantly recognize that symbol as the insignia borne by Carol Danvers, also known as Captain Marvel.
Marvel Studios has therefore strongly suggested, if not definitively established that Captain Marvel will be key to Thanos' defeat in next year's sequel to A:IW and has, in doing so, has virtually guaranteed that a significant percentage of the tens of millions of movie viewers all around the world whose patronage powered A:IW to a record-crushing $641 million opening weekend (without China!) will want to check out Captain Marvel's solo film which is due out in March of next year. While the Marvel badge has, over the years, proved to be the closest thing to a guarantee of box-office success, this little tidbit has all but guaranteed generous box-office returns for Marvel's first female-anchored superhero film, assuming the film itself is a decent product. Such is the strength of the Marvel marketing machine that they they have, in general, managed to sell the heck out of even the weakest of their movies (I'm looking at you, Thor: The Dark World). That's not the big surprise.
What, to me, is surprising, is how A:IW with basically one throwaway line in the script may have subtly, ever-so-slightly undermined the chances for the breakout box-office success of Ant-Man and the Wasp, the sequel to the 2015 superhero/heist hybrid.
One of the characters mentions that neither Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye nor Scott Lang's Ant-man is in the film about a third of the way through the movie, citing the fact that they were incarcerated at the end of Captain America: Civil War and had to cut a deal to stay free, and no mention is ever made of them again. It actually makes quite a bit of sense in the context of the story because Hawkeye and Ant-Man are the only two Avengers characters with children. From a viewer's perspective, though, this line basically declares "these characters don't advance the overall narrative." In Hawkeye's case, this isn't a problem; I'm sure Jeremy Renner appreciated the time off from dangling from wires and other bruising stunts, plus the fact that he doesn't have a standalone movie to sell. In Ant-Man's case it wouldn't have been much of a problem either, if it wasn't for the fact that Avengers: Infinity War delivered a series of emotional gut punches that left much of the audience reeling and a heck of a cliffhanger. The takeaway from the A:IW script, however, is that Ant-Man and the Wasp will have no impact whatsoever on this story.
Does that mean it won't sell? Of course not; the first Ant-Man movie made half a billion dollars with barely any connective tissue to the ongoing narrative at the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I'm sure the core audience will be back for more of Scott Lang, but what about the millions of new viewers won over by Black Panther and bowled over by Avengers: Infinity War, and who will no doubt be eagerly anticipating the next chapter in the story? They've just been told that Ant-Man and the Wasp will basically have nothing to do with A:IW.
In truth, it's to Marvel's credit that they were willing to leave all that money on the table rather than force some kind of connection to the larger narrative; they're letting Ant-Man and the Wasp stand or fall on its own merits. It's just a bit surprising considering that just about every one of the 18 films leading into Avengers: Infinity War was tied into it somehow, to see Marvel categorically declaring that this one stands on its own. Perhaps it's the start of a new era of confidence in their product where they content to let movies stand on their own and not be inextricably woven into one big meganarrative, who knows?
LAST CHANCE!
Okay, anyone who's seen Avengers: Infinity War knows by now that the film begins (and ends) with the death and apparent death of several characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including four deaths at the hands of Thanos and/or his henchmen and nearly a dozen deaths that happen instantaneously when Thanos, having assembled all of the Infinity Stones, snaps his fingers and extinguishes half of all life in the universe. The film ends with Marvel's beloved end-credits stinger, with a crumbling-to-dust Nick Fury using an old-school pager to make an emergency call, the recipient of which is identified solely by a symbol that flashes on the tiny display of the pager.
Marvel Comics geeks will instantly recognize that symbol as the insignia borne by Carol Danvers, also known as Captain Marvel.
Marvel Studios has therefore strongly suggested, if not definitively established that Captain Marvel will be key to Thanos' defeat in next year's sequel to A:IW and has, in doing so, has virtually guaranteed that a significant percentage of the tens of millions of movie viewers all around the world whose patronage powered A:IW to a record-crushing $641 million opening weekend (without China!) will want to check out Captain Marvel's solo film which is due out in March of next year. While the Marvel badge has, over the years, proved to be the closest thing to a guarantee of box-office success, this little tidbit has all but guaranteed generous box-office returns for Marvel's first female-anchored superhero film, assuming the film itself is a decent product. Such is the strength of the Marvel marketing machine that they they have, in general, managed to sell the heck out of even the weakest of their movies (I'm looking at you, Thor: The Dark World). That's not the big surprise.
What, to me, is surprising, is how A:IW with basically one throwaway line in the script may have subtly, ever-so-slightly undermined the chances for the breakout box-office success of Ant-Man and the Wasp, the sequel to the 2015 superhero/heist hybrid.
One of the characters mentions that neither Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye nor Scott Lang's Ant-man is in the film about a third of the way through the movie, citing the fact that they were incarcerated at the end of Captain America: Civil War and had to cut a deal to stay free, and no mention is ever made of them again. It actually makes quite a bit of sense in the context of the story because Hawkeye and Ant-Man are the only two Avengers characters with children. From a viewer's perspective, though, this line basically declares "these characters don't advance the overall narrative." In Hawkeye's case, this isn't a problem; I'm sure Jeremy Renner appreciated the time off from dangling from wires and other bruising stunts, plus the fact that he doesn't have a standalone movie to sell. In Ant-Man's case it wouldn't have been much of a problem either, if it wasn't for the fact that Avengers: Infinity War delivered a series of emotional gut punches that left much of the audience reeling and a heck of a cliffhanger. The takeaway from the A:IW script, however, is that Ant-Man and the Wasp will have no impact whatsoever on this story.
Does that mean it won't sell? Of course not; the first Ant-Man movie made half a billion dollars with barely any connective tissue to the ongoing narrative at the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I'm sure the core audience will be back for more of Scott Lang, but what about the millions of new viewers won over by Black Panther and bowled over by Avengers: Infinity War, and who will no doubt be eagerly anticipating the next chapter in the story? They've just been told that Ant-Man and the Wasp will basically have nothing to do with A:IW.
In truth, it's to Marvel's credit that they were willing to leave all that money on the table rather than force some kind of connection to the larger narrative; they're letting Ant-Man and the Wasp stand or fall on its own merits. It's just a bit surprising considering that just about every one of the 18 films leading into Avengers: Infinity War was tied into it somehow, to see Marvel categorically declaring that this one stands on its own. Perhaps it's the start of a new era of confidence in their product where they content to let movies stand on their own and not be inextricably woven into one big meganarrative, who knows?
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