Ant-Man: The Kang Era Begins

Hi, I'm Sam Ervin, and you're listening to Movie Meltdown. It's showtime. The following feature has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences and parental discretion is advised. Our nuclear reactor pumping out one million kilowatts of power.

What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown. I'm Brian. And I'm George. And we're coming to you live via digital recording from the Oddity Studios for another in the Super Series. The never-ending, we don't go very long without another installment of the Super Series.

Huzzah! So in thinking about that earlier, I was like, it wasn't that long ago since we sat and talked about a movie. But like we used to, it timed out so that like between the last movie to the next movie, a whole new series would come out and we'd talk about that series. I was thinking today, I was like, when's the last like real series? We've had two one-offs.

But like, was She-Hulk the last? Yeah, it was like She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel and before that was. Moon Knight. Moon Knight, yeah.

So I was like, I went through those three in my head and I was like, those are all a long time ago. Like, She-Hulk wasn't that long ago, but we talked about it already. So I was like, I guess they're... Secret Invasion's next up for the series. And even that, I don't think they've pinned down a start date.

Yeah, well, that's the thing. We've only seen the trailer for that one. But most recently, we've seen, like, there's a Disney Plus commercial. We've seen some new footage for Loki. Yeah.

So we know season two. We know that's coming. And we definitely, yeah. Not to jump ahead yet. Yeah, we'll talk about that in a bit.

But yeah, I mean, there's a bunch of series supposedly this year. And the new, what's the animated craziness? That should be soon. What if? Yeah, the what if should be coming soon too.

And supposedly also X-Men 97, which is the sequel series for the 90s X-Men animated series. Which, yeah, that was the maybe most beloved of all X-Men. As time's gone on, even the 90s movies, a little of the shine has come on. Yeah. And lately, well, definitely the last one.

Kind of the last two. So, yeah, I think that's the return of people actually embracing X-Men. I will look forward to seeing... what the MCU does with the X-Men because I've never been 100% satisfied with any of the X-Men movies. Mostly because they do kind of what the cartoon did, which was you don't start with the OG team. You kind of just pick and choose people throughout the years.

Oh, we got to have Wolverine on there because all the kids love the Wolverine. I mean, from a business standpoint, I understand. But thankfully he's retired now and we won't see that Jackman back playing him ever again. No. I've already seen the pictures.

That's not entirely true. Well, I knew that even when Logan, I was like, they'll rope him in for something. I don't know how, I don't know why, but they'll get him back. Like he still, he has to love it. It made his entire life, you know, it's like. you were a nobody really like, don't get me wrong.

I'm sure he would have been very happy in his hometown doing musicals because that's his thing. But, but that changed his career. And I mean, he got to do so many things because of that. So, and he's very appreciative of the fandom for Wolverine and loves those folks just as much as he loves the greatest show people and whatever else. So that's, that's really cool.

There's, I've been in a long history of actors who get in genre filmmaking or TV or whatnot, and they get known for a character despite other projects they've been in, and they have a hatred for their fan base. They put money in your pocket, ass. Turn their back on it. Stuff like that. It's like, come on.

Some handled it well, and some... did not. I don't know. It just seems like maybe folks are better trained these days or better prepared because now it just seems like if anybody likes me, that's cool. I think the business has changed so much at this point. Everybody's fighting to find their footing, period.

If you need to do a different type of thing. Again, if you need to go from doing blockbuster action movies to musicals, you do it. If you need to start your own YouTube channel or Get on freaking TikTok. That's what you do. Yeah, it's like, that's what you do.

So I think everybody sort of opened up their options at this point. One of my favorite things I saw on social media from the Golden Globes, you may have seen this too, is that F. Murray Abraham is walking the red carpet because he got nominated for White Lotus, right? So he's walking the red carpet and people start cheering. And at first he's kind of like, yeah, he's just walking.

And then he realized, like, they're getting louder. And so he kind of turns them. And it's this wonderful real-time realization. Like, oh, you guys are cheering for me. And he was just so delighted with it.

He's kind of like, you know, kind of doing a little turn. Just enjoying the moment. It's like all these people on the red carpet are screaming for him. Yeah. And it's this great kind of career resurgence with basically, of course, Moon Knight and the now White Lotus.

He's kind of had this nice little resurgence being in stuff people care about and showing off like, hey, this guy's always been a great actor and thanks for bringing him back. Yeah, it's nice when people still seem somewhat grounded to him. Or at least they've been through that. Maybe in the mid-80s he would have been like, of course they're cheering for me. But, you know, you take a couple of shots over the years and it changes your perspective maybe.

It was just such a delight to see him light up and just realize that they were cheering for him. It's like, man, that's got to feel good. So yeah, that was my normal go-to, which I guess we can't really talk about. The most recent series that hasn't happened yet. I'm patiently waiting.

We're supposed to be getting possibly Agatha, Covenant of Chaos towards the end of the year. Possibly Wakanda Forever. I saw the promos, and I'm like, they're showing clips from all kinds of stuff. But I'm like, no real dates on a lot of it. Well, I know Echo was supposed to be this year, but I heard there were some production issues that pushed it back.

Of course, they just released a teaser poster for the Captain Marvel sequel, which informed us that it will not be coming out in July like we thought. It's now November. So, like, okay. But. To me, though, my wife was like, oh, is that something wrong?

I was like, I don't know, because look at their schedules. You had Ant-Man in February. It was packed, I mean, yeah. Marvel's packed at the beginning of the year, and then basically after the summer, okay, there's the Kraven, the Hunter movie, which is another Sony, hey, let's do a Spider-Man villain movie without Spider-Man in it. Let's do a.

Thing that we'll forget we made in a year, let alone the audiences have already forgotten about it. You know, it's like Craven's a cool character and nothing against Aaron Taylor Johnson, but no fucking way. He keeps trying and nothing. I mean, for somebody who like has been in so many big, amazing projects, every time I see him and go, Wait, who's that guy again? Yeah, I know.

I watched that entire freaking bullet train movie and was like, who is that guy? Like I got to the end and then I was like, oh my God, no wonder he looked familiar the whole movie. Yeah, I know. It's like, he's just so. He's a talented guy, but he's kind of got one of those, like I can blend any, like he's a good looking dude, but he can also like subterfuge anywhere.

Yeah. And this is why they keep killing you off in your giant. platform movies and I mean he's been in such huge attempting to be blockbusters I mean from Marvel to Godzilla they're trying to cram you into any big budget thing and the audience are just like nah I mean. He had both the kickass movies too so those are based on see that was. The only thing people originally knew him for and then like he kind of bumped up a little bit and he's like oh not this low budget superhero knockoff thing we're gonna give you giant big budget movies. Yeah yeah and the audiences were like what Here's this guy.

Who are you again? No, thanks. Yeah. Yeah. That's just how it goes.

But yeah. So, you know, patiently awaiting some dates for when shit's going to come out. Cause yeah, I'm, yeah, I'm looking forward to secret invasion. Definitely Loki season two. I mean, you know, we're, we're going to get some more Kang in there.

We got, we got our, we got our proper introduction and the movie we're going to talk about here in a bit. But, uh, Yeah, we got like a little tease in season one of Loki, and this one's kind of like the door swings wide open. It's like, hello. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So, I don't know. Do you have anything else you've watched lately that you'd like to mention? I was trying to see if I had any other superhero tie-ins. I've only got one that's a rewatch, really. So, what have you got to work with?

Well, amongst, of course, always listening to Movie Meltdown, I've got my own show, Fanatic Forum. I've been obsessed with another podcast recently called Video Archives. Are you Are you familiar with this one? I think I recently heard about it. This is a Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avery podcast.

That was the one, yeah. I was like, wait, Tarantino has a podcast? Yeah. Who doesn't? At this point, they just issue you one.

Go to the grocery store and on your way out, they're like, oh, and here's your sign-up sheet for your podcast. This is a concept that was made for Tarantino. Because what it is, the video archives was the name of the video store that both he and Roger worked at for a number of years. And then it closed down and that was, it closed down like, it closed down and then his career, their careers kind of launched almost, not quite simultaneously, but pretty close. What did it close down for?

Basically, they had to move locations. Well, the initial thing was, because they were like Redondo Beach or something like that. And so the initial location they were in was super popular. That was the hangout place. It was the place to be.

It was like Wild and Wooly in its heyday. Because all the cinephiles hung out there, but it was the place to be for video people. then they had to move locations. And the second location was a little bit further out, wasn't easily as accessible, and they didn't get as much traffic. And then, of course, you know, things happen. Video stores start closing down left to right.

Yada, yada, yada. The world has changed. Yeah. But the whole concept is that basically Tarantino and Avery bought the collection that Video Archives had. Tarantino bought all the videocassettes. avery brought all the laser discs and so the entire podcast is them talking about these movies and reviewing them they pick like a couple of movies an episode like two or three something like.

That so they can only do things that were in the video store so it has a time cap on it. It does have a time cap uh there's a lot of uh exploitation stuff that's in there because that of course you know that's obviously that's tarantino's you know who he is yeah yeah he that's his you know bread and butter But it's all over the place. They talk about a lot of A-movies, too. Some known titles. They talk about some foreign films, too.

It's all over the place. Basically, if you love the kind of movies that Tarantino loves, when he makes certain movies he appreciates, this is a fucking great podcast. Yeah. But it's nice because it's got me going out and watching movies that... Let's see.

One-Armed Executioner That's a– I think it was a movie that was made in– it was like a Taiwan-made or Malaysian-made film. Yeah. Actually, not too bad. But it's a revenge film. Basically, dude gets– his wife is killed.

He gets his arm chopped off. And then he goes after– he learns to fight one-handed and then goes and goes after the bad guys that killed his wife and took his arm. There was a Mexican horror movie called Demonoid. Basically, it's like a possessed hand. movie the name sounds familiar yeah yeah it was one of those movies that had like a tremendously awesome box art and so it's like oh those are the ones i remember most really yeah it had great it had great box art and uh fortunately the movie does kind of live up to the cool box art um that's good it's a very well-made movie and the practical effects especially on the crawling hand are amazing. Because, like, you can't see, like, the wires and you can't, you know.

Yeah, it was just really well done. I was like, this is a low-budget Mexican-made movie. It's not like it's Wednesday. That makes sense. Yeah, it wasn't the Addams Family movies where it's CG.

Yeah, even then, it was pretty good. It's like, this is almost better than the hand movie, like the Michael Caine. Yeah. This is better practical effects than that. And that had a budget.

Yeah, that had a budget. At the time. A lot of those hand scenes where it's crawling are dark. they do a lot of these like bright daylight, full on lit room. And here's the hand crawling. It's like, I don't see how they did that.

So it's just found a possessed disembodied hand. But it, you know, there's lots of other fun movies, uh, blind rage, uh, five blind dudes, rob a bank. Um, and the funny thing is like, it's, it was a Fred Williamson movie too. Cause like, it was like a, he was reprising a character he'd done in other movies and, But Fred Williamson is literally in the last 15 minutes of the movie. When it's time to bust the guys, at the end of the movie, he shows up with the cops.

And, like, there's literally one scene of him, like, we got to take these guys down. All right, chief, let's go. And then they go and bust the guys, and that's it. And it was like, hit that scene. Time to bring in the big names.

But the whole movie is, like, the blind guys, like, figuring out the job, kind of like literally working it out, like how they're going to do it because, I mean, they're all blind. So you've got to figure out how to do it and how they've got to put taps on their shoes so they know who's who and they don't shoot each other. It's really clever, really well done. It seems like a lot of extra work. There's a lot of stuff.

The whole three-quarters of the movie is the setup. the working out the job, performing the job, and then the chaos that happens after the job. And then Fred Williamson comes in for the last 10 to 15 minutes of the movie like, ah, you're under arrest. Oh, I'm going to kill you. He beats up one dude. One dude.

Again, sometimes these smaller movies just bank on, this is our name, we can work him in, even if it's for a scene, we gotta go with it. So I'm not surprised. That's what you do. But there was some other stuff. They were talking about Dressed to Kill.

Because Tarantino is a huge De Palma fan. And so that kind of got me. I haven't seen Dressed to Kill in about 20 years. I re-watched it in the last year or so. But one De Palma classic that was kind of a Wasn't appreciated at the time, but it's become appreciated now, was Blowout.

And I'd never actually seen that one before. I loved Blowout. Like, even as a kid, I remember really liking that one, even though I probably shouldn't have been watching it. Yeah. But, yeah, I remember that was one that I really got attached to at the time, and then I ran across a copy of the Criterion version.

I was like, well, obviously, I need this. So, yeah, I rewatched it then, and I want to kind of dig into all the special features, because, yeah, that was, I think, one of his better, like, there's some off stuff that De Palma did, but, like, that's Right in the middle when he was maybe at his most solid. And it's kind of funny because, like, he, of course, uses a lot of the same, you know, visual tricks and, you know, tricks that he did in Dressed to Kill, which was literally, like, this was his follow-up to Dressed to Kill. Yeah. So, like, it was, like, a couple years later, wasn't it?

Nancy Allen once again playing a prostitute. Go to, yeah. Which, of course, they were married at the time, so that's why she got used a lot. But the funny thing was, like, The prostitute she plays in Dressed to Kill is like Nancy Drew, but she also hooks on the side. Whereas the prostitute she plays in Blowout is like.

Geez, shucks, I gotta collect $ 5 here. Oh, I'm getting mined. Somehow she's so adorable at doing that and shouldn't be. You should just be like, okay, whatever, let's get rid of this prostitute. But no, because it's Nancy Allen, she makes it work somehow.

Yeah, she is adorable, but you know it's like you're just waiting for her to get murdered. You know it's coming. Yeah. And it's got such a messed up ending, too. Again, that's one of those things that stuck with me at the time.

As a kid, when I was like, movies don't end like this, right? And I was just like, oh. I was like, well then, this is a different kind of movie. Yeah, because... I was watching it, you know, by myself.

And then my wife was out somewhere. She comes in for like maybe like the last half hour of the movie. So I was telling her kind of a little bit what it was. And she's kind of paying attention. And then literally sees, you know, at the end where he's like all forlorn that she gets murdered.

But he had captured it on audio. And then basically like he's sitting there editing it. And you're like, wait, is he? No. Oh, my God.

He's sampling her death rattle. That was the good scream that he finally got was her getting murdered. Free. Oh, that's fucked up. It's a mess.

But so good. Yeah. Sorry to spoil like a 50 year old movie here, but God damn. If you haven't seen it, you should watch it. It's amazing.

Yeah. It was, it was, it was so weird because it bombed in theaters. Oh yeah. It didn't do. Well, I mean, even Dressed to Kill didn't do that good.

Like, I think in years later, people look back and go, oh, that was one of his bigger ones. But I'm like, I don't remember it being huge. I think it did better than his earlier smaller budget stuff. But still. It did well, but it was kind of all those things, too.

Like, you know, when it hit video, it picked up a little bit more. And, you know, of course, it was infamous for many reasons. Well, yeah. It's also so, again, I forgot all the weird aspects that come in halfway through. I was like, oh.

Yeah, this is kind of different for as early as it was. It's like 80, I think. Yeah, 80 or 81, yeah. Yeah, it was pretty early on to be working in some of the weird things that, you know, nobody was talking about at that time. Well, and it's interesting, too, because De Palma, yeah, because there's a lot of people who have been at a lot of criticism because basically, like, you know, the twist with Michael Caine being trans and being homicidal and whatever else.

Which happened a lot in these movies and nobody cared. Question it at the time. They all kind of get re-evaluated these days. But the thing is that people have been critical of the movie, but they also don't realize that De Palma lays his cards down very easily. Like, there's a Donahue clip.

I mean, I just watched this movie literally less than three weeks ago. Yeah. It's like there's a Donahue clip where someone who is trans and not homicidal is talking about their story of their sex change. and whatever else. And Donahue is approaching this at a normal– he's not being salacious about it. He was actually pretty good about that in the beginning.

I think he had to compete later when all the knockoffs of his. Show came along. Exactly. And he got as trashy as they did. But in the beginning, he was a pretty decent representation of trying to look at actual events going on in the world.

De Palma establishes this is the reality of trans people. This particular one happens to be a split personality and homicidal. Oh, and one of the personalities wants to have a sex change, but the other personality does not. So this is not normal. Over here, normal.

Michael Caine, not normal. So De Palma's very good about establishing that and saying, let's be a little sensitive. Like, okay, this is a cool gimmick here, but it's also let's be sensitive to the real people who actually are going through something like this. and are not homicidal split personality. Well, I wasn't. Again, I was going to try to steer more towards superhero rewatches, but since we're on random weird stuff, and one that I knew of, I didn't expect what was about to happen.

And while we're on creepy people, this is not so much Brian De Palma, but as directors go, have you seen Match Point? Oh, the Woody Allen? Yeah, it is like. I did not see that. I mean, it's a Woody Allen movie, so I very much expect some sort of relationship drama, blah, blah, whatever.

Sometimes he throws in a little comedy, but this seemed like it was leaning more towards relationship drama. I'm like, okay, whatever. And you get more than halfway. It's like two-thirds of the way through that movie, and it takes a turn that I won't necessarily spoil. I don't know that anybody's lining up to watch a Woody Allen movie at this point.

I was even kind of... If it didn't have, I guess there's my tie and it had Scarlet. And I'm like, well, I kind of want to see this performance because it was right at that. point when she was breaking out and becoming scarlett johansson but she was no wasn't quite what she is in today so yeah. It was more like she was you know like this was a few movies after uh ghost world yeah so she was being well known as an actress and a critical darling before she became black widow. Yeah establishing herself but not your big a-lister that you know you go to first on the list for any upcoming movie where she was just like oh, this girl is ridiculously attractive and I want her in my movie.

And then you get to this movie and I'm like, oh no, Woody Allen knows. And like, he so makes use of that. And it works for what they're trying to do in this movie. So it's like, she's perfectly used in a movie that is a bunch of weird, you know, British people. Like she's the one lone American and she's very like out of her element and kind of forced into this scenario and is like, sort of coasting on it in the beginning, and then as time goes on, things get a little more complicated, as relationship dramas do.

And yeah, we get... And like I said, I won't spoil it, but two-thirds of the way through, it changes gears in a way that I did not see coming. And it's good, yeah. It's impressive. I mean, it's not necessarily a fun movie, but again, when do you go to Woody Allen.

For fun anymore? Well, I. Much like I would say that Inside Man is a Spike Lee movie for people who don't like Spike Lee, Match Point is a Woody Allen movie for people who don't like Woody Allen movies. Yeah. Because you could safely say I've seen a Woody Allen movie, but that movie is Match Point, which is unlike anything he's ever done before.

It starts off like you would think. There's a little bit of a twist to it. The whole British side of things is a little different. Yeah, which is weird. And that they're talking so much about tennis in the beginning.

I was like... Does Woody Allen really know this much about tennis? Or is it a recent obsession or something like that? Because it's not even normal novice tennis. He was on the circuit.

He was a professional tennis player, and they're making those kind of, if you're at that level, the kind of conversations you would have. And I'm like. Did he have to do research, I suppose? Because I don't think Woody Allen's that level of tennis. But yeah, I don't know.

This isn't like Luke Wilson and the Royal Tenenbaums where like, okay, one of the kids plays tennis, but you just see him in the gear. We don't actually talk about tennis. You just put a funny headband on and you're a tennis player. But this is kind of like, if you enjoy tennis, the real ins and outs of it, this is some fan service. In the first 20 minutes or so, yeah.

Then it veers in a different direction for that middle part, and then it takes a hard left turn. But, yeah, it definitely surprised me, but in a good way. So, yeah, I haven't seen it probably since it came out. But, yeah, it's definitely worth checking out. Yeah, I did not expect it to not only do what it did, but I also didn't, like, I think I was mixing it up with all the other ones because then, again, no surprise being who he is, he really likes Scarlett Johansson and wanted to use her.

So I'm pretty sure at some point I'll watch the one where she's like, trying to solve a mystery and it's way more comedy. And like, was that the movie that was that after match point or was it before? Cause he did like two with her right. I know right in a row. I can't, what was that one?

Cause isn't like one of the guys is dead and she's like talking to this ghost and trying to solve a mystery or something. Yeah. I know what that one is, but it's the, you know, the, scorpion woman or something like that or. Curse of the jade scorpion but that wasn't her that's not the one i'm thinking of but it's not sleuth that's michael cain again but i'm thinking it's like a one word something like that that came out right around that same time scoop that's the one see i told you it was close to that yeah so yeah i remember seeing scoop and then i at the same time sort of in the span of a couple years that wimbledon movie which didn't that have kirsten dunst or something like somehow i rolled all those into one and i keep going now wait which one is this is this a comedy is she solving a mystery are they at wimbledon like i knew there was like way too many things all kind of rolled into one at that time period i was like I'm going to have to watch this and figure out which one it is.

And yeah, I did not expect it to. Be that serious, number one. And then definitely not the serious level it gets to by the end of the movie. Yeah, so Match Point came first in 2005 and then Scoop followed the next year. So there you go.

Yeah, Scoop is pretty goofy, if I remember. And I don't mean in a bad way because, again, I like Scarlett Johansson. So I enjoyed it, but.... Even for Woody Allen, it's kind of a different level of goofy. Oh, and then the third film he did with her, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, in 2008.

Again, I think he just likes Scarlett. He just likes Scarlett, yeah. I mean, I get it, but he's on a different level. Yeah. I'm trying to think what else here.

Well, of course, I've been binging Only Murderers in the Building on Hulu. As you should. One of my favorite shows ever. I basically did the first season in two days, and so I'm stretching out the second season a little bit more, but I've only got like three episodes left, so I'm waiting third season now. It goes quickly, yeah.

Even this last season, I was watching it weekly, and I was like, oh wait, it's already done? It seemed like it wrapped up even faster the second season than the first, so. Yeah, because I'm a sucker for anything Martin Short. And then when he and Steve Martin get together, it's just magic. And Selena Gomez is killing it, man.

That was my thing. I was like, I went into it because of Selena, because I'm already a Selena dork. But, I mean, I grew up Steve Martin more than anything. And I had a weird thing for Martin Short. He's back and forth.

He can be solid, and then he can be crazy over the top. And, like, he finds a nice balance in that. Like, he's so, like, goofy Martin Short. And then he'll, like, once or twice a season just deliver a scene that you're like, oh, I forgot he can act. Like, if called upon, he can actually be a serious actor.

But most of the time, he's still kind of goofy Martin Short. Yeah, and that's my favorite, Martin Short. I've probably seen, like, Three Amigos and Inner Space dozens upon dozens of times. SCTV stuff. Oh, yeah.

Very, very brief stint on SNL. You know, that's the thing. He was on SNL for barely a season, but created the Ed Grimley character, and then now he's an iconic SNL cast member because of one sketch. That's the thing. I remember that was the go-to when I was a kid for him.

It was like, yeah, my cousin and I thought Ed Grimley was the funniest thing ever. And like, so yeah, just waited every Saturday. Like, are they going to do another one? Are they going to? So that was its own level of dorkiness.

But yeah, he's... He's an interesting guy. And then being a movie fan, especially like, you know, movie. I kind of have a love-hate with movie critics because there's some that are really good. But then, of course, they end up trashing movies I like.

I'm like, you're an idiot. But Jiminy Glick was the best. I mean, he just, talk about, again, talk about over the top, but commitment. Like, he was knee deep in the insanity on that and just never breaks. Like, he is just crazy.

So committed to that ridiculousness. And it was kind of groundbreaking at the time because this was before Sacha Baron Cohen doing Ali G. This is before Zach Galifianakis doing Between Two Ferns. So it's like he was doing the exact same of I am a character. I'm doing cringe comedy.

I'm going to make you feel uncomfortable or even anger you. And I hope to do that for the sake of comedy. And I'm going to be committed 100%. And even funnier if you're like a fan of you know movies and celebrities in general because he's just does not know who any of these people are and like it doesn't phase him like and would get them the actual actors in to do this and would just like one slap in the face after another of like not knowing who they are not knowing what movies like confusing them for the wrong people like Just that kind of stuff. And like, again, it wasn't fully scripted and you couldn't tell exactly how far he was gonna push it with them.

And yeah, that was... And very, very, very vacuous sort of personality. Oh, yeah. But, you know, of course, just like anybody who is a film fan or you're a film critic or you're in the industry or whatever else, you've got your favorite era of Hollywood. And that's what you're obsessed with.

That's your knowledge base. But it doesn't extend from there. Yeah. So it's like if you're talking to, you know, Vanessa Redgrave, okay, cool. Yeah, I can talk about some stuff you've been in and I've enjoyed things.

I've seen movies you're in. I know who you are, but you bring in like a current star. Who are you? What have you done? I'm, you know, Justin Timberlake.

You know, my records do all this stuff. My movies do all this stuff. You know, I'm well known. I'm a big star. Who are you?

You know, it's kind of like, yeah. Great stuff. I've been wanting to watch the show for a while, but I'm on the murder train now. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. But yeah, so basically the Tarantino podcast, watching movies they're talking about that I've never seen, and then only murders.

That's what I've been jamming on. Which, I guess, if you haven't gotten to the end of this season, you may have already seen promos for the next season. I have not. There is. Definitely a crossover with where we're going today.

That's cool, okay. It'll be interesting when you get to the end of the season, because I did not see what's coming. I'm very good about kind of staying off social media for certain things or missing certain things I have a talent for it I know what I'm supposed to know and if I'm not supposed to know something I have a talent for missing it so I didn't even know a season I knew they were working on a season 3 I didn't know it's on the way in the relative future yeah it's pretty close so that's great because I'm going to have to wait too long after I get season 2 finished. Well with that should we go ahead and jump to this movie of the episode. I will, but I've got to plug your show once here, just because I watched the, you all talked about Choose or Die with Nora and Phillip.

Sorry about that. Well, the funny thing was, I actually watched that episode, I saw that movie before you guys talked about it. So I'm like, hey, it's the first time I'm ahead of you guys. Because most of the time I'm like, oh, you all were talking about something, and I'll go and watch it after you all talked about it. Or I'll watch it before you all talk about it.

But in this case, I was like, I was prepared. And I agree. That was just... It's so clunky. Like, it's got good ideas, but few and far between compared to what you're served up all hour and a half or however long.

Yeah, so, but yeah. And I felt back as, of course, there was one time, like, Nora made a recommendation about a movie, and I'm like, oh yeah, that was great. It was the YouTuber guy that got in the haunted house movie. Yeah, that was great. Deadstreams.

That's what, yeah, I think. I think that's what it's called, Deadstreams? Deadstream, something like that. Something like that, yeah. But Philip had made a recommendation about something, was talking about something.

I can't remember what it was, though, and I agreed with Philip about his recommendation. And I, sorry, Philip, but. I feel like he's done more series lately, so it might have been one of those. I know he watched Cabinet of Curiosities. What else have we talked about?

But it seemed like he's done series lately. Yeah, I can't remember. There was something that Philip recommended and I was in agreeance with him on that. So I want to give him a shout out this time to not make him feel left out. Well, I'm glad someone's taking to heart these important things that we're discussing.

That's right. I mean, normally I don't try to make it quite so obvious, but I sort of Showing our hand in the title of that one. I couldn't not. Like, I got to it and I was like, ah, damn it. I'm going to have to title the episode Snooze or Die.

Yeah. Not really a secret how we felt about it right from the get-go. It's bad. I tell you what, there's a couple of cool comics I'm reading right now. One is definitely...

There's one that's being made into a movie, Warner Brothers doing it, called Night of the Ghoul. I think I talked about this one before. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, Warner Brothers said they're going to make a movie out of it. It was three issues.

It was amazing. Great kind of like just slam the door in your dick kind of ending, as all great horror movies should be. And then there's another series. I'm waiting for the last issue, but it's from Boom Studios. It's called The Approach.

And this one I've been highly recommending to people. This is basically the thing in a small airport. Because basically you've got a small, I think it's like Colorado. Basically some place that would have a lot of snow. And so this is a skeleton crew, tiny airport.

They don't normally get big commercial airliners in. But a commercial airliner has to land because of the weather. Like these people are going to like Panama or something like that and they're all. In swim trunks, ready to go to the sun, and like, ah, you gotta go outside in the snow and hang out in this airport for a little bit. Well, as they're deplaning everybody, a second plane lands.

And it's a small charter plane, like a little single-edged Cessna sort of thing like that. There's a single passenger aboard, and as soon as he crash lands, things aren't quite right with this fella. And so basically... What starts from there is basically people getting eaten one by one. The third issue is the greatest because it's the part of the movie where the body count is the highest.

It's the assholes and elbows, kind of like everybody's getting chased. But there's a big showdown kind of thing like that. Fourth issue is a big cliffhanger with the main character. So it's such a fun comic. I'm like, I hope this gets turned into a movie.

But yeah, it's called The Approach. It's a five-issue series. uh, issue five at this point has not come out yet, but it's coming out, I think in a couple of weeks. So now I'm trying to, that, that just reminded me of when I watched, I think. It was right around the beginning of the year. Um, no exit.

Have you seen no exit? It just reminded me because it is like, it's also kind of maybe more, um, Tarantino, the thing. Okay. What's his version of it? Um, The thing?

Hateful Eight. Oh! It's way more Hateful Eight because it's here's a very isolated situation made that way by snow. So it's like a girl that gets out of an institution essentially. She's basically getting there for drugs or alcohol or whatever and is trying to get to her mom who's sick in the hospital so she essentially escapes.

And then they get to this rest stop and they're snowed in. And she gets there and is like stuck with this like five people or so. Okay. And then she walks outside to like see if she can get bars on her phone or something. And she gets to this van and there's a girl tied up in the back of like a little girl tied up in the back of the van.

Oh. And she's like, okay, some, and she, it's locked. So she can't even get in there to let her free. So she's like, now not only do I want to find a way to save this girl, but I have to figure out who I'm trapped in here with. is a kidnapper that's taking off with this young girl. That's cool.

It's an interesting scenario. Yeah, I liked the setup because, again, it's very Thing. It's very Hateful Eight. So it's trying to figure out the whodunit in the middle of a snowstorm where everybody's locked in. Okay, okay.

Yeah, that just reminded me. Yeah, it's not bad. I enjoyed it. I'll have to check that out. Yeah, currently streaming on Hulu.

Yeah, I think that's how I got to it. I already had it from the last round of only murders in the building. I'm still keep finding things of like, am I going to keep this till next time? And then now I've watched so many things along the way. I'm like, all right, I guess I'm just riding it out till the next one.

And another movie, of course, it's kind of just, it seems in the same theme, Identity came out like, what was it, mid-2000s? Yeah. With John Cusack and a bunch of the people in it where it's like they're all... The little motels set up. They're all reigned in the motel and there's a nice big twist at the end with, you know.

I haven't re-watched that. It's one of those I keep... I think of it semi-regularly. I think it was pretty well done. I watched it a couple of years...

A little bit like About a year or so ago. And yeah, it still holds up still good. I feel like at the time I thought the movie was better than the twist. Like, I feel like the whole lead up was so good that I was like, oh, okay, whatever. Like, I'm just like, it's fine.

But I'm like, I think I enjoyed the movie as a whole better than the gimmickness of what it ends up being. I would agree. Yeah. The performances and the lead up and the suspense because you're basically, it's like, oh, people are getting murdered. Yeah.

Who's the murderer? And yeah, sort of thing like that. And then there's a bigger twist kind of. encompassing the whole thing, and you're like, oh, okay. I guess, yeah. I was like, it doesn't ruin the movie for me, but I enjoyed it more when it was doing what it was doing in the beginning versus where it ends.

Yeah, I would agree. But it's still pretty solid. Again, good performances. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so there you go.

A bunch of different stuff to watch, folks. Yeah, there you go. Snow yourself in and watch several of these movies. There you go, yeah. All right, I guess we will get into it.

Yep. Get more out of life. Go out to a movie. Out of town. Out of town.

Out of the night. Out of town. You're an interesting man, Scott Lang. You're an Avenger. You have a daughter.

But you've lost a lot of time, like me. We can help each other with that. Who are you? I'm the man who can give you the one thing you want. What's that?

Time. I can rewrite existence. And shatter timelines. You cannot trust him. I don't care who this guy is.

I just lost so much. He can give us a second chance. Let me make this easy for you. You will bring me what I need. or everything you call life will end. This is all my fault.

You may not want her to watch this. We had a deal. You thought you could win. I don't have to win. We both just have to lose.

I'm sorry, Cassie. What I'm saying here, looking at you, I don't see. I'm looking straight through the suicide. When you're young, to be told, you're the first I want. Like a chip box, I do some flavor.

Yeah, yeah, that music's plastic. It's dirty, so try another flavor. I do some flavor. I do some flavor. I do some flavor.

This super series out on the town feature is Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantamania. In Quantamania. Going to Snowdin, Quantamania. Not quite Snowdin. It's Cerebral Snow.

And as we see from the credits, we know you can't spell Quantamania without Ant-Man. I see what they did. So, the year is 2023. The director is Peyton Reed, once again. And they plot, according to IMDb, Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyke, along with Hank Pym, and why do we need the whole roll call?

Jesus. Explore the quantum realm where they interact with strange creatures and embark on an adventure that goes beyond the limits of what they thought was possible. Boom, boom, boom. Spoiler alert, we're gonna ruin the hell out of this, so... Hopefully, you've already gone to the theater and seen it yourself.

If not, go do. That right now. I've gone twice already. I saw it opening night and then I took my wife for a matinee today. So opening weekend, I gave them some money twice.

I'm sure they appreciate it. The theater system is not what it used to be. It is not. I do kind of wonder where... That's a weird thing we could have gone into at the opening of the show.

That some theaters now, we won't name names... Are going to start charging more for the good seats. That's a whole little, if you're in movie world on the internet, that's what everybody's having a hissy fit over and going to complain about. The question is though, what do they deem good seats? Are we talking like center of the theater?

I think center. The perfect spot between the speakers? So if you're like an aisle person, you're probably fine. Because I doubt they're going to do more to sit on the aisle because that's not. That's not really ideal placement-wise, but convenience-wise, you don't have to climb over people.

Sure. I mean, you know, the middle's fine. I traditionally would like to go to the middle, but also I'm a big fan of the back. of the theater. And because usually that's, I mean, not for illicit purposes. No, I'm just, my knee-jerk reaction is to say fuck the back row.

That's for other reasons outside of. You know. Yeah, but in recent years, especially with like, you know, the lounge chairs that are in theaters now, stuff like that, I like the back row because you get a little more room and basically if people have to cross in front of you, they don't have to do that awkward, sorry, you know, because basically my feet happen to stick out further than i'm a tall guy well even if. You're not there's not a lot of room in between that is something i've realized re-entering into society again going back to the theaters after the shutdown of the world i don't remember it being such a thing beforehand but now i guess i got so used to not being around humans for two years straight that like now when i go to like today i went to the theater to see this movie and there was someone on both sides of me and i'm just like I don't remember being this weirded out by being boxed in by human beings.

Yeah. They were relatively well behaved. I was actually enjoying the conversation of the guys on my left. Cause they were like, they were kind of into movies and they were having their own little conversation. Oh, cool.

The other side, not as much. And then see, you know, back in the day, I loved, you know, hanging out with the cinephiles or whatnot. Or, you know, if you're going to like a fan screening or whatnot, like everybody there is, is a fan, you know, you know your Marvel stuff or you know your Star Wars stuff or Harry Potter or whatever the thing happens to be. You know, if it's a fan screening, those are the best because everybody's there for the movie. You're there to celebrate the movie, especially if it's an older movie.

We've already seen it before. So there's a lot of cheering. There's a lot of this and that. So it makes a lot of fun. It depends on the movie, I think, too.

I mean, I still really like the theatrical experience as a whole. I love the... Aesthetics of a theater in general. And then on top of that, watching it with an audience is a different thing. Sure.

I remember, not as much with recent ones, but when we're talking in the Marvel world, we're talking the Endgame. Yeah. I mean, there were... applause moments in the theater you know it's like you don't crying moments you don't yeah definitely crying but i mean you don't get applause in theaters anymore like it's not a normal thing so when you get that kind of like into the movie same thing with horror horror is always kind of fun i do remember really enjoying the the scream now that it's come full circle we're about to do that again but yeah the scream experience last year was really fun because people were into it and like getting super freaked out about things. So I remember that, but I don't know, for the most part, it's hard to readjust to sitting in a room with these people.

Yeah. It kind of, uh, one lost genre or standup comedy films. Cause those used to be quite frequent. It's not. Well, that's cause I mean, everybody gets a Netflix show.

Yeah. So like, it's just not a reason for streaming and cable. So I got, but it used to be like, especially, you know, even in the eighties and nineties, uh, stand-up comedy films were quite frequent. And I loved going to those because it's basically like going to see the person live anyway. But way cheaper.

Yeah, but cheaper. Yeah, you saw Eddie Murphy for about probably $ 50 less than. You would have. At least. Or the Kings of Comedy or whatever else.

But yeah, going to see a stand-up movie with a full audience is a lot of fun. That's a different thing. Yeah, you probably won't get much these days. No. Now, I mean, of course, nowadays they have, like, the events they do or, like, you know, for, you know, they'll sometimes do, like, sporting events or concerts or something like that at movie theaters.

You know, they'll, like, you know, stream it in or whatever else. Or, like, you know, the one-off, you know, Japanese anime movie or Godzilla movie where they show it only one time. Yeah. And it's an event thing there. So they do a lot of that stuff.

So that's kind of the newer aspect of that now because that's a ready-made audience. Like, that's a specific event. You're going there for that. And there may be cheering involved. It's more interesting now because they keep...

Again, I only say I don't go to things that would enlighten me or broaden my mind. So when you see the commercials beforehand of when. They do ballet that is being... beamed into. The theater and you're watching it essentially live or if not a really well done or a musical or something yeah and then yeah today they ran a promo for uh tons of like plays that they're doing that are like full-on productions only you can go watch it at your movie theater and i'm like that's cool that that's an option now yeah i'm probably not going to. But yeah i like that it's a thing that people can do so you know and it's got everything to do with the fact that basically you know movie theaters switching over to digital so there's no film anymore yeah um and that they're desperate for anything to bring money reason to come to the theater please do yeah e-town's had a little bit of a whether this is a good thing or a bad thing but basically uh the area used to have three movie theaters now we have one yeah but the two movie theaters that closed down were family-owned They were, you know, there's some people that have a lot of nostalgia to them.

I don't share that nostalgia. I like my modern amenities in a theater. I like the theater to be clean. I like to be a nice place. I mean, I don't mind an old theater, but mop the damn floor, you know?

And you didn't realize, like, again, I went to a handful of the old school theaters growing up, and, like, you didn't realize what you were missing before stadium seating came along, and, like, So the handful of times I would go to the one that is now closed that still had old time seating, I was like, oh, this is why we got rid of this. Now I realize because I can't see the screen half the time because there's some weirdo right in front of you. And like it just like this is why we changed that. And like that's technically better. You know, I enjoy this shit.

The screening better when I can see and not have to worry about people. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, there's reasons, but I still miss the old ones. Yeah, so it kind of makes you miss the old Vogue, doesn't it? Yeah.

And your cavernous one theater. I mean, that's the thing. It's like, if you want to sit in the front row of the Vogue theater, you were prepared for a walk. Because that's a... It was huge.

It was a big house. Well, that was... And that was a long trek down. And that was the reason I said, fuck the background. Of my many nights at the Vogue at midnight, where that's a thing you say at least once a session.

That's right. But yeah, it's a different world today. It is. Where would you like to begin on this one? Well, this is our setup, I guess, for the next phase for Marvel here.

Because we had kind of our rebuilding phase with Phase 4. We had to introduce a whole bunch. Of new characters. Kind of some new teams, a new status, because basically Endgame basically changed everything. Yeah.

And even in this movie, there's a couple of references that, you know, basically like, you know, we're still dealing with a lot of homelessness of people who got blipped out for five years and came back. Yeah. You know, somebody's living in their house or somebody's married to their wife or husband. Guess what? They replaced you on your job because you were gone for five years.

Yeah, you know, so it shook the world, you know, and its effects we're seeing, you know, several years down the road. That's maybe the thing I like best out of this post-in-game world is, like, it's minor. I think that's why it's so impressive is, like, Starting with that second Spider-Man movie, we go through each time we have a new either show or movie, we have an extra little snippet, just a little mention here and there. Or you might see something, you know, maybe a little more big and crazy. But there's a lot of world building that goes on in the background.

And it's like that stuff I appreciate that they are bothering to put that much. Because, again, if you're going to make this the huge undertaking that it is to put all these movies together... you don't want to just one off them and have them not have anything to do with each other. Whereas they have put so much time and effort into this world building that literally like these little mentions here and there just continues to build this universe that. They put together. It's that, that's the stuff that I am kind of like attached to from one to the other.

Sometimes I look back and I'm like, eh, I don't like that movie as much, but I think I'm a little things with all of them and it. Makes a more impressive sort of overall system. Sure. And that, that's, That's Marvel. That's basically how they've been since the word go.

There's so much world building, certain events or people being introduced in throwaway books or issues or things nobody cares about, stuff like that. But suddenly that person becomes important later. So we're seeing so much of that. So now we've kind of gone past the rebuilding things. Now Ant-Mans are like, okay, now we're getting some serious.

We're starting to establish... Our new threat here. Our new Thanos-level threat, and the man's name is Kang. And not to jump ahead, but if anybody... That has been kind of the make or break with so many superhero movies on both sides of the fence there, Marvel and DC.

But there's so many Marvels. That there were a lot along the way that I'm like, well, it's a little lacking in the villain department. But this one, you get to this, and I'm like, it is. Kind of hard to. Especially when you're going to come up with a big bad and you're coming after Thanos.

It's like you've got a lot to live up to. He did a hell of a job. It is one of those I was concerned going in, even after seeing Loki wrap up. I was like, yeah, alright, we'll see. This will be interesting, but I don't know.

He's got an uphill battle. And then you get to this movie and I'm like, no, he delivers. He is definitely... commands the screen when he's on there even in the quieter moments yeah he is always kind of threatening even when he's not attempting to be threatening and by the time he just gets pissed by the end you're just like oh no he's a threat like he is a legit threat. So that's the thing that's so fascinating about the character of Kang anyway and they really did a good job of encompassing this in the movie is that this is a man of hundreds of facets you know you never know which Kang you're technically dealing with because there are so many variants so many different stages of his life because you know being a traveler being a conqueror he has we don't know exactly how old he is no we know originally he is from the future he's from like the 24th 25th century something like that and basically kind of got into time travel was an explorer whatever else and basically has gone back and then lived basically from the back to the front sort of thing like that but It's not a linear path.

He goes here, he goes there, and, you know, whatever else. So he lives lifetimes in ancient Egypt. He lives lifetimes in the future. He lives lifetimes in current, you know, things. He lives lifetimes in timelines where there aren't people, you know, because everything's gone.

It's the end of things. You know, he's all over the place, but the younger versions of Kang are the far more dangerous ones. And so that's what we've got in this case here. We've got a younger Kang and he is, you know, sometimes he comes off as a nice guy. He seems like he's kind of warm and friendly.

But then there's little turns in his performance where it's like, oh shit, he's about to like go ham on us here. He's a hell of an actor. So it is interesting to see, you know, somebody that not only is good at it, but they're kind of giving. Him something to play with here. He's got.

Both ends of it. Like we see him be calm and just having a conversation with Michelle Pfeiffer. And then a few scenes later, he's just full on Rocky three going to town with, with Batman. So he can do both just fine. So, and then, you know, there's other times where he's basically playing the threatening Uber villain sort of role and having, you know, your, your exposition or your threats and stuff like that.

And even then, like it still comes off. Yeah. That's the, you know, Kang is a very, hoity-toity kind of character yeah so he but. Not overly so like it could be taken too far i don't think he's just very he seems you know intelligent and well-spoken and like he seems like he has lived lifetimes at this point but he's not like over the top about it he's just there is an air of like i'm obviously better than you. Like, by the time, like, it all kind of comes out, you definitely get that, yeah, I've done all of this before, so you idiots that don't know what you're doing just need to listen to what I'm here to tell you.

Yeah, exactly. But, I mean, the funny thing is, like, there's still, like, elements of his you know, hubris on display. You know, there's paintings of him. There's murals on walls. You know, he wants to make a big speech.

So there's this giant video hologram of him making a speech to the whole fucking quantum realm. You know, sort of shit like that. So there's still those elements of, you know, like where he just, I'm top, you know, top dog here. Y'all know it. I'm going to keep displaying that every time I can just to reinforce that I'm in charge.

It's very Cobra Commander. Oh, very much. Very much. To reference another comic. Yeah.

Yeah. But a lot of fun things. Michelle Pfeiffer gets herself several big moments. And that's by the end of this. That was so my takeaway.

It was like, I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm enjoying the rest of this. But can we just watch Michelle Pfeiffer kick people's ass for a good amount of time? Because that ending there. where she gets the gun and starts just kicking people's ass. I'm just like, you know, I could watch this for a whole movie.

Can we, can we just give her an action franchise at this point? The thing is, it was kind of, you know, to me, it was kind of unfortunate. It's like, okay, you know, I know this character, you know, of Janet Van Dyne. And it's like, you know, she's, you know, she's evolved so much over the years, you know, when she was originally created in the sixties, she was kind of, you know, a bit of a bubble headed ditz, you know, it's like, It was the 60s and she was a woman, so that's not a shock. Well, basically, she was a bubble-headed ditz, but she also was very capable of doing stuff.

But then also, she was almost kind of like the Kelly Kapoor of the Avengers. Because she was fascinated with fashion and high lifestyle and. You know, stuff like that. You know, and the superheroing, okay, well, that was kind of, that was a fun thing my hubby likes to do and I'll tag along. It's kind of fun.

But then, like, by the 80s, she's leading the team. Yeah. So, I mean, it's like, she had such a, just transition over the years of finally becoming a badass. So, it's kind of getting to see who she really was, you know, her time in the realm and stuff like that. And seeing her really kind of bust out some action stuff, I was like, thank you.

Yeah. That was cool. Yeah. So, it only took three movies for her to do that. Well, yeah, I mean, she's, almost non-existent in the first one.

The second one, she's gone most of, and we just were looking for her, but we don't get to her. Until it's almost done. So, yeah, it's kind of nice that at least this one, she gets a full-on role that she can be in the whole movie and have things to do, actually. But another thing, this is a unique series because this is the only one of any of the Marvel movies. We've had the same director for three movies.

Yeah, I mean, without Sony... Because Spider-Man did too, but. It's not full-on Marvel. But yeah, it's sort of canon now, but it's sideways canon. I am annoyed because I can't watch it streaming right now.

Because I'd like to revisit that third one. Yeah, I can. Why? It's not on Disney Plus. No, but why would you want to revisit the third one?

I like the third one. Why? The one we just watched last year? No, no, no, no, no. Okay, not that one.

I was talking about those. Oh, I was talking about the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man 3. No, no, no. I was talking about the... Oh.

Ones we just had. Oh, yeah, the Tom Holland. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, that one's good, yeah. But again, side universe, sort of.

Okay, no, that's canon. That stuff is. The Tom Holland. That makes more sense now. Yeah.

I was like, wait. Yeah, the Tom Holland Spider-Man, that's into you. That one was good. What are you talking about? Yeah, we're good.

No. Okay. Yeah, I thought you were talking about. The dance number movie. No.

Yeah, I thought you were talking about the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man 3. It's like, why would you. No, one, two, yes, definitely. Three, not so much. Yeah.

Even though it's really weird. They brought Thomas Hayden Church back. We want to remind ourselves that Spider-Man 3 still exists? I think at those points it's just like, no, we have to at least acknowledge it. We almost need to make good on it.

It's the same way in Star Wars where now they'll make reference to stuff from the prequels. They're like, look, we know you guys don't love them, but we're knee deep in it, man. We got to at least lean in enough to acknowledge them, but let's not stay there for too long. Same thing. We're not going to bring back.

Any of the other characters, but that guy from Wings was fine. We'll bring him back in. Yeah, it's that same move. But, yeah, but so it's, but like I said, this is kind of unique because since, okay, we start from Iron Man 1. Yeah.

Then this is the first, basically, of the heroes, basically he has the same director for all three of his movies so far. And, you know, Peyton Reed did a lot of stuff, you know, kind of like putting in little Easter eggs here and there. Like he teased the Quantum Realm. you know, quite a bit and seen a little bit of there. Even in the first Ant-Man where that brief time you're in the quantum realm and you see like a city on the hills or something like that. While we weren't, we didn't know that was going to be Kang, we referenced that there's people in the quantum realm.

So, you know, that there's, there's other stuff in there. There's things to explore. So finally, this third film, we get to do that. And that was a lot of fun. It's just, Since we're talking about the director, I will say it is interesting that it is our same guy because it feels very different.

Even in the last two, like last time. I feel like two felt. Similar to the first one. I feel like it was a little better, maybe because the situation wasn't as messed up as the coming in on the first one. Two was all his project, and I think it's a stronger film because of it.

But you get to this one, and I'm like, it is... Not so much dark, but it definitely is not the comedic presence that 1. And 2 just. Because they almost set out to be a comedy more. That first one is trying to be a comedy more than a superhero movie.

It's good at being a superhero movie, but it's leaning towards the comedy more. And the second one gets a little bigger and adds a lot more superhero into it, but still... you know, it's a, it's an Ant-Man movie because it's way more of a lighter tone and just sort of a fun way of dealing with things. But like this one doesn't. Feel that way. Like this one, because it's so in its own little world from the get-go, like it's a much darker tone to it.

And then in general, I feel like there's not the jokes that, you know, and I don't, mean that in a bad way like I don't think it would have been fitting it might have been forcing it too much so there's moments here and there there's some fun stuff along the way but it's not that tone that we got in the first two so it's kind of surprising that it is the same director but. Yeah I would agree because you know I mean definitely the stakes are higher in this film because of the introduction of our big bad yeah we got like I said we you know again we got to tease the season finale for Loki but this is kind of like this is our proper introduction of Kang for this film So, kind of like Ragnarok, they do a good job of balancing the serious and the comedy.

Because there are still tons of laughs in this movie. Oh, yeah. I mean, like I said, I've been in the audience twice for this thing, and there are laughs in this movie. There definitely are. That get the people going.

And some are... On purpose. Some are a little bit accidental. We'll get into one particular character. Yeah.

There's one that, I mean, you can't take it seriously. So it has. He needs to be the laugh moment because you can't do anything else with him, really. And it's very interesting how that was handled, too. Because fans were kind of...

You know, let's just stop tapping into that. Let's talk about MODOK. Let's talk about. Because. I've seen him for years and I thought, man, that's silly looking.

Yeah. So if you were going to tell me we're going to make a actual real world three dimensional version of this guy, I'm like, how the hell am I going to take that seriously? Luckily you kind of don't have to. It's a great payoff because I mean, you know, they'd shown images in the trailer and some of the toys. So we knew MODOK was coming.

They were doing a little bit of a tweak with him and they're like, Oh, he's kind of like a metal face. And it's like, it's kind of looks more like a robot. It's not like a, you know, basically a giant head with normal size arms and legs sitting in a floating chair sort of thing. And then you're like, oh, no, it is. It still is.

So anybody who was worried about how MODOK was going to be treated, while it's not the original character, it's MODOK. It is fun. Again, it's maybe the only like through line of light tone stuff. Because even when He's trying to be serious. Nobody can take him seriously.

Just not only the visuals, which were always there, even in the comic, he looked like that. But because of who we have as the character now, it just sort of changes the tone quite a bit. And again, it's fun. I do like it. Yeah.

You cannot take him seriously. What we're talking about, though, is that basically, if you remember back in the first Ant-Man, the character of Darren, our bad guy who takes the yellow jacket suit. The bee guy. The bee guy. If you remember at the end of the movie, he basically kind of gets, well, it looks like he gets crushed, shrunk down, and shrunk completely away.

Well, what happened was he got deposited in the quantum realm. But because of where basically the Pym Tech landed on him, it shrunk the rest of his body while it shrunk his head somewhat, but it was disproportionate. So he was already a mess anyway. He was more head than anything else. And then Kang gets a hold of him and, you know, turns him, you know, makes him, you know, better, stronger, faster, you know.

As much as you can when you're a giant head and little tiny body. And did you notice we still got a butt shot? Yeah, yeah. I feel like there was a. For that half second that it happened, there was maybe more than one place in the theater I gasped.

Yeah. I don't know that it was a good one. It was, oh, God. Yeah, I know. I was like, this is a tiny little butt.

I was like, oh, that's great. I love that. I don't think anyone was prepared for the butt shot. I love it. And see, the thing is, like, you know, MODOK has always been, like, a serious villain when he was initially created.

It was basically... They introduced AIM a little bit in Iron Man 3, but they repurposed it or whatever else. So basically, in the comics, AIM is like HYDRA, but it's all mad scientists. They all do super science experiments, weird shit. They don't care how it affects humanity.

They're just curious about the data. And so MODOK was one of their scientists. He was experimenting on himself, making him like a cybernetic being, yada, yada, yada. And the experiment went haywire and basically collapsed. made him a giant head and a tiny body and he would have to sit in this floating chair in order to move around and do things. But then also he's got like mental abilities and he's got the cybernetic stuff.

So he basically, it's somewhat worked, but he basically is completely deformed. Yeah. And so basically he's this giant face sitting in a chair basically with little arms and legs. Which again, I know they treated it seriously in the comics. But I always thought it was silly looking.

Well, they treated it seriously in the comic, but then over the years, they've also agreed with you that it is silly looking. And so, of course, there was the Hulu cartoon that Patton Oswalt did the voice for. That's entirely a comedy. And, I mean, that was hilarious. I love that stuff.

And so we get kind of a little bit of both. Yeah. But Corey Stoll gets to reprise his role, and his face is basically, like, stretched, you know, very much over a giant head. It is very silly. up you're like oh my fucking god hey remember me yes and they even do like a little bit like a quick montage yeah but i love to like there's a couple of times where we're doing like exposition stuff and then paul rudd interrupts that He just totally steps on the hose and asks a stupid question. Another thing I loved too is that David, of course, we had the little buddies.

He was Michael Pena, David S. Malvin, and who's the rapper guy? Yeah. I can't remember. I don't remember now.

But yeah. But his, yeah, the three guys. The security team. Yeah. Of course, and Michael Pena was always the star of the three of them because Luis, he would have his stories.

And just stole the movie every time he spoke. So that was great. So you missed him. But we didn't miss David S. Malkin because, well, it's not his character.

He gets to play the character of Veb, who's the big lovable goo guy. Yeah, I did see his name up there again. And it did remind me. I was like, I think that's another thing that makes it. seem so different than those others. Because the other two, they're pretty heavily featured.

You know, they're not the leads, but they've got a good amount of time on screen. And I'm like, yeah, this one doesn't have any, like, that is one of the weird things about this. The structure of this movie is very different than even most Marvel movies at this point. Like, we get right to it. You know, you get the little flashback of like, hey, what's been going on with me yet, man?

And once we're done with that, it's like, okay, let's hit the quantum realm. Like, they do not mess around. Yeah, it gets right to the point. It does. Which, again, I like.

Of course, I mean, I love the book stuff, too. Because if you'd been watching the last couple, like, movies and TV shows and whatnot... If you watch the crawls, when they have a news story that comes on there, if you watch the crawls, you've been seeing that basically we know that Scott had a book coming out. We know that he has a podcast also out. I think the podcast came before the book.

But yeah, so Scott has been doing this kind of like victory lap of I saved the world for quite some time. Because he really can't do anything else. He can't. He's not been able to, like, have a real life. He was on house arrest the last movie.

Yeah. Like, he can't get a real job. So, like, the only thing he has is, like, hey, guys, I'm an Avenger. You know that, right? But the funny thing is that he basically avenged, like, the one time, and then he really hasn't done anything since Endgame.

And so that's kind of what his, you know, Cassie's argument is basically, like, you know. What are you doing now? It's like, I'm out doing stuff. You know, she's kind of, you know, following in his footsteps, so to speak, being in A little more social justice thrown in, too. But she's out doing what he does, and she's like, why aren't you?

Why are you just writing books? You've got the title of Avenger, and yet you're not doing anything to help people day in and day out. Yeah. You could do more than you already are doing. So that's kind of the fun thing.

And of course... you know, we're ever, ever, ever closer to our young Avengers because literally we are missing one core member. Yeah. And I don't know if we're going to get to him in Secret Invasion or not, but basically we have one character and he's a Skrull, but he's a nice Skrull. And, you know, so yeah, I'm just waiting because the team is there. We have all the other players.

We've even got members who came in later on because Cassie wasn't an original member. She showed up like I don't know, maybe after the first ten issues. But basically, the real core team are the twins, Kate Bishop, Elijah, who we met in Captain America and Winter Soldier. His grandfather was a Captain America during World War II, or during Korea. And then, granted...

Kang kind of was a member in the initial, but it was a younger, nicer version. I don't want to be an asshole. Basically, in this movie, he didn't want to be a dick. Because as we learn, it's never too late to not be a dick. Words to live by, kids.

Exactly. Look out for the little guy and don't be a dick. That's the things we learn in this movie here. While we're on, Cassie, to time out for real world, do we know why they recast? I have no idea.

I mean, she's kind of more famous, so I didn't know if that's why. I guess so. If we're moving forward and going to give her maybe her own series, maybe put her in the movies down the line, if we want to get a. More polished actress. Because, yeah, I think she's the one from Freaky, if I'm remembering.

Yes. Which she's good in Freaky. Yeah, that's a fun movie. At first, I was like, oh, it's kind of weird that they're switching out. But then I saw it was her.

I was like, oh, she was good in Freaky, so I can't complain about it. But I thought. they haven't done a ton of switch outs on the people in the roles. Yeah. And it's, that irked a lot of fans too, because basically I can't remember the actress name. I know her first name is Emma, but I can't remember her last name.

Yeah. But yeah, I mean, she, it was kind of shitty too, because like they didn't even tell her, Oh, Hey, you're not going to be reprising this role. She literally found out the way the rest of us did when they announced, Oh, Hey, Catherine Newton's going to be playing the role of Cassie Lang. And she's like, what? I just bought a house guys.

Yeah. Was banking on this for years to come, thanks. Yeah, because the actress that we see in Endgame, that's the age of Cassie as we see her now in Quantumanias. It's like, that was an age-appropriate actress. I mean, they already switched out from the first actress, but that made sense.

She was a little girl. He comes back years later. She needs to be grown up. So that makes sense. But yeah, this one, there wasn't really a real reason within the story, so I assumed there was some behind-the-scenes goings-on.

I guess she's a She's a bigger name. Yeah, that's the only thing I can think of, yeah. But another interesting thing, too, I just happened to think of, Cassie's the only one we've really seen grow up through several films. Yeah. Like, okay, we've got the twins over in WandaVision, and we saw them again in Doctor Strange Multiverse of Madness, but they're still the same age.

So we haven't seen them get older. Cassie, we've seen get older over multiple films. And that's a unique treatment of her character more so than any of the others. Because Tom Holland doesn't age. No, Tom Holland doesn't age.

Somehow he's been the same age, even though really it's been a lot of years. He should look a little older, but he's still a baby face kid. Well, he's got that good British genes. They don't age. I think they wait until like 75 and they hit the wall.

Yeah, they just turn. They just turn. But up until 75, they look like they're 25. Yeah. But yeah, we haven't really had a lot of that.

We just veer away from it if we, you know, it's weird that they kept bringing her back as a character. Normally, if it gets too weird, they're just like, nah, and then we're done with that character now. But it's been a fun thing to follow her. And, of course, fans of the comics know that eventually the Young Avengers are coming. Yeah.

You know, we've got, like I said, we've laid out every other cast member. So it's just a matter of, like, when are they going to bust them out? Yeah. And, of course, you know, we'll probably bust them out, you know, a little bit later on. You know, we've got to age the twins up.

Yeah. You know, for obvious reasons. It'd be okay if they started without them and put somebody else in maybe and then go ahead and ease them in. The twins, especially Billy, is kind of crucial to the early part. The thing is, Tommy doesn't come on the team again until around when Cassie comes around.

So Tommy is not a core original member, but Billy is, the wizardy one. Well, and then are we. What universe are we taking those twins from anyway? That's a good question. They don't technically exist in our world, right?

So, like, the only places you can pull them from is other multiverses. Exactly. It's confusing. Well, basically, you know, while that seems confusing, if you remember, we got two Avengers movies coming up in a couple years. One called The Kang Dynasty.

Another one called Secret Wars. Yep. And we're going to be dealing with a whole lot of multiversal shit. That's a great way to be able to age up some certain characters. It's going to be a great way to bring back a few people.

If we don't see Chris Evans and or Robert Downey Jr. in Secret Wars, I'm going to be pissed. And so will a lot of other people. Or even ScarJo. It's a great opportunity. It's a way to bring people in.

Just for a one-off or whatever else. Because it doesn't have to be like, oh, we're bringing her back. No, this is a... black widow from another universe where she's still alive or. It's the professor xavier this last time around it's like you know he's not around but here we can have a nice little cameo and things are gonna work out great. For him don't you worry yeah so and of course i was convinced we were gonna see hugh jackman as wolverine in that movie and then of course deadpool 3 you know.

We're gonna see him don't. You oh i'm sure we i'm sure we are but you know they see they they they kind of spoiled a little bit beforehand. He's like, oh, we're going to see Deadpool 3 and Deadpool 3 is going to come out from 4. We already see him working out, so we know he's coming out. Yeah, we know he's coming, yeah.

But yeah, those little promos they were doing were great. On that note, only because I just saw some sort of talk show that they were talking to Paul Rudd, and he talked about getting back into training and like, he's in that suit the whole time. What's the point of training to get ripped if you're not going to do the signature Marvel shirtless scene? Like, We don't even get that. Like, what's the point of bothering to get super ripped?

And he was talking about being on this high-protein diet and changing everything about his life to get ready for the next Ant-Man movie. I mean, he still looks good in the suit. He looks good, but I'm like, there's like a giant piece of rubber around you. Like, you could be in horrible. Shape and wear that suit and you'd look okay.

I mean, there's... we at least get a point to see Jonathan Major's guns, because like, he was already in Creed 3 training before he did this one, so like, he didn't need to be superhero training. He's there. He's already a big dude at this point. The dude's a beast. I can't wait for Creed 3, man.

Good God. It looks, yeah. I've seen the trailer, the last two things I went to the theater. I was like, Man, as if I wasn't already on board with this Creed series. Like, this is an interesting one.

But, yeah, again, just really enjoyed kind of just the whole journey we've taken with Cassian. Now she's a superhero. We don't get her superhero name in this movie, just yet. Even though if you go out and look at the figures or the toys, they call her Stature because that is her name in the comics. She doesn't go with a bug theme.

She's like, you know. Well, they also just jumped right to that. Much like the rest of this plot, there's no easing into it. It's like, she's just a kind of normal girl last time we saw her. Now, not only is she getting arrested because she's a social justice warrior, but she's also got a suit, hanging out with Grandpa, who's not really her grandpa, but he's adopted Grandpa, and is also kind of a genius.

I'm like, we didn't really get that. She was just a normal kid every other movie so far. So it's like, it's good that now she's like suddenly. Iron Man level of genius. Yeah.

That's handy. But yeah, we didn't ease our way in on any of those things. She just, she's super smart. She's got her own suit. She knows how to use it for the most part.

Other than the, you know, flip and kick. But yeah, other than that, it's like we just immediately are thrown into, oh yeah, and your daughter's also a superhero. You know, it's kind of funny. It kind of happened in the same way in the books too. Because...

You know, when Scott was first introduced in the 80s, Cassie was always the thing. And he was like, you know, he's trying to split time between being a good dad and trying to raise money and go, I'm really good at being a thief, so there you go. Then he steals the Ant-Man suit and the rest is history. But yeah, Cassie was always the thing in there. And then literally when they decided to do the Young Avengers thing, it's kind of like, oh yeah, let's, you know, Ant-Man's got a daughter.

Let's take her. Let's bring her in. And so literally there was no previous development of oh, she's, you know, a bit of a science person or she's, you know, a bit of an adventurer or whatnot. So, yeah. It just happened real quick.

But, I mean, she does make a good point that basically, you know, a guy in a bee suit tried to kill me when I was six years old, so I've never had a normal life. I did like that line. I was like, yeah, I mean, we've been there for her whole upbringing now and every step of the way it's, Weird stuff going on. Oh, now my dad's a superhero. Oh, and then he was gone for five years.

He was blipped out of existence and turned to dust. Well, he wasn't even blipped out. He was stuck in the Quadrant. Well, yeah. As far as she knew, he was blipped out.

But really, he was. Stuck in the back of a van somewhere. Yeah. But yeah, so she's had a very interesting life nonetheless. But yeah, it's going to be interesting to kind of get her and Riri Williams from Wakanda Forever... soon to be Ironheart, to get the two of them in the same room together.

Because basically, there's your science people, whereas she is more of the Tony Stark builder. Cassie, on the other hand, is kind of almost like a Reed Richards, where she gets into the experimental science and the super science kind of stuff. So yeah, she's a bit of a builder too, but she's on a different level. So she's in the higher planes, that sort of thing like that. So that's going to be very interesting to get these younger characters together, kind of see what they come up with.

Definitely. Yeah. I do feel while we're on that first structure of it, I think if there's anything that's a weird area, because by the end. I enjoyed the hell out of this movie. Yeah.

It does feel like it takes its time when it doesn't need to once we, because we jump right to it, but then there's like this long period of like, well, we got to go look for somebody and well, I'm not going to tell you what's going on. Like, it seems like there's that extra time. I'm like, Okay, first of all, we know who it is. Yeah. So it's a weird.

Long time before they bring our villain in, really. We even have our floating head fake villain for a second there. And then you're like, oh, no, I'm working for the real guy. You just wait till he gets here. So I'm like, yeah, shouldn't he already be here?

We know who he is. Number one, saw Loki. We've seen the trailer. Like, we know who it is. But they take a good amount of time to work up.

To, like, the big reveal and everything. I don't know. That was weird. So once we get him in there, I think from that point on, everything's just kind of awesome. Because he's so good, and then we get these great series of action scenes.

So just structure-wise, that was a puzzling part. Why are we pretending or just taking so much time? It'd be different if it was a fake-out reveal or something. But we know where we're going, and we go there. It's not a change.

So they really. Granted, in that downtime, we hang out with Bill Murray, which I did not know was coming. Oh, you didn't know that? Okay, yeah. So that was fun and weird all at the same time.

It was kind of nice, too, because we've never really seen him play a villainous character before. And there's a couple of moments in his scene that he has. I mean, Venkman's kind of. He's maybe a sociopath. Well, maybe, yeah.

But he's still a lovable guy. But there's a couple of times where Bill has a sinister delivery of things. Like, I could see more of him playing a bad guy. I would actually like to see... That's one of those...

Going back to Tarantino... Pluck him out of there and throw him into your villain role. Yeah, I could watch that. And it's interesting because the role he plays, the character, I mean, you can't get any more obscure. I think this character played like...

I think he was in one issue of The Hulk in either the late 70s or the early 80s. And he was like a futuristic weapons dealer guy. I mean, it just... one-off guy completely unimportant to anything in the marvel universe but let's pull this obscure character out just so i can stunt cast bill murray. I mean they've done that a lot recently we've already worked jeff goldblum in we can't do that again who else can we get well i. Mean but jeff goldblum's character though is sort of a major character.

He eventually has a huge you know we're not huge but he has a good amount of screen time he does come into play as to how the Plot turns out where that is not the case with Bill Murray. Yeah, I mean, there's certain people they bring in like, okay, well, you're like Benicio Del Toro and Jeff Goldblum's character. They're universal aspects. But they still sort of felt like that same casting of like, what? Who can we get to play a weirdo?

Who's kind of a weirdo anyway? Benicio Del Toro? Yeah, he'll do it. They were well cast, but at least they were somewhat important characters. Whereas Bill Murray's character is not.

I mean, he's not even in the quantum realm of... When Hulk finds him. So, like, this character was completely reinvented just to stick Bill Murray in the role. But, like, we can't do a really important character just in case we want to use this guy later on. And Bill's probably not going to show up for a whole movie for something weird like this.

But if you leave him a message on that answering machine, he'll, you know, if he feels like it that day, he might show up and do two days worth of shooting. So that's what you get. And it's kind of worth it just for the weird octopus thing. By the end there, I was like, okay, I. Didn't see that coming either.

That's pretty awful. I was like, revenge! You know, for the drink with the little squid character. Yeah, that's pretty... And, you know, kind of the next scene we go like, so... hooking up with him, were you?

Yeah. That was a fun little post-married couple moment. Well, that was kind of fun because you got to think like, okay, you know, it's like, yeah, she was in the porn realm. It was 30 years. Yeah, they were essentially separated for 30 years, but yeah.

And he thought she was dead, so like, and she didn't know what the hell was going on or that she'd ever get back, so. There you go. I get it, you know. Yeah, she had needs. You got needs, you got needs.

But yeah, a lot of the technology that was done there, of course, like, you know, how The steering mechanism. It's like these gelatinous worm things you stick here. It's like stuffing a Thanksgiving turkey. Just jam it all the way in there and there you go. Stuff like that.

They just wanted to establish the quantum realm doesn't play by the rest of life's rules. The world's rules or anything. Again, almost immediately we jump there and then the whole rest of it is just. Like a prog rock album cover. Yeah.

I mean, every time they'd cut away to some other thing, I'm like, yeah, yeah, there you go. I mean, the VFX people, they just outdid themselves. Like, the Quantum Realm was beautiful. It is, and a lot of weird variations. Like, it wasn't just the same thing.

Like, you'd cut to a different area, and it's like, no, this is an entirely different weird thing we're looking at now. Yeah, this whole movie is like walking in the Mos Eisley canteen, and you're seeing like a hundred different aliens. Which, there were a few that I was like, aren't those just leftovers from that last Star Wars movie? The ones that had like the head drape, almost like a Middle Eastern headgear on. And I was like, weren't they in the party scene when they go meet Lando in that last movie?

Oh, you're talking about when she meets up with the people and chops the dude's arm off together, right? Okay, those were nomads. So that's kind of why they were all dressed up like the desert. But again, it kind of feels like that same, which there's a few times in this, And now I'm just like, are these all just big storytelling? Because there's so many moments that I'm like, it's kind of like from this movie.

And that's kind of, but I mean, I guess when you watch enough crap, everything starts to be, there's only so many variations, but there are a few times in this when I'm like, well, I'm kind of like, you know, cause they do. I mean, they have the, let's create a revolution in the middle of our story just for the hell of it. And I'm like, like the robot revolution. when they jump out of the ship and yell revolution i was like that's a little familiar based on a company that owns both of these properties yeah but then also that's i was like well that's also what they did in the in the ragnarok too like with jeff goldblum they set up their own little mini revolution to kind of go along with what they were in the middle of already doing.

So I'm like, we're starting to see themes here, but, It may. Just be general storytelling stuff. Traditionally, when you have a despotic ruler, sooner or later the folks are going to revolt against him. These are basic things. But even, yeah, the big battle of like, here comes the, you know, oh, we're going to lose.

Oh, here comes the big army. It's like, is this just Return of the King now? Like, what do we, like, everything. I was like, again, these are all just classic storytelling tropes. Well, and in this case that, you know, Michael Douglas gets to play Gandalf because he comes in with the ant cavalry.

He comes rolling in. And I love the super smart ants. That was great. That was cool. And like, they just sort of buried that at the beginning.

Like, we just barely get the ant farm. And then by the time we get to them at the end, it's like, all right, it's a good thing we set that up because damn if they're not awesome when they show up. Yeah, because we know they got in the quantum realm with them. So it's like, you know, they aged up and I mean, they were already super smart, but they aged up even more. I like that tech.

Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah. Like, we got ants who built their own society, a technocracy. And then when they show up to battle, like, they're armed to the teeth. I like the one that had, like, the laser on his thorax or, like, in his mandible area.

And, like, anything that comes in front of him, he's just, like, cutting it in half. Sawing it down. Like, that's awesome. Yeah. Or, like, had, like, the giant ant, like, the big tank thing.

I was like, dude, okay. Yeah. And once again, this is, I mean, I know it, but he's changed so much in recent years. But like that shot of Michael Douglas, I'm like, man, I grew up in an era when there was nobody cooler than Michael Douglas. So watching him just come strolling up with the battle full of ants, I was just like, there he is.

He still got it. Yeah, I was like, that's that badass I remember. Still got it. Yep. Michael Douglas.

Oh, and we got to talk about our freedom fighters here throughout the movie. So- you know of course we've got you know an array of different characters. That was another one. I was like, this is sort of a thing they return to with like, let's find some weird, quirky side characters and then suddenly they're going to become your favorite. This is the Thor Ragnarok all over again.

It's like, those two guys are my favorite in the whole movie. And then you realize, later they realize that too. We're going to keep putting them in there. So I'm waiting to see if I've Got No Holes becomes a standard go-to at this point. Who doesn't like it?

Veb is going to be everybody's favorite new character now. He's pretty lovable. Yeah, just this sweet little gelatinous guy. Who runs ridiculous. Who runs ridiculous, but his most important character trait is that apparently he oozes a liquid, and this liquid is used basically as a universal translator.

So you drink his ooze, and then now you can communicate with everybody in the quantum realm. That was another thing there of watching, and I was like, this is also like Marvel translated through. Douglas Adams. I was like, there's the babblefish. And then there was another one later in the movie.

I was like, that's kind of like the, I don't know. There's a lot of those weird sort of ridiculous things going on in the quantum realm that are a little Douglas Adams-y. So I'm like, yeah, I can see that. Yeah. But the interesting thing is that, of course, when I saw the trailer and I saw the scene where kind of the freedom fighters come up over the hill and gather together, I was convinced that those were the Micronauts.

Yeah. Because the Micronauts were a property that Marvel had in conjunction with Hasbro, because it was another, like, toy-turned-comic book. But the irony is that the comic book lasted twice as long as the toy line ever did. And then, matter of fact, they had, like, a second iteration, like a sequel series that was done, like, it started in the 70s, and then they had, like, a sequel series in the 80s. And then the property went dormant for a long time, and then another company picked them up and is doing Micronauts books again.

I think it's because the toys were really fragile. Yeah. I ended up with one, and every time I moved him, I was like, oh, I think he's going to break. They were, and they were very... The toys versus the comics are almost two completely separate things.

Yeah. Because while there are characters that do overlap, they have a whole other slew of characters in the comic books that are the lead heroes... That were never represented in the toys. No. Like the main bad guy is, but not.

I don't even remember them having character so much with the toys. It was just like, here's some guys. This one's orange. This one's green. That was the most defining trait they had.

This one's got a silver face and a translucent body. Yeah. This one has a silver face and an orange translucent body. Totally different guy. And then, okay, the main bad guy looks kind of like a Wish version of Darth Vader.

So there you go. So... Yeah. But yeah, so the comics went much further. They were incorporated within the Marvel Universe, and then basically Hasbro pulled the rights.

And so now we've kind of got this franchise that every now and then keeps kind of popping up in Marvel continuity. There was a character, part of the Micronauts, called Bug, who later pops up in Guardians of the Galaxy in one of its revival series. So all these Guardians fans are expecting Bug to pop up in the movies. Like, that's never going to happen. Because Hasbro...

Just for whatever reason, they will not release the Micronauts. We only have so much stuff. We have to hold on to these. But it's also they're not doing shit with them. Yeah, of course.

There's no movies. They tried a comic book through IDW Publishing. Because they did the whole thing. Hasbro has the rights to G.I. Joe, Transformers, Mask, Micronauts, and ROM Space Knights.

And My Little Pony. And My Little Pony. Yeah. The most badass of all. And with the exception of My Little Pony, they try to do a collective universe with all these toy properties in there.

Yeah. And they actually have done a crossover of My Little Pony and Transformers. Well, no, that was, yeah, I didn't know this existed. I specifically messaged, I mean, if you listen to the show, I messaged Misty and went, how do I not know there's a My Little Pony. That's also a Ghostbusters?

Me, dork that I am, someone who goes out and sees toys and random crap all the time, how have I not run across this? Because it's been out for several years. Oh, wow. But yeah, it's normal, looks exactly shaped like a My Little Pony, and yet has the Ghostbuster emblem right on its butt like they always had lightning or cupcakes or whatever weird shit. So yeah, I saw that recently and was like, how did I not know.

This was a thing? But I looked, that's that same series. They did a crossover of Ghostbusters. Power Rangers for some reason. And they did one that's an Optimus Prime pony.

Yeah. So he's pretty badass looking. He or she, whichever. There's also a Transformer of Ecto-1. Yeah.

There's a Transformer of the DeLorean from Back to the Future. And now my favorite, they're doing G.I. Joe Transformers mashups where like there's Bumblebee that transforms into a G.I. Joe vehicle. And then there's, I can't remember which, Decepticon transforming into a Cobra vehicle.

So, like, you get a Transformer that turns into a G.I. Joe replica vehicle, but it's still, when you transform it, it's the Transformer you know. It's also a Transformer. It's your favorite thing. But then it also comes with a G.I.

Joe figure, too. So it's like, holy shit. This is too much for my brain to handle. It's too much awesome is what it is. You know?

But anyway, so they're doing all these kind of especially crossover toys. But, yeah, so anyway, so I knew, like, okay, did they get the rights to the Micronauts? Or, like, are we going to do kind of like a half-assed Micronauts and we get a half-assed Micronauts? So. Basically, because the Micronauts were a group of basically collected heroes throughout the Quantum Realm that had a...

I can't remember what the Lord... Like, not Voltron, or... I can't remember what the main bad guy's name was. But basically, he was a despotic ruler of the Quantum Realm, and they go and basically are freedom fighters fighting against him. So it's the same concept, they just couldn't call them the Micronauts, and they couldn't use any of the names of the Micronauts.

And, like, they basically turned, like, the main guy, Acrier, into the warrior woman character. A.K.A. Valkyrie. Yeah. She is badass.

But, yeah, Jentora's awesome. Yeah. It felt a little Valkyrie-esque. Very Valkyrie-esque, yeah. I mean, Valkyrie's also badass, so I can't blame you.

Yeah. There's a lot of badass warrior women. Oh, there are. But that one, she didn't really have much else. Like, she wasn't given a ton of. all you get is badass.

She's just like, oh, she's got. A staff, and what was that staff doing exactly? But it was badass. So yeah, she was cool, but I kind of wanted more personality from her, but we didn't spend much time with anybody. The most we get is I've got no holes.

Yeah, well, we got enough. Basically, you kind of had like four freedom fighters you kind of got attached to. Basically, you got Gentora, you had Veb we've talked about. You've got the telepath Quaz. Which he's got some great scenes, too.

I was going to say, he's got the good lines. So, yeah, he's got all the jokes when there's not a ton of jokes. He had half of them, it felt like. Yeah, and then, of course, you've got the robotic, was it like the laser-headed dude? Zalem.

Zalem is his name, yeah. Pretty badass, too. Yeah, and so, you know, not to spoil anything, but he's our one, you know, casualty. Yeah, we didn't lose a ton of people this time around, so I guess that was the only, well, we've got to kill somebody. It's got to be semi-realistic.

We've got to off one of our regulars. Well, and we kind of get a false ending, too, where we think that basically, oh, maybe Ant-Man and the Wasp now are trapped in the quantum realm. Yeah, like almost immediately they reverse that. Yeah, I know. It's like, oh, okay, they're going to be in here for a little bit.

Yeah, I thought we were going to leave it like we did. on the cliffhanger at the end of the second one. It's like, oh, he's stuck there now. I thought that's kind of how we were coming back to it. And so I thought maybe they were going to do that. Like, okay, we're going to have Ant-Man leading the Freedom Fighters and then he gives them the name the Micronauts or something.

So we get that in there, but then they're like, oh, no, wait, Cassie went over there She's the one who initially built this machine, so she can easily repair it and open the door back up. So within seconds, she can Iron Man her way right in there and fix everything. So that's what she did. Yeah. So it's like, okay.

Never mind. Yeah. Back to Baskin-Robbins. Yeah. So there you go.

Oh, and I didn't... That's great, too. We get lots of Baskin-Robbins jokes, you know, bringing that nugget back from the first movie, the creepy manager, whatever else. And then I didn't notice it the first time I went, so he picks up the ice cream cake, and of course you see, like, this horrible aunt... You see a lot of mistakes on there.

I didn't realize he spelled birthday wrong. But it's like Biff Day or something like that. Yeah, he came out of retirement for that. Yeah. And my wife asked the very obvious question, like, how do you screw up an ice cream cake?

You know, it's like... He seemed to find a way. It's like, do they make the cake fresh there in the stores? I always kind of was the impression that it basically is like they just get like slabs of cake and slather ice cream between there and there you go. Yeah, it's just pre-made in a truck and you just put the little... detail on the side there.

You do a little trim and you're good. Yeah, or if somebody wants a specific flavor, you just basically slather your brick of ice cream in between two things of cake there and there you go. I don't know, but either way, the man apparently is capable of screwing up an ice cream cake. Can I at least make my... It's never too late to not be a dick, but sometimes I still have to...

I've mentioned this many a time and I'm not trying to be a jackass guy that thinks he can comment on women's looks, I'm just being realistic. I do not like her haircut. Hope, what are you thinking? I don't like that haircut. Yeah.

Well, I was confined the other movies. There's only a handful of women that can pull off something that short. I don't know. It ain't happening. I don't get it.

It didn't completely distract me, but I wasn't 100% a fan of it. Yeah. But see, the thing is that she dyes her hair for the Ant-Man movies to play the character of Hope as a brunette. But in real life, she's a blonde. Yeah.

And so she's kind of running around with that length of hair, and she's a blonde. See, I thought maybe it was just to simplify putting the helmet on, because now she's in action mode the whole movie. Unlike the first movie, she didn't have to worry about that so much. The second movie in Endgame. Second movie in Endgame, she's in there the whole time.

So I was like, maybe this just simplifies the whole problem. But I was like, well, but Cassie has a ponytail, and she has no problem putting her helmet on. Yeah. I don't get it. I don't know.

So it's not my place to say whether or not You can do whatever the hell you want with your hair. Just saying. I don't like that hair. Yeah. There's a couple of, you know, I don't know if these were purposefully put in lines, but there's a couple of lines, two different moments in the movie that kind of a little bit, you know, mirror real life.

There's a scene where basically MODOK, a.k.a. Darren, sees Cassie for the first time. And says, Cassie, I barely recognize you. That one was, well, yeah, that was funny. But also I do, while we're on that, I do like him at the end going, you changed your hair.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That is funny. I didn't like the hair change, but it is a funny line. The first thing, you know, as he's dying, he's like, you changed your hair. But yeah, the line of, oh, I barely recognize you, because that's the fourth actor to play this role.

The other line I thought was funny was when basically, you know, Hank brings in all the ant army and says something about I know socialism is a charged word but we can learn a lot from these guys and then Evangeline Lilly shuts him down which is kind of funny because much like Letitia Wright in real life Evangeline Lilly has gotten on social media and made some controversial political statements and Disney had to basically say shut your fucking mouth you. Are a big part of these movies would you like to continue to be? Just people in general. Just like, you can think whatever you want, but shh, don't get on Twitter and say it because you're going to get yourself fired. Yeah.

So, you know, think whatever you want. I don't care, but. Yeah, it's like, be fucking smart about this, people. It's like, you are, it's like, it's one thing to have your own political opinions and your own, you know, social opinions or whatever else. It's like, But when you are a part of a multinational conglomerate media giant that is fucking Disney, you shut your damn mouth.

Just from, like, again, I'm not telling you to do that. I'm just saying you should know to do that as you're dealing with your livelihood at this point. Yeah. You think you would have sense enough to be like, you know what? I think I'm going to just back off.

No, I'm not going to say anything, huh? I'll just post this picture of a kitty, and that's pretty funny, and people will like that. I don't really need to go on a rant on Twitter right now. Great fucking case in point, Jon Voight. John Voight for years had a great career.

Some people knew him, knew he was a political guy, knew he was a conservative guy. But the older he gets, the more crazy conservative he gets. And then guess what? You can't get in a fucking Hallmark movie now. That's pretty much everybody.

Everybody somehow becomes older and more conservative and more of. An asshole most of the time. I'm like, I don't care what your political beliefs are, but just shut up. Yeah, Rob Schneider, there's a reason you're not getting cast in anything except a podcast. There was a reason in the 80s and 90s as far as I was concerned.

Well, he was Adam Sandler's buddy. That's how he got every role he had. He can get in movies and just be a funny... I mean, I met the guy in person. He's a nice guy.

But it's like, okay, if you have controversial political statements, just don't... say those in avenues where you are written down or recorded. In any way. Where you're going to get yourself fired. Because you will. This is the world we live in.

Yeah, and the world of Hollywood is a liberal town oh yeah we know this it's been that way since jump street. But it used to be you could do whatever you wanted and everything got swept under the rug or even the press used to look the other way and that is not the world we live in now and you know that since the internet came about specifically since social media became a thing in the forefront at this point that like you can't do that anymore and now that basically not the world we live. In and then now that basically every citizen who owns a smartphone is now considered a part of the media yep you have a recording device in your hand that you could broadcast it to the world. And no matter what you say even if you think oh i might go back and delete that by this time 4 000 people have already screenshotted it and you're not escaping from it so there's no going back covering your tracks like at this point just Just everybody shut up.

Yes. Yeah. That's the thing. Unless you're saying something like, you know what? Puppies are great.

Puppies are great. That's something everybody can get behind. Sick with nice. Post a little post if you want to still have a career. Again, I don't care.

You can be an asshole if you want, but don't expect to still have a career when you post stupid things. Retire, then become an asshole. Yeah, you can think and say whatever the hell you want. I'm not here to tell you, but I will tell you you're going to get fired if you do it. People are dumb.

Well, I don't know. It's just people just, you know, the ego gets in the way of good sense. And y'all is like, I'm a famous person. I can say what I want. No.

You can. It's not going to work out for you. Well, I mean, the whole thing is that some people who've had the misunderstanding of things, of like, the internet basically brought consequences. Mm-hmm. That's what it.

I mean, you were held accountable for things you said. Yeah. Well, I'll be damned. You know, that's kind of how it should have always worked. But it didn't.

And now all of a sudden, you're actually responsible for the things you do and say. Yeah, I'm sure. Oops, you know. I'm sure in all of our youth, you know, or whatever else we've said or done things we regret. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. But, you know, fortunately, no one was around to record those things. That's not the case now. And so, yeah, you got to be careful about that shit. It's a different world.

So, yeah, it's like, ladies, men, whatever the case may be, it's like, Yo, Amber Heard is a great example. She will not be appearing in the Aquaman film coming out in November of this year. She was in the movie. She shot all her scenes. She's still getting paid for her work, but she will not be in the final cut of the movie whatsoever.

So, lesson learned here, folks. Watch your shit. To counterbalance Don't Like Hope's hair, Michelle Pfeiffer looks amazing. Yeah. Not to, again, be a creepy dude, but I'm just like, I love the hair.

Like, again, like, don't bother dyeing it because she looks amazing. Yeah. And, like, not just the hair. How the hell does she hold up like she does? Because she is not a kid anymore and yet looks so damn good.

Yeah. Points to you, Michelle. You look terrific. I would like to think she probably knows what moisturizer is. Obviously.

Amazing. And she looks like she hasn't had any work done or anything. No, that's the best part is she doesn't look doctored up like Almost everybody at this point. Yeah. I mean, so it's like, yeah, she's just aging very, very well and, you know, still got it.

And then, like, you know, this is, I mean, she's done some adventure-y roles before and she, I mean, she was a freaking cat one. But she did way more action in this movie than I've ever seen her do before. Yeah. Like I said, she is a full-on badass in this movie. I'm all for it.

So, yeah. I would love. Michelle Pfeiffer. I would love to see more Janet Van Dyne in action. So, yeah.

But, yeah. So, you know, we've kind of talked a little bit about Kang a little bit. But we've got to get to Kang and talk a little bit more about him. Because, again, this is our big bad for this movie. Chunk of this whole run for the next several years.

So settle in we're gonna get real close with mr majors here. Which at least this is promising you know if we would have gotten in and went oh who is this guy you know you'd be in trouble because it's not a one-off villain like we've had those I feel like that was one of my issues in that last Thor movie. I was like, well, that was. Oh, he's gone? Oh, well.

Yeah. So you don't have to worry about whether or not you liked him because he's gone already. But this guy is going to be around in the series, as we see by the end of this, in the next upcoming movies. It's like he's our go-to. So...

Yeah. Yeah. So, of course, he's going to be, you know, different than Thanos, you know, different type of villain. And, yeah, what I like a lot about, you know, Kang is, you know, very much when he wants to, he can be very charming. He's highly manipulative, you know, like he knows how to work somebody.

Oh, yeah. And you kind of almost get a little bit of mirroring from that from Janet, right? Because she's basically the secret holder. She knows all the shit that's going on. She knows what they're heading into, but still does not tell her family, does.

Not tell her friends. Hasn't mentioned it since she's been back, period. Yeah. And even when they're in the middle of this, it's just like... Anyway, I've got to go look for somebody.

I'm like, wow. Even now, when they're in danger, you're not going to come clean on it. Yeah. So she's kind of holding back a lot of secrets and manipulating the people she's with, but she's doing it for protection or into that guy's. But it's like, you need to come clean with the fact that you have an Omega-level threat here who's been trying to get out longer than you have now because you were in for 30 years and you left, but he's still been in here for another 10 years.

So, it's like, and what he did in that time is rather horrific. So, shit. But the interesting thing, jumping ahead to our cut scenes, because we have two post-credit scenes, both dealing with Kang. Yeah. They didn't even switch up like they knew.

Normally, there's like, here's what's coming next, and here's a funny one-off thing we thought of. And we get a little bit of that because our second scene, we see Loki and Mobius again. So it's like, okay, we know we're going to be... Because, I mean, you saw season one of Loki. You know season two, Kang is going to be all over that.

Things have changed, and Loki's the only one that knows everything's different. So we get a little bit of that, but we get to see another different aspect of Kang... in that time period and who he is and his style of character there. But then the first scene, though, was much more interesting because we get the Council of Kangs. See, that's what earlier I was going to get to because when you were talking about the different stages of Kang, once we get to that point, I'm like, okay, so now I'm trying to figure out what are those actually different people and there are multiples of them or is this the same guy in different time periods? The Council of Kangs, it depends.

This is like Rick and Morty, right? Kind of, yeah. It is kind of like Rick and Morty, yeah. So he hates all of them. You guys all suck.

Well, that's the thing. Kang is very prone to want to team up with himself, but he's also very prone to want to manipulate himself for his own means. Very much like Rick and Morty. And if the other Kangs get destroyed in the process, that's fine. Very much like Rick and Morty.

If they follow the comics, the three Kangs we see initially in that scene, that's Kang in three different stages of his career. Okay, so that is the same guy, he's just different arcs coming back around. Same guy, different time periods. Out of time, yeah. Because the ancient Egyptian, that's Ramatut.

That's basically when Kang first discovers time travel, he goes back to ancient Egypt, becomes a pharaoh. and rules for centuries. Sounds like a pretty good gig. I can't blame him on that one. And the Avengers come across Kang in the modern world, but the first time the Fantastic Four run into Kang, it's in ancient Egypt and they meet Ramatut. So that's kind of our first introduction, like, oh, Kang's been doing some shit.

The futuristic one, basically, that's probably like a much later, you know, you know, version, you know, his armor is changed. Cyborg-y looking. Very cyborg-y. Yeah. The other one is the most interesting one because that's Amortus.

Amortus considers himself the lord of time. He almost considers himself like a god where he basically controls time, can easily manipulate it, manipulate events from the shadows. He's no longer an active participant in stuff. He's basically the guy in the big castle. Basically, he's almost kind of like The version we see in the end of Loki.

That's what I was going to ask. Is that who we run into at the end of Loki, or is that. A different variation? Different variation. But still pretty much that same thing.

Because that is basically a really, really, really, really, really, really old Kang. That's the old, tired version of Kang. He's just like, I don't even feel like destroying you guys anymore. Well, that's the thing, though. He still does.

But he's like, I'm not an active participant anymore. I'll just sit here in the shadows. And, you know, cut this time stream, cut this time stream, cut and paste, you know. So he's a projectionist now in an old movie theater. Yeah, basically.

So he's still doing the manipulating and doing the evil things. But now he's doing it on a much grander scale. And sometimes does things that would be somewhat considered good. But if you've got to break a couple eggs to make the omelet, he's okay with that. Yeah.

Because he's seen how it all works out. Right. When you're that detached and distanced from everything, yeah, it's like you don't have any ties to these. They're barely even people anymore. This is just what happens.

This is what I do. I've been doing this for millennia. This is what it is. Immortus of those Kangs is probably the most dangerous because of how he carries himself, how he thinks of himself for that period of time, how long he's been doing things. And then his modus operandi at that point, because he's far more powerful as Immortus than he is in the others.

Yeah. So that's the most dangerous one. Now, whether or not that's still the case or if that's just this is a different variation of Kang. So everyone in the Coliseum there at the end is all from different time periods. They're not just like cloning.

No, they're not clones. These are different time periods. Different time periods, different variations. That's kind of what I thought, but I'm like, you never really know at this point. Because it's kind of like we get a little bit of that mirroring when basically, you know, Scott's trying to like, you know, shrink the power core and you get like all the multiple versions of it.

That's kind of what we're seeing in there. But at least those Kangs are aware of the fact that they are a different variation of things because they're They've served the time stream. They just go and live their own life, more or less. An interesting thing, though, is that basically we're seeing all the people, you know, they see that last shot of all the, you know, arena full of Kangs all being, you know, kind of very excited about being there and whatnot. There's one Kang that was a Skrull.

That we can tell or that. It's going to appear later? No, literally. There's two green-faced guys. One's got this very lizard-y looking thing.

It looks kind of like an alien from the Sigourney Weaver movies, but green. That was a Kang. But then we see up in the back row, the last shot of the dude. He has a screaming line, but he has a line. That fucking Kang was a Skrull.

Yeah. So, and our next movie we're dealing with, or. Next series is Secret Invasion. Oh, these Skrulls. It's a good thing we won't hear anything else about them anymore.

Yeah, except for Secret Invasion. So, yeah. So, I'm curious there. Some interesting little Easter eggs. We're going to have to kind of get to them.

The second scene, the, you know, basically the Kang kind of giving the presentation about time. The sign labels that person's name as Victor Timely. Victor Timely. If you remember back in the original Captain America, where they're doing, like, a World's Fair thing, and where they're trying to, they're talking about when they first experimented with the super soldier stuff. Yeah.

And they show the one dude who basically is, like, giving a presentation. There's a guy on fire inside of a bottle. That's the original Human Torch from the 40s. Not the Johnny Storm Fantastic Four guy. The android guy who's basically, you know, had Human Torch-like powers, why not?

Fought in World War II, fought alongside Captain America. Yeah. But he was created by two guys, Phineas Horton and Victor Timely. Hmm. Yeah, how much are they actually going to do with that?

Yeah, is there any lead in that? Or is that just kind of thrown in? Because there was another thing that was also thrown in, too. The whole big scene with the big action scene, the revolt, and the bridge gets shut down. And they're trying to get the bridge back open.

And so basically they extract the code. The bridge code was 18147? No. All right. That was thrown in for all of us issue nerds.

I was going to say, what issue number was that? Because they love to do. That in these movies. 181 was the first issue of Avengers where Scott Lang is introduced. Alright.

47 of Marvel Premiere was the first issue where Ant-Man was introduced. So there you go. Extra little geek time. Little geekness thrown in there, yeah. Mm-hmm.

So yeah, like I said, the whole Victor Timely thing, and the thing too is like, Timely Comics was what Marvel Comics was called before it was called Marvel Comics. And its logo was a shield kind of logo. That sign that said Victor Timely was a shield sort of logo, very similar. So I was like, whether or not that means anything, or they just threw that shit in just to throw that shit in. But yeah.

Yeah. There's a lot of deep dives for Marvel people, so, you know, you gotta work those in somewhere. But yeah, then they have to decide, oh yeah, are we gonna do something with this? Yeah, so they threw in a lot of stuff in there. But yeah, so just, I guess the next time we'll definitely see Kang.

I'd love to. We don't get, like, you know, most of the time we get the endings of these movies and we'll get, you know, Captain America will return or Thor will return. We didn't get an Ant-Man will return. We get Kang. Kang is coming back.

Don't you worry. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to see a whole lot more of this guy. Most definitely.

Yeah. So I'm very excited where this is all going to lead because, you know, they're following some stuff in the books, but they could definitely take a lot of liberties and a lot of changes of things. But, I mean, this guy's going to be ruling the world here in a little bit. Yeah. I wasn't sure.

What to think going into this one. And as I said, once we get to the introduction of Kang, it also just gets to be fun from a big crazy action movie kind of thing. All of the whole setup with him as he's sort of still snowing them and pretending to be someone else until we get to the full-on reveal from Michelle Pfeiffer. And then once we know for sure, then he just becomes full-on villain. And then the big battles in the end are really fun.

So, yeah, that whole last two-thirds is just so much fun that, yeah, I ended up really liking this more than. I even expected going into it. Yeah. That's kind of the thing I had the suspicions about, that this was going to be a much bigger film. because of, you know, we're going into an entirely different section of the Marvel universe, the quantum realm. So we get a whole new area of discovery, you know, which I like those aspects.

We get like new realms, new worlds, new things to discover because there are so, I mean, we've still got tons more shit to get into, you know, the guardians, we're going to be getting this guardians three. We're going to be getting some other stuff on that road. The movies too. So get that trailer. Yeah.

The new trailer, the new trailer. That's a lot of stuff. Yeah. I, I, I'm looking forward to that just because I always like what they do with most of the Guardians run anyway. But yeah, they definitely have a lot of new area to cover in that one.

And I warned my wife. I said, yeah, Guardians 3, bring the tissues. We're killing off some of these, if not a lot of these people. Well, I mean, this thing is, you know, this is the last run for this crew. If we do more Guardians movies down the road, there will be different members.

You know, and there's, of course, there's a lot of speculation that basically, you know, Gunn's going to take some of his buddies over to D.C. with him. So we may see Chris Pratt playing a superhero for an entirely different company. He can go. I'm fine with that. Yeah, that's fine.

I've soured on him a lot over the years. And again, mostly real world stuff. I'm like, just another one that I'm just like, shh, just don't talk about your life. I know. Just don't talk about your life.

Just be that dumb guy on screen. He's entertaining still on screen, but. Yeah, I just stick with just watching him in Guardians and then Parks and Recreation. I'm not a big Jurassic Park fan. I'm okay with them fighting dinosaurs, but again, that movie's not good.

But there's action scenes that are really good in it, so I'll watch them fight a dinosaur. Yeah, I haven't seen the new one yet. It's not great. It's way too many things going on at the same time. There's no reason for several of those plot lines to be there.

Of course not. It's too much. Well, I mean, I... Growing up as a kid, I never was a huge, like, dinosaur kid. I think they revoke your kid status at that point.

Well, I mean, I was, I got into, like, mythology and stuff like that, so it's like, you know, in D & D, so it's like, well, fuck a trancetops, I would much rather, you know, deal with, like, a dragon, or, you know. I guess. They're just the real world dinosaurs. You know, a griffin or some shit, you know. Right.

Give me a centaur any day. I was dealing with mythical monsters as opposed to real world shit. Shocking, right? Affording real world topics? Who would have thought that?

That's when I'm always amazed that it still holds up. Because I know the little kids I see now and they're still like, yeah, dinosaurs! Still playing with the same plastic dinosaurs I was a hundred years ago. And I'm like, you know, dinosaurs. It just doesn't go away.

It's still. it's funny even when they're young enough crosses over that even girls are like yes dinosaurs like later they mostly steer clear of it and we're like okay barbies are cool or whatever but it's interesting how connected every. Kid seems to be to dinosaurs yeah i mean grant me you know it's not like i hate dinosaurs or anything like that you know you know stegosaurus is you know my personal favorite or triceratops but you know from but for the most part though it's like I was like, yeah, those are cool, but here's Godzilla over here. Or here's Tiamat, the seven-headed dragon. I was like, I'd much rather deal with that sort of stuff, because those are cooler. It's like, yeah, those are nice, but a meteor took them out.

They're pussies. Speaking of which, we had Kaiju Ant-Man this time around. Yeah. I've said it every Ant-Man movie, and probably every one he's in. I'm like, what a weird powers to call him Ant-Man...

Even though most of the time his go-to move is to get giant. Especially in these Marvel movies. Every movie he grows giant. And now so does the daughter. At least, again, give her a new name.

Because she's not Ant-Man. She's not Tiny. Yeah, that's what I said. Stature. That's the name she chooses.

Kaiju Ant-Man. But it's interesting, though, that they changed her costume. Because in the comics, she sports a little bit of her dad's colors. It's a little more. Passing the torch kind of.

No, it's basically like the color scheme is definitely heavy on the red, like red and silver with a tiny bit of black, whereas his suit is like red and black and a little bit of silver. So, you know, complimentary colors sort of thing. Purple's way cooler. Yeah, they gave her purple. I'm going with purple.

That's what I'm going with when I make my super suit. Yeah, we don't have enough purple themed superheroes. But yeah, I just noticed we got a lot of giant Ant-Man. Which is fun, don't get me wrong, but. It's, I'm like, That's not what ants are like at all.

Well, see, here's the funny thing is that basically in the books, Hank Pym has five or six different personas that he's had over the years. Start with Ant-Man. This is why he just needs to be Pym-Man. No, no, right. Because the Pym is like the go-to now.

I mean, that's kind of almost as gotten as huge as Stark Industries now. He's worked him in so many movies. He's getting to be kind of a big deal. Well, it's funny you should say that you don't call him Pym-Man. So we start with Ant-Man, and then we go Giant-Man, then Goliath, then Yellowjacket.

So yeah, he had that yellow... The Yellowjacket was his weird period where basically he has like a He kind of snaps and goes crazy and goes into spousal abuse. Cool. A very dark period for Hank. Not cool, Hank.

Yeah, they did it to him in the 70s and they kind of, it didn't go away in the 80s, but it's kind of haunted him for the rest of his career. Yeah, there was that part of time where you went crazy and had a whole different persona where you were kind of like, you know. He was basically Mr. Perfect Superhero, but he was also like an asshole and then beat his wife. Yeah.

So, yeah. He's not cool. Yeah. But yeah, so he's out of the others. Giant Man, Goliath, Yellow Jacket.

And then later, finally in the 80s, he just goes by Hank Pym. And that was it. Pym Man. Yeah, still does all that stuff. But then Ant-Man has always been Ant-Man.

But that was kind of the thing. It's basically like. In his discovery of Hank Pym's discovery of his own abilities and his science, it's like, okay, well, first I'm shrinking things. Oh, now I can make things grow. So then I just go back and forth.

Again, but why would you settle on one? I don't know. And then the ant tie in. I'm like, well, it seems like that's a whole different skill set. I can talk to ants.

That should be my thing. Oh wait, but I also get giant sometimes? I don't know. It's a lot of weird stuff. I'll let it slide because I like these movies.

And the Ant-Man, talking to Ant-Communication, that only carries over when he's in the Ant-Man stuff. So when he's Goliath and Giant-Man and whatever else, the ants aren't there. I'm getting big. That's what I'm saying. It's so unfocused as superhero powers go.

But again, I'm fine with it. Most of the time he was basically, occasionally he would do some science-y stuff or talk about science stuff. But for the most part, it's like, okay, well, if we don't have Hulk or Thor in this issue of Avengers, we need a Heavy. Giant man! Mm-hmm.

While we were on the Giant, Cassie gets used to Giant real quick. She does. Because that's the focus of the several times he gets big, is that he just immediately passes out. And even Hank says that when he was doing it. So it's interesting that, like, She just kind of goes with it.

And eventually we get that last second moment of her collapsing. But I was like, she's rolling with it pretty good. So she's got you beat, Dad. And I think it has youth to do with that. Maybe so.

Hank was doing it later in his career. And then you know Scott has pretty much proven like he's not an athlete or anything like that so but yeah just the whole you know call back to needing citrus you know it's like do they ever get any orange slices. Oh well I guess that's most of the goings. On yeah I think we've covered all the bases. Any final thoughts on this one I mean we know we're headed to Towards a lot of crazy big bad stuff.

Yeah. That's kind of the unusual thing is that we know movie-wise. Let's see. Our next movie is Guardians in May. Yeah.

And then it was going to be the Marvels, and now that's in November. So basically May is our next movie, but not going to be dealing with any of the Kang stuff. So really like low-key. Season 2 of Loki will be the next time, but God knows when that's coming out. Yeah, I thought that was pretty soon, but now everything's a mystery.

Time-wise, we all know it's coming, but we don't know when on any of them, really. I think it's kind of unusual, because Disney has been complaining about low streaming numbers, or their ratings are down for certain things, or whatever else. It's like, yeah, maybe you need to roll some shit out. I mean, it has been a while on the Marvel for a full series, and then even... quite a lull for i mean they were knocking out a couple of star wars in a row but it's like we're finally getting back to mandalorian so it's like it took them a little while on that one too because for a while it was one after the other like it was back to back in fact some of it i wouldn't finish one series without the next one starting there was like a two-week crossover sometimes of like the last marvel the next star wars whereas now we've had several months of nothing so yeah.

So i think this year we also get the ahsoka tana series too i think so yeah Yeah, so we've got some Star Wars stuff coming. It's so unusual, though, that we're getting all the streaming stuff of Star Wars, but we haven't got a film since Episode 8. I know. And there's nothing down the pike. They at one point had a Rogue Squadron or something like that.

And they scrapped that. And then it could be back. But now it's like. Indefinitely back, maybe down the line. We don't know.

It's back. It's not with Patty Jenkins. Yeah. It's like everything's been pushed off indefinitely. So they just got...

I mean, the one-two punch on those last movies. Well, all three, really. I mean, they had so much backlash from Last Jedi to then. turn around and. Immediately throw Solo out there and nobody knew what the hell to do with Solo. And then let's quick fix everything and do the last one.

And everybody got rubbed the wrong way on that too. So they just had three misfires kind of in a row. And they're just like, you know what? People love this Mandalorian thing. Let's just stick with the series.

I think it's just safe. It's also a little less investment because now they're doing it all on the big giant screen. So there's way less money involved compared to those full on movies. So yeah, I. Think they're just playing it safe now.

I mean, they may be saving a little bit of money, you know, cause it's not a, you know, you know, we're not dealing with a two and a half to, you know, possibly, you know, like a two and a half hour movie. We're now dealing with basically a six hour series. It's six to eight hours depending on what they do. But at the same time, half of it, especially like the stuff they were showing behind the scenes on Mandalorian, like they weren't even building most of the sets. Like it was all on the screen.

So I'm like, Basically, once you hire your actors and you get some good costumes put together, you're set. Like, you don't have to invest near as much on that stuff once you've got that screen. So it's got to be massively cheaper because they were still building huge sets and tons of props. Yeah. I don't know.

I think it's just so much cheaper to do it series-wise. I mean, even the ones they did some stuff. Like, Kenobi, they did, like, some real world and went and shot in a desert somewhere. Yeah. I think.

They did, yeah. But, again, that's a pretty low-tech one. You know, it's like deserts and roads, and that's all you need. Yeah, it's just true, yeah. Yeah, so I think they're just scaling it back and maybe reforming.

Figure out what the hell they're going to do next as far as movies. Because they can't be done, but I think it just scared the hell out of them. They're just like, oh, we thought we had Star Wars fans forever. You know, we thought we could do anything, and they'd back us. But that's not the case.

Yeah. I think it basically, you had a fan base that was ready for some new stuff, but half that audience was tentative because basically we had the three prequels that Lucas put out, which, you know, there are generations of, you know, fans who, though it's their Star Wars, that's something they grew up on. Mm-hmm. Like I said earlier, like it comes back around and like, now that's a go-to for some people. So it's like the kids grew up and like, not only do you have to mention the prequels, but like Kenobi is a whole tie in.

Like everything that goes on is a hundred percent, even to the point of bringing back Hayden, you know, it's like they totally embrace the fact that like some people like these, these were yours as his kid. And now you're a grownup and you want to see more with that. So they have to kind of fully commit to it to some extent. And as me, I basically am on the opposite camp. I did not like that.

I could basically take parts from all three movies and make one really good Star Wars movie out of that. And most of it's the third movie. Yeah, most of it. I enjoyed the second one more than most. I think that second half is way more pulpy.

It is just a John Carter movie. I'm fine with that. And you threw some lightsabers in there. So, I mean, there's no downside to that for me. Now, is it a great movie?

No. But is it fun? Yeah, that last half's pretty fun. But it's interesting to me how you could basically start to take the potential from that second movie and then basically launch an entire series that is far better than three movies. Which, I mean, yeah, most people will go to animated clone stuff and that's their canon more so than.

Worried about what happened in the prequels. And that's the thing is that a lot of the people who are fans of the prequels will agree with that and say, okay, yeah, there's things we enjoy about the three movies, but really the Clone Wars series is where it's at. Or they just include it all. Like, well, this is a continuation of that, so this is equally as much part of the story as the movies were. So I'm like, yeah.

And that's the thing is, of course, they had a Clone Wars animated film that was very much for kids, which I would recommend just not watching unless you're a child. The first couple of seasons of Clone Wars is still definitely made for kids. But basically when you start getting around season three and definitely in four, shit changes. It's a different show. It grows up.

And then the seventh final season, I mean, when you get to those episodes, especially when you get to like the last four episodes... if you haven't watched the final season of Clone Wars, binge all four episodes together. Yeah. Because that is probably one of the greatest Star Wars, it's not a film, but it might as well kind of is. Because it's extremely cinematic. Like, the whole last season is very good, but those last four episodes, I mean, everybody that's seen those will tell you it's those four that just, like, Jesus, this is better than what Lucas shit out.

Yeah, yeah. So, but yeah. And the Rebels series was very much similar to that. I watched a good. Amount of Rebels, and it was really, I thought, really well done.

Yeah, and another series that it was, you know, it's definitely for kids, but it grew up. So by the time you get to season five and six, and the series ends, it's a grown-up series. Yeah. So that's the thing. There's just, you know, it's kind of this funny thing now where it's like it was seen as like Marvel doesn't do TV well, but they do the movies really well.

And DC does TV well, but they don't do the movies well. Star Wars is now getting in that camp. They do great TV. They used to be known for films. Now they don't even put out films anymore.

So it's a weird world. It is a very, very real world. At least we got John Wick 4 coming out. Yeah, I got that one too. So that's that.

I can't not love it. I mean, just watching. Just that thing that Keanu does that for a while. It's so funny watching it, talking about things changing and growing up. Like the thing that was a joke 20 years ago, now he can do kind of the same thing.

And you're like, yes, there it is. Like there's just the way that he delivers stuff. That has become so signature Keanu in general. But just because this is such a huge part of who he is now, it's like, it's John Wick. And, like, that's what we need is Keanu to show up and be Keanu and kick people's ass.

So, yeah, that trailer looked really fun. Yeah. And it's so funny to kind of think, like, you know, his first foray getting into action stuff was Speed. And we're like, oh, great, Ted's going to do an action movie. I like Speed.

I liked it at the time. I've come to, like, really respect how. Well executed that is as an action movie. To me, that is a great one-time movie. Yeah.

That movie is tremendous the first time you see it. It loses everything upon additional views. And then the, I mean, Keanu is just there to be there, but all the other performances, like, Dennis Hopper is amazing. Like, as he always, especially at that era of his career, he was just phenomenal. And had no problem chewing the scenery and was great at it.

And then there's a reason the whole world fell in love with Sandra Bullock. It's in that movie. You're right there going, look, charisma. Like she's just, whatever Keanu's not doing, he's just kind of hanging out there and jumping on a bus. But like Sandra Bullock is like winning over the entire country in this movie.

So I'm like, everybody else showed up and brought their A-game. So it's, I don't know. There's something about that movie that sets it apart from a lot of the other action stuff at the time yeah but i. Think definitely what changed things for him was doing the matrix oh yeah because we see that in the john wick movies that He gets intense in his preparation. Oh, yeah.

Like, you know, he knows Kung Fu for real because he literally learned it for three movies and studied it every day. And so has since repeated that when he did John Wick. But even more, like, you see him handle a weapon in the John Wick movies. And it's like, this is a guy who's clearly trained. Like, he handles that weapon like an operator, right?

It's just fluid at this point. It is just part of him. No matter what the weapon is, it can be anything. Yeah. You get to that last movie, he's just picking stuff up off the set.

And, like, it is just immediately just part of him. And he will beat the hell out of anybody in the vicinity. But that's what so buys into the believability of his character. Because, like, there's still elements from, like, you know, he just doesn't look all that menacing and threatening, or he still kind of looks nice, and I still see a little Ted in. There or whatnot.

And we all know now he is the nicest dude in the world. Absolutely. So, yeah, it's like it's kind of hard to picture him being this badass, except he's so good at it. Yeah, when you see him in action, you're like, oh, shit, okay. He's like, all right.

I mean, he'll give you a seat on the bus anyway, but if he wanted to, he could kick your ass. And keep it. Yeah. But I recently got to watch the whole trilogy because my wife realized that she'd never watched any of the films. And so like some of her co-workers were like, oh, yeah, you guys, those are great.

You got to check them out. And so she just got a wild hair press. Hey, let's watch John Wick trilogy. And so like over a period of two weeks, we knocked out all three movies. Yeah.

And she enjoyed the hell out of them, was looking forward to part four. Yep. It's an interesting series. Did not see it coming. No.

I don't think anybody did. I don't think the studio did. And the lovely thing too is that basically, you know, the success of John Wick also gave us the film Nobody. Because it's done by the same people, but it's like, let's take a, you know, an even different turn of like, here's a guy who definitely doesn't look like a badass action guy of Bob Odenkirk. You know, we know as a comedic actor, you know, but never in anything like this.

I mean, I put equally right up there with the John Wick stuff, Atomic Blonde is so impressive. Just from the fighting standpoint. Oh yeah, yeah. Like, watching those fight scenes they're just orchestrated so perfectly that i'm just like yeah i mean you can take keanu out of it and these guys know what the hell they're doing like you can again there's just an art form to making a good fight scene and a good action movie in general and like they've got it down like you know what they're doing. Well and it's the that's the thing i like is of course like in the 90s and the 2000s we saw a lot of influence from hong kong cinema and Oh, yeah.

Influencing action films in the States. So that's why everybody's carrying two guns and we're doing all the kind of the John Woo kind of stuff. Now, what we're dealing with is basically influence from Taiwan. Yeah. Basically, especially in the Raid movies.

Which, the honest thing is, a British filmmaker goes to Taiwan and makes T1E' s martial arts action films. The first one is like a Raid, no pun intended, but a... building raid, you know, last standing kind of thing. And then the second film was basically a Scorsese crime epic that also has a lot of T1Es and, you know, martial arts. But the style is very much kind of like Wushu Kung Fu, where you kind of use everything around you, but it's a lot faster. It's a lot more fluid.

It's basically like, okay... I'm going to punch you three times in the face, and then while you're falling down, I'm also going to smash your head into the wall and the floor as well, just to get those extra elements of... you know, punishment in there. A little overkill, perhaps, but, you know, I really want to hit you a lot. Possibly overkill, yes, but it's like, okay, when I'm dealing with a hallway full of dudes, I got to drop this guy as quickly as I possibly can. And instead of just doing the whole Akito, I'm just going to snap your neck in one motion.

No, I'm going to hit you five times with five different things. I'm going to pummel you as much as I can first. But, I mean, it's exciting to watch. It's a new way of doing things. Yeah.

You can kick more than one ass more than one different. Way, I guess. And that, at least in the John Wick form, is also coming our way. So here's all our coming attractions. We've hit all the things coming soon.

In every avenue. I don't know about you, but I am terrified, not in the way they want me to be, but terrified about the Exorcist remake coming this year. No trailers yet. We've seen posters. I just heard about it, but I don't know.

They just keep Again, they keep trying to return to this thing. I mean, how many sequels have we already had? How many competing sequels have we had? How many? I mean, this is so many times to try to hit that same thing.

And I'm like, it really kind of worked once. So like. You keep going back to it. The only sequel that's worth seeing is the third one, Legion. It's made by the guy who knows the most about it.

That was his movie. That's the one that he wanted to put together. And then you had the prequel that was remade. There's two versions, right? Yes, there are two versions.

But basically, it's almost two entirely different films. They're so different. different, so they might as well be two different movies. So technically you've got four sequels, but now they've just gone and just said, you know what? Let's go and throw the turd in the cinematic punch bowl and remake a fucking classic. No.

It doesn't work, people. I was hoping at least they were doing just another weird offshoot sequel, but remake, it's always a question. But here's a weird one, though. They're calling it a remake? But the little girl who gets possessed is not Reagan O'Neill, but Ellen Burstyn is coming back and reprising her role from the original.

That's what I thought. That's why I thought it was a weird legacy sequel kind of idea because they brought her back. So I was like, well, this is just another let's return to the property with the original character. But yeah, why you would want. And why we have Ellen Burstyn back but not Linda Blair too.

I don't get it. This is not. It's like, I know Linda's available. She's kind of retired from acting for the most part. She's doing a lot of pet rescue and activism and that.

Technically, we've got a whole extra movie in there if you count Repossessed. And then you do get Linda Blair. Yes! There you go. That's your takeaway.

Go watch Repossessed and you don't. Need this new movie. God, I haven't seen Repossessed in years. I watched that. I saw that in theater, and then I had a copy of it and watched it more than I probably needed to.

I didn't see it in theaters, but I definitely rented it when it came out. I'm a sucker for Leslie Nielsen. I mean, it is that era of his ridiculous Leslie Nielsen, and if that's what you're looking for, it delivers, and all the timely references that are Barely funny for people now, if you're not really old, all of the stuff they're referencing is totally gone and not even part of pop culture anymore. Except the worst joke that falls the most flat, because it doesn't make any fucking sense, is that the devil, the thing that gets her out is that he starts performing Devil in a Blue Dress because the devil hates rock and roll. Sure.

No, he doesn't! Because rock and roll's cool and the devil's not. But, no, that's... See, they just tricked you with all that metal music. Truth is, the devil hates rock and roll.

No, it's the devil's music. That's what makes it so enticing. Yep, everybody's just been wrong all these years. It's the damnedest thing. I refuse to believe that.

All right. Well, there's a lot of things for you to go check out after you're done with your Marvel movie. There you go. Lots of exploitation, comedic things there. You know, Star Wars cartoons.

Yeah. All kinds of shit. You got a lot of stuff to watch. You got a lot. So get to it.

And I'm sure we'll be back with some Guardians talk before long. Oh, yeah. All right. With all that having been said, otherwise that about does it. We will return next time.

Same geek feed. Thanks for listening. Later, folks. Feel like you're flying Higher than any plane. Nobody knows you And everyone knows your name.

Pockets are breaking. From an overflow of wealth From up here where. I stand A speck of dust I see And though I love you all You look like ants to me And though I love you all You look like ants to me Look like ants to. Me Feel like you're falling No one can understand. Fear overtaken Like a giant in the van Paths obstructed Clouds you can't see through Vision is failing Lacking a guide with you Remark me where I stand.

And though I love you all You look like ants to me Look like ants to me Flying Up above it all Falling The lines are just how small The insignificant immortal man And once again Don't love you where I stand A speck of dust I. See And though. I love you all You. Look like acid. From up here where I stand A.

Speck of dust And though I love you all You live against the need. Quadrophenia. You guys are ready to talk about The Who, right? Well, I could talk about Quadrophenia. Actually, I saw that movie not too long ago.

Just for gigs. I kept seeing the title of our actual movie and just going, I don't know. That's an odd way to title your movie. This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown. Produced and edited by The Oddity Studios.

With opening music performed by The Empires. For more on how to sponsor or support the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com. Talk hard! This program is a proud member of the Battleship Pretension Fleet.