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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Just came back, and I thought it was pretty good. Majors was okay, but I don't see him carrying the entire MCU as so many are treating him as doing, especially after THAT scene. Suprisingly topical at some points, with Cassie getting arrested during a protest for shrinking cop squad cars who were evicting a homeless camp from a SF park due to the Blip making rental prices even worse than in RL.

Or when Hank discovers his experimental ant colony due to time dilation in the Quantum Realm created a Class II Civilization on the Kardashev scale
Hank Pym: I know socialism is a charged word, but...
 
Vympel said:

Does the entire movie look like this? This shit is horrifically ugly. Impossible to take seriously.

Also, do all of their superheroes just have the shitty ass disappearing nanotech helmets now?

EDIT: lmaoooo come on man nooooo you can't be serious


View: https://twitter.com/soonrightaway/status/1626294047949176835?s=20
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Having been to see it, yes. It's galling that they had Bill Pope as DoP for this and made such an ugly picture. It's kind of an achievement.

Also, not that the MCU is flush with great shots, but Kang was really poorly served by the camerawork. Majors works hard to supply grandeur and gravitas, but the filmmaking is doing very little to bolster him.
 
Feels like we're getting into a mirror flip of the MCU - where before we had good films with terrible villains, now we're getting good villains in terrible films
 
Flectarn said:
I mean, once it's become an established tech that exists for avengers level heros, why wouldn't they?
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More importantly, now the directors can have their cake and eat it too with their A list celebrities.

Edit : Of course the big thing is that it looks pretty lazy. Where the early Iron Man suit gave the impression that all the bits could actually fit into each other allowing the suit open or close up that way, these just feels like speed blurs and visual noise being used as slight of hand.
 
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I don't remember what media introduced folding helmets to me (it was probably Dead Space 2), but boy, do I come to dislike it. I really appreciate how the DS Remake has Isaac just take off his helmet normally.

I also can't believe Star Wars of all things has Mando keep his helmet on 95% of the time.
 
silentorphan said:
Darth Vader was basically a suit of armor for the nearly entire original trilogy, and no one complained about that guy.
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Because there was in fact a personality associated with that suit of armor. Fett was literally just a guy who followed vader around and looked menacing. His entire appeal was his look and the sense of mystery.

This is the sum of his OT lines -

  • "As you wish." - Boba Fett to: Vader
  • "What if he doesn't survive? He's worth a lot to me." - Boba Fett re: Han Solo
  • "He's no good to me dead." - Boba Fett
  • "Put Captain Solo in the cargo hold." - Boba Fett
 
Triggerhappy said:
More importantly, now the directors can have their cake and eat it too with their A list celebrities.

Edit : Of course the big thing is that it looks pretty lazy. Where the early Iron Man suit gave the impression that all the bits could actually fit into each other allowing the suit open or close up that way, these just feels like speed blurs and visual noise being used as slight of hand.
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Goes with the effects pipeline too. Back in Iron Man 2 they could spare the attention to make the suit look all neat, but the 2018 version looks noticeably worse because they couldn't give it all the attention it needed what with most of the sets and many of the costumes being wholly CG.

Incidentally this film was worked on by seven different VFX studios and there are still effects in places which feel unfinished. Compounded by Marvel's refusal to ever colour grade, which just makes it feel like you're watching through a sort of grey haze and none of the colour pops like it ought to. The muted aesthetic is actively at odds with the tone and the genre they're cosplaying.

On top of that, the film's flourishes all feel lifted from better films and The Rise of Skywalker.
 
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bluntblade said:
Incidentally this film was worked on by seven different VFX studios and there are still effects in places which feel unfinished. Also Marvel's refusal to ever colour grade just makes it feel like you're watching through a sort of grey haze and none of the colour pops like it ought to. The muted aesthetic is actively at odds with the tome and thengenre they're cosplaying.
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Yeah, learning about color grading, even as a layman, is pretty wild. Basically Marvel's 'house style' is just the default settings for the digital cameras XD

It's like saying your art style is 'landscape' not, 'I am a landscape artist' but like a landscape preset in photoshop.
 
Triggerhappy said:
Yeah, learning about color grading, even as a layman, is pretty wild. Basically Marvel's 'house style' is just the default settings for the digital cameras XD

It's like saying your art style is 'landscape' not, 'I am a landscape artist' but like a landscape preset in photoshop.
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I think it actually works against the realism they're going for for me, nowadays. It feels like footage rather than film, in a way.

Plus once you're in a wild sci-fi world, you probably want brighter colours to fit that sense of other-ness. There's a reason Pacific Rim did that.
 
bluntblade said:
I think it actually works against the realism they're going for for me, nowadays. It feels like footage rather than film, in a way.

Plus once you're in a wild sci-fi world, you probably want brighter colours to fit that sense of other-ness. There's a reason Pacific Rim did that.
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I mean, cinematographers have been using color grading as a standard tool in the toolkit since at least the Matrix. I think a few movies did it before that, but that was definitely where it became an industry standard. It's kinda strange how the MCU just . . . doesn't.
 
Triggerhappy said:
I mean, cinematographers have been using color grading as a standard tool in the toolkit since at least the Matrix. I think a few movies did it before that, but that was definitely where it became an industry standard. It's kinda strange how the MCU just . . . doesn't.
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I guess wasn't previously necessary when people shot on film (though you get stuff like silver retention on Se7en used to enhance the picture) but it seems to have become a thing to not really grade much now. I keep seeing the D&D trailer and thinking that it should pop more. Though that often seems like other franchises taking a cue from Marvel (particularly Disney remakes post-Cinderella, and SW post-TRoS though that's also Rogue One mimicry).

It is maddening though - when I still made kayaking videos, I learned to grade a little bit on the last few just to give them some punch - but I guess that dull doesn't tend to provoke complaints. Whereas more colourful films are more readily criticised, especially for being "immature." And of course the most notorious comic-book movie failure is Joel Schumacher's Batman films, which were garish. So I suppose that above all, the MCU is scared of looking like that. And whenever something like Pacific Rim, Speed Racer or Aquaman comes out and has aesthetics which polarise people, the urge to look muted is reinforced.
 
Flectarn said:
I mean, once it's become an established tech that exists for avengers level heros, why wouldn't they?
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It just sucks. Like having a real mask that the actor can't just magically disappear makes the suit and the performance feel more grounded and also allows for things like battle damage. The original Ant-Man's pop-open-mask was great. Now it feels incredibly insubstantial and results in absurdity like actors throwing off their masks on and off multiple times a scene like they do above. The artifice is super obvious.

Generally the entire nano-tech thing sucks ass. Iron Man was never worse when he got that crap. All sense of 'Iron' was replaced with just magical nonsense.
 
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Vympel said:
It just sucks. Like having a real mask that the actor can't just magically disappear makes the suit and the performance feel more grounded and also allows for things like battle damage. The original Ant-Man's pop-open-mask was great. Now it feels incredibly insubstantial and results in absurdity like actors throwing off their masks on and off multiple times a scene like they do above. The artifice is super obvious.

Generally the entire nano-tech thing sucks ass. Iron Man was never worse when he got that crap. All sense of 'Iron' was replaced with just magical nonsense.
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And it's one more thing which they're having to do VFX work on instead of all the other stuff which needs attention.

Aesthetically, Iron Man loses that sort of boxy appeal his look is built on. Circling back to Boba Fett, he and Din would not look better if their Beskar was nanotech and fitted like lycra. There's a certain heft which is just pleasing to the eye, and it means there's a little more variety than if everyone is in spandex.
 
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Iron Man's nanotech is fine in a kind of overall sense, it's the logical culmination of where his tech was driving towards since quite early on

but the execution in infinity war and endgame was very inconsistent, sometimes it looked decent and sometimes it looked real bad. it's at its best when its like this almost alien thing that shifts and flows around him like the fight on titan

also the quantum family helmets are surely quantum techn right? like they're not a shifting cloud of nanoparticles they're just shrinking away :V
 
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