"Ant-Man 3" is okay as the prologue to the fifth phase of Marvel, not rotten, but also no longer interesting

Author of this article: Li Xiaotian

After Marvel smashed in the fourth stage, starting with "Ant-Man 3", it officially entered the fifth stage. The good news is that as a prelude, Marvel finally shows signs of coming out of the quagmire. The bad news is that "Ant-Man 3" lost the sense of humor in the first two films and became boring.

In the first stage of Marvel, "Iron Man 1/2", "The Invincible Hulk", "Thor" and "Captain America" were released successively, and finally came a hero assembly, and "Avengers" rumbled in. In fact, at this stage, the only really good movie is "Iron Man", and the rest are ordinary and not excellent, but the emergence of "Avengers" has pushed the movie to a new height, but it makes people see a new possibility of the movie. This unprecedented model, which has made the scale of the film quite huge and has also played a huge role in the promotion of the film industry.

Without The Avengers, the Marvel Cinematic Universe would be difficult to really build. After all, "The Incredible Hulk" has been a complete failure, and "Thor" and "Captain America" are also so-so. But with "The Avengers", everything has become different, and this film has greatly increased the audience's viewing expectations and given Marvel great confidence in production.

So, in the second stage of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, although "Iron Man 3" and "Thor 2" are not too good, they have also improved for the previous works in the series. More importantly, "Captain America 2" and "Guardians of the Galaxy" are particularly exciting, once again raising the height of Marvel movies.

It is in this second phase, when the layout of other films is grand. "Ant-Man" came out, it chose a completely different model from other Marvel Universe films, took an urban light comedy model, and made the story pattern as small as possible. Moreover, the wonderful mouth cannon supporting role makes this sketch-style superhero movie interesting and eye-catching. There is a delicious food to enjoy, and the hors d'oeuvres are also amazing.

Looking at "Ant-Man" alone, it seems that it does not blend well with other superheroes, but it has its own flavor, small and delicate, and interesting. Moreover, in "Captain America 3" and "Avengers 4", little ants have played a big role, and they are also grafted with other superheroes.

"Ant-Man 2" explains why Ant-Man was absent from "Avengers 3" because he was grounded after "Captain America 3". It also explains that although the little ant did not participate in the hero war, it was not idle, but took the time to build the "Ant-Man family", the first generation of wasp and the second generation of wasp women have completed their transformations, and the "Ant Girl" (also called "change girl") who is about to complete the transformation in "Ant-Man 3" is also growing rapidly.

The important thing is that "Ant-Man 2" adheres to the humor of "Ant-Man" and continues to take the route of urban light comedy, and the first two are combined with elements of urban love, making this series look a little out of line with other Marvel superhero-themed films, but full of funny and just the right humor, which makes this series a unique series in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Of course, accustomed to watching the Marvel style of holding high and cool, there are also a considerable number of audiences who are not interested in the "Ant-Man" series, making this series somewhat alien from the Marvel Universe, and there seems to be a barrier. In particular, the weakness of the villain in "Ant-Man 2" reinforces this feeling.

In this way, it has survived to this point. In the fourth phase of Marvel, where there is no hero assembly, Little Ant did not participate in it, did not improve, and did not fall his own reputation. In the fifth stage, the head cannon comes out and it is.

Back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, before the fourth stage, it has always been steady and steady, and there is a detailed plan behind each film, and then rely on the "Avengers" series to form a series and promotion, and then there are films like "Captain America 3", so that different heroes are skewed. "Spider-Man" and "Thor 3" are also played this way, and they all work. However, in the fourth stage, before returning to liberation overnight, each hero played his own game, and "Doctor Strange 2" linked Doctor Strange and Red Witch, but it was not good. On the whole, the superheroes in the first generation of the Avengers have come to an end, but the newly launched heroes in the fourth phase are not very powerful, and then lack of linkage, and the entire fourth stage is like a piece of, smelly, so that countless fans began to lose their powder and turn into passers-by.

Now, the time enters 2023, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe has also entered the fifth phase. At this stage, "Avengers 5" is still not visible, and it is still paving the way and extending the old universe. At present, "Captain Marvel 2", "Captain America 4" and "Thunder Agents" still make people sweat. "Captain Marvel 2" and "Captain America 4" do not seem to be much different from the fourth stage of "Doctor Strange 2" and "Thor 4", and "Thunder Agents" seems to have the taste of "Shangqi" and "Eternals". With a high probability, this fifth stage still can't explode, but it's another blind toss.

But fortunately, "Ant-Man 3" is okay, although it is not high-quality, but it is by no means a bad film, and it can be watched. And "Guardians of the Galaxy 3" has whetted everyone's appetite. "Deadpool 3" and "Blade" are also worth looking forward to.

Looking at it now, the fifth phase of the Marvel movie, some bad feelings, will be better than the fourth phase overall, but it has not completely changed.

This remarkable feature is fully reflected in "Ant-Man 3: Quantum Frenzy".

Let's take a look.

Since it is the beginning of the fifth stage, the biggest role of "Ant-Man 3" is to bring out a new super opponent of superheroes, that is, "Kang the Conqueror".

From the perspective of "Ant-Man", "Ant-Man 3" has opened up a new realm, moved into a new field, upgraded the pattern, become luxurious, and looks good. But from the perspective of "Kang the Conqueror", "Ant-Man 3" is far behind, nothing.

A significant feature of superhero movies is that the quality of the film depends on the villain. Because superheroes are heroes who do not eat human fireworks, they cannot have defects, and even if they do, they are harmless minor problems. Therefore, the hero can only look up, not sit and talk. Although Marvel is too strong in this regard, it still cannot change the fundamental attributes of superheroes. Therefore, it is still an anime film to look good, and the villain must be wonderful enough.

The villain is weak, the film must be flawed, not so good-looking, "Ant-Man 2" has this problem. And "Thor 2" is the worst in the entire series, but because of the handsome villain Loki, he still saved this originally bad film. The reason why "The Dark Knight" has become a masterpiece of comic book films is mainly that the villain Joker is really wonderful enough.

The reason why "Avengers 3" is wonderful is also to create a powerful Thanos, and the important thing is that in this film, the superheroes have become supporting roles, and the whole story has been transformed into "Thanos' rise road", and the psychological construction of Thanos has a complete construction and portrayal, so that this hero has a foothold, flesh and blood, and a sense of déjà vu of a tragic hero.

The highlight of "Ant-Man 3" is that "Kang the Conqueror" (actually "Kang the Exile") went from nothing to building a powerful quantum empire in the quantum world, so that the strength of this character has a clearly visible development process. It also makes the process of the "Ant-Man family" in the fight against Kang extremely difficult, and there are many things to see.

However, comparing Kang in "Ant-Man 3" with Thanos in "Avengers 3", it was found that Marvel obviously did not draw enough wisdom and did not copy the successful rise of Thanos, which was exactly what Marvel was best at before. Marvel has always been so good at copying itself, over and over again, that Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan and others are so annoying and scoffing.

The rise of Kang the Conqueror in "Ant-Man 3" looks very clear, but for his psychological construction, it is not clearly outlined, and it is flattened and superficial.

In fact, in the whole story, Kang from the original exile, from nothing to the king of the quantum country, plus his interaction with the original Wasp, has a complete story line. If this line is handled well, it is fuller, and Kang is turned into a flesh-and-blood character, and the film will become very good-looking.

But it didn't.

In the whole story, the protagonist of the first half is actually the original Wasp. In the quantum world, the perspective of the original wasp is also used to unfold the magical mystery of the quantum world, and also lead to Kang's growth line. In fact, this line, using Kang's perspective will obviously be better. The film adopts the perspective of the original wasp girl, but she is obviously an old lady trapped in the quantum world for more than 30 years, no longer growing, and using her perspective, what do you want to illustrate?

The angle of the film, using the perspective of the original Wasp, is to unfold the quantum world. However, can the quantum world, no matter how good it looks, be better than "Avatar"?

Therefore, the original wasp girl has no growth line, Kang has no growth line, and the quantum world that is focused on portraying is not exciting enough, so what else is the first half of this film?

In the second half, "Ant-Man 3" still adopts the story line of "Avatar". It is the story of superheroes from outside the region leading the aborigines to resist the super opponent, "Avatar" is the human jack became the savior of the indigenous people of the Pandora Forest, and the ant-man in "Ant-Man 3" became the savior of the aborigines in the quantum world.

However, this model, since you have "Avatar", you "Ant-Man 3" to apply again, how do you want to be exciting?

In the story line, the protagonist in the beginning is the original Wasp, which later became Kang, and as for the real protagonist of the story, Ant-Man, he became a supporting role in "Ant-Man 3". The outline of personal image is gone, and psychological construction is even more gone.

In order to serve the Marvel Universe and the quantum world, "Ant-Man 3" made too many compromises, and as a result, the most uncompromising Ant-Man was taken care of, and became a dispensable supporting role. What's more unbearable is that in the first two works, one of the biggest highlights is the super interesting supporting roles and super funny sense of humor. As a result, "Ant-Man 3" is also gone.

Who dares to say success in such "Ant-Man 3"?

Sitting in the cinema, watching "Ant-Man 3" can be regarded as okay, and I finished the film in a relatively relaxed way. However, after tasting it again, I found that nothing was right, and this was not the "Ant-Man 3" I wanted at all.

Losing the edge that his series relied on to survive, he adopted a new adventure mode and stepped into a whole new world with novel landscapes to move the story forward. The little abacus of "Ant-Man 3" made a noise, but he completely lost himself, which is equivalent to nonsense.

Fortunately, the director is still Peyton Reed, the director of the first two films, who tried hard to use his talent to support this third part without collapsing, and still retained some jokes in some places, but its results were far from enough.

As for fighting Kang, what the Ant-Man family defeated here is actually just one of Kang's many variants. Just like in the drama version of "Loki", Loki and Sylvie killed a Kang, but it was only a variant of Kang, not the one that the next Avengers heroes will fight.

In this way, "Ant-Man 3" acted back and forth, but in fact, nothing was performed. The real Kang has not yet appeared. Kang here is just a blind toss.

Fortunately, "Ant-Man 3" can still watch, at least it looks much more comfortable than "Black Panther 2", but the expectations of fans are far from enough.

It successfully drove Marvel's fifth phase one step forward, but it lost too many things to say.