Author: Ya Ting
Editor: Takushu Kimura
Whether it is as the opening of a new journey in the fifth phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or as a work released in mainland audiences after three years after "Avengers 4", "Ant-Man and Wasp: Quantum Frenz" (hereinafter referred to as "Ant-Man 3") has performed generally and not as expected, and is becoming the consensus of most audiences around the world.
According to Douban 6.2 points, Rotten Tomatoes 51% freshness, European and American media authoritative rating website Metacritic 49 points and media comprehensive reviews, "Ant-Man 3" is not humorous enough, imagination is poor, chaotic scenes and flat plots are frequently mentioned, and even the appearance of the villain "Kang" in the multiverse stage is a bit tacky. Coupled with the weak word-of-mouth reputation of series such as "Eternals", "Doctor Strange" and "Thor" in recent years, the lack of new concepts such as "multiverse" and "disrupting the line of time and space", comments and audiences are a little worried about the development of the fifth stage "shaky".
This gap in expectations may be more intuitive for domestic audiences who have been missing for three years. Considering that "Black Panther 2" has been released overseas for several months, and the issue itself has limited appeal to domestic audiences; "Ant-Man 3" is likely to be the first work of Marvel for most Chinese audiences to return to the cinema.
And when I put on 3D glasses with the feeling of wanting to reunite with superheroes, being excited by the spectacle of visual effects again, and resolving the crisis of the psyche with (relative) universal values, I honestly got an almost completely counterproductive answer.
Scott transforms into a wealthy family and can't find a trace of the failed thief in his debut. The superhero's story focuses on his parents-in-law and daughter and partner, trying to split up a 120-minute storyline with Kang. The world of the quantum realm looks like a virtual space in any blockbuster after a new century, and the ant-people have chosen to "get bigger" in their way of coping with crises more than the presentation of miniature landscapes after becoming smaller.
The treatment of the main storyline makes people wonder how they are forced to review the "Avatar"-style old-school stories that have been fixed more than a decade ago, and the crisis in the quantum field is even more conservative than "Avatar". I'm not sure what else this "story of superheroes going to strange territory to help local natives fight against the dark forces" can tell, not to mention that the film's creation and release time is set against the background of recent years when the world is full of sudden crises and confrontations.
From these perspectives, the cold reputation of "Ant-Man 3" certainly has the limitations of the digestive ability of different cultural backgrounds, but combined with the superheroes who have performed mediocrely in recent years, "Ant-Man 3" can also be regarded as the concentrated crux of the failure black hole of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
As a product of the transition phase, these new works not only have to deal with the problem of "old with new" (common double/multiple superhero story lines), but often have to link with other superheroes or introduce key characters in the next crisis. The capacity of the series may still have room to complete such a variety of tasks at once, but in the 150-minute movie space, superheroes can easily appear "instrumental". Taking characters like Wanda and Hawkeye as an example, superheroes can repeatedly jump between positive and negative identities due to the need for plot advancement.
Of course, if you jump well repeatedly, you may also leave room for the complexity of the character to grow. But the increasingly anxious story line, the inflated number of characters, complex transition tasks, and the contractual constraints of capital rarely set up a convincing enough course for superheroes to explore their beliefs.
In the past, we were happy to talk about the movie Easter eggs in the period before and after "Avengers 4", using it as a prop to link comics, audiences and movies, not only to fill the gap in the film production cycle, but also to condense fans' imagination and discussion of Marvel culture. But increasingly homogeneous stories and increasingly colorful superheroes gradually turn these pleasures into a burden to enter the story world.
Coupled with the setback of cinemas during the epidemic and the dominance of streaming media on movie-watching scenes, the publicity of cinema films as a medium is inevitably weakened; Not to mention the vast selection of stories that audiences outside the walls can easily choose between Netflix, Hulu, Apple+, and HBO. It's easy for viewers to lose their passion for exploring together for stories that have no new ideas.
The above problems will fall to "Ant-Man 3" one by one. The unclear story line is the most prominent. The new Janet and Cathy, there may be highlight lines, but there are almost no highlight plots that can make people remember the image and character traits. And more importantly, if you are an audience who has not seen "Loki" and does not know much about the Marvel Comics system, Kang's appearance in the movie is definitely quite boring, he is similar to most of the previous Hollywood clichéd villains, what he says is that I want revenge, but in fact he is still a weird who only wants to destroy mankind without a head or tail.
This, of course, will make the first appearance of the fifth stage quite disgraceful.
Because the success of "Avengers 4" is too dazzling, Marvel fans and even ordinary moviegoers actually know the main task of the fourth phase after the end of "Avengers 4" - to soothe the trauma of Marvel fans, use the old with new ways (combined with specific social and cultural demands) to launch a new generation of "Avengers" or "Avengers-like" superhero groups, and guide the audience to complete the cognitive and emotional upgrade of the concept of cosmic crisis.
In fact, taking Marvel film and television works launched around 2021 such as "WandaVision", "Falcon Winter Soldier" and "Black Widow" as examples, the emotional healing function and echoing (American) reality appeals may also be targeted. The word "cure" sounds chicken soup, but it is actually Hollywood's mastery of being accepted by the world market as a strong plot manufacturing machine, using a moral and ethical belt with clear distinction between good and evil to place the audience's anxiety from the social structure level that is unfair from reality.
Marvel actually did a good job at that stage. First, it acknowledges what the protagonists are deprived of in film and television, whether it is love, dignity or spiritual leadership, and it appears as a gesture of acceptance of people's mourning pain. Then, it reaches out to the real crisis in the United States - "WandaVision" coincides with the loss of the first wave of life in the United States after the new crown, "The Falcon Winter Soldier" is almost a little serious about the American team spirit and the division between American conservatism and freedom, and even "The Female Hulk" cuts from women's anger to politically meaningful gender issues in the United States.
In recent years, ordinary people have been able to feel the general mood of anxiety because of the economic downturn, the epidemic, environmental protection and war crisis. Looking at this creative strategy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe alone, there seems to be no problem, after all, only real crises can be mitigated and solved to place real pain. But this conflicts with the task of guiding the audience to identify with and imagine future crises in the fourth phase of the Marvel Universe, although it is difficult to say that this is Marvel's problem.
Painful telling and being solved requires the sincere use and creation of personal experience. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has tried as much as possible in this regard, and the audience is certainly happy to see more and more diverse gender and different cultural group skin color creators appear, and creators are also trying their best to combine personal dilemmas and experiences with superhero movies. But the result is clear, it selects more creators who grew up in the United States, so we have witnessed the interesting phenomenon of Hollywood's self-innovation - from "Shangqi" to "Moonlight Knight", "This work is very sincere, and it really shows the confusion and self-pulling of X-Americans". (Ant-Man 3 doesn't even do that.) ）
For Marvel Studios and Disney, which are interested in the global market, how representative can the problems and stories of American localization be? Especially in recent years, when the world political situation has been volatile and irregular. It is important to answer this question, and isn't this the basis of our imagination of future crises? It is easy to imagine villains in the era of peaceful cooperation, but now, how people can skip the immediate crisis and imagine the future crisis requires very imaginative and practical answers.
"Ant-Man 3" is not enough, "Black Widow" and "Black Panther 2" are not enough, and even "Spider-Man: Homeless", which set a box office record, is not enough. Nostalgia can soothe our wounded feelings, but it cannot take us through the immediate crisis.
For now, the Marvel Cinematic Universe actually gives an answer - the crisis of reality has been solved in the Marvel world, or other multiverses!
The new generation of superheroes who appear does have more women, more different sexual orientations, cultural groups and skin colors, and white men like Ant-Man who want to be fathers and love to play smart are the few. However, in order to make the old heroes exit the game with dignity and speed up the integration of new superhero teams, these iterations and shifts are achieved "naturally" with a very gentle appearance. This makes the inequality from the race/sexuality/gender dimensions in the first three stages appear to be a kind of "unnoticed" carelessness.
Of course, this is not to liquidate the superhero inside (which can be done by "Black Robe Picket"), and the liquidation may not be meaningful. It's just that there is a real problem with the credibility of such a macro setting, even if only for American audiences. If the advancement of women's rights in recent years has actually gone through several rounds of counterattacks and setbacks of the Metoo movement and the 2019 women's rights march, if the fight against racial discrimination and sexual orientation discrimination has actually gone through decades and paid a fairly painful price - which reality is the multiverse reality described by Marvel Cloud?
Completely avoiding the depiction of the power struggle process, only presenting a harmonious and natural surface result, the diversity of the Marvel Universe is difficult to trust, and therefore loses the opportunity to touch the hearts of the wider audience.
"Ant-Man 3" seems to be very representative. In fact, I quite like the bridge in "Ant-Man 3" where Scott splits into countless self-possibilities, and audiences who have seen the movie may also have the impression that when Scott splits into countless me and I quarrel with each step of his action, the anxiety and helplessness under the noise can even fit with the individualistic crisis that has been constantly mentioned by the media and cultural works in recent years. But the way the film solves this problem is still very frivolous, and the sincere parts are like the flickering of this clip - a little, but also a little.
When the film actively chooses to avoid serious choices and feelings, we can certainly understand that it is meant to be funny and lighthearted, but if the whole film is flickering like this, what we end up with is a work that is filled with empty slogans and symbols because it rejects things that really exist.
On this level, we understand the hollowness of Cathy's uplifting speech and the swing of Marvel's new generation of teenage superheroes. In fact, if we pay a little attention to the social news at home and abroad, we may know that more and more young people have become the main force in defending individual rights and even the rights of others. What could have been a consensus behind this is the narrowing of the pathways to ascent among young people around the world, the defense of their right to speak by young people, and the desire of young people to change the status quo.
Marvel's approach is that it invites a lot of young heroes to enter to share the honor under the spotlight. But whether it is Cathy or Kate Bishop or Spider-Man, they are always a subject who cannot be fully responsible for their actions, and the things that are rebelled against in serious youth movies - adults limit you in the name of protection, the absurd but difficult rules of the adult world, the shackles of social identity inlegitimacy - exist intact in every young superhero. Lucky characters such as Peter Parker because of his early appearance, and there are movies and stories around him. Others are more in a queue, waiting for a passive growth.
In a way, that's why it's getting harder and harder for me to dive into Marvel stories. Time and distance inevitably change a lot of things, and when distant stories are reduced and distant news is transmitted, our definition of what is true and wonderful is also affected. But there is also a possibility that "Ant-Man 3" is just a shallow step in Marvel's swing exploration, and Marvel, Disney and Hollywood, which are sensitive to public preferences and the smell of the film market, will eventually create a lifelike world, using stories and sensible emotions to take me to the distance, rather than cold news.