General

Yeah, I feel like I undersold it, if anything. I wanted to say more, but didn't want to risk spoiling anything, even minor aspects of the film. Just ignore the critics and go see it for yourselves!

Added Quantumania to my ranking. It landed in a funny spot.

It's getting harder and harder to rank new things with how many movies/shows there are total. I used to just kind of go down the list "do I like it better than this? yes, ok check the next movie, do I like it better than that?" and so on. But I'm finding more and more that that doesn't always work perfectly. Sometimes I'll find I like A more than B, but then C is below B and I don't particularly prefer A over C. I'm not going to overthink it anymore and just kind of put things wherever it feels right. It helps having tiers. It divides them up pretty well, and then within each tier, there's really not THAT much difference in my rating of each film.

I watched Ant-man 3 again, this time subbed and in 3D. Some great effects and depth, and a better understanding of Major's interpretation of Kang.

There have been so many posts on Reddit about this movie. Most people on there are ripping it to shreds. I could understand if someone didn't love it, thought it was just "ok" or whatever, but people on there are acting like it's one of the worst movies ever. I don't get it.

What're their biggest complaints, @Scott? Personally, I think it looks great and can't wait to see it. But, like everything else that starts out in the theatre, I'm gonna have to wait 'til it hits "home video" (or, in this case, Disney+).

Bad CGI, bad dialogue, muddled plot, bad humor, bad characters, bad ending, everything bad, basically.

I'll be honest, there are some criticisms that I think are fair:

MAJOR SPOILERS!

But, I thought the rest of the movie was good enough to overlook these things.

I'm being bombarded daily with articles trying to explain why Ant-man is so bad, and who everyone and their mothers blame for this disaster. I'm starting to think there really is some Marvel hate amongst the critics and the press, lol

Yeah, it's pretty dumb.

I haven't seen it yet, but everything I hear from the internet is that it's the worst Marvel movie yet. I hear Kang is great, but everything else is completely pointless with horrible CGI.

Crazy that most of the viewer's comments are positive in contrast to that. Feels like the opposite of Love & Thunder, although this reaction seems more extreme to me. Maybe it is because I can see how L&T is not for everybody.

The funniest part is the amount of people throwing around "worst Marvel movie yet". Even ignoring my personal opinion of each movie, let's just look at the MCU movies that are the most criticized, historically. Thor: The Dark World, Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, Eternals, Black Widow, The Incredible Hulk. People really think Quantumania is worse than any of those movies? Come on!

Is The Incredible Hulk officially a part of the MCU? For whatever reason, I didn't think it was...

Noid wrote:

Yeah it is, it's just the black sheep of the MCU because they weren't 100% on Hulk's direction at that point, especially with Edward Norton not enjoying having to commit to a connected universe in order to tell the story. Universal still owns the rights to solo Hulk movies (or at least have since that movie released, that may have changed by now) so once Marvel Studios officially kicked into gear, they could only include Hulk in movies NOT called Hulk haha. I guess they figured it was worth retooling the character given those restraints.

And I'm glad they did, Ruffalo's version is my favorite version of Hulk. Something was off about Norton's version imo.

On the Quantumania backlash: I don't think it's entirely fair to just boil it down to "MCU hate" or anything like that. Several of their projects still received favorable reviews from both critics and viewers over the course of Phase 4... it's possible Quantumania simply doesn't land well for the majority of folks. Doesn't mean it's a bad movie by any means, just means it's not what certain people wanted. Of course I'm sure there is overblown hate toward it, but that sort of happens toward any big franchise these days.

I will say that the bloom is definitely off the MCU rose these days though, meaning that folks seem less willing to give every movie an immediate pass just for being an MCU movie. Like Scott said, there are several "lesser" MCU movies that have been released that still averaged favorably among critics when, honestly, they probably wouldn't have without the MCU connection. Even Hulk and Dark World got "good" scores, generally speaking. Now that Endgame acted as a perfect "finale" for THAT era of the MCU, folks are more willing to scrutinize.

I still haven't seen the movie but still really want to. I like the idea of a super sci-fi Ant Man movie, personally. The comics were always more in that realm than the "wacky heist" genre of the previous two movies (that I also dug enough).

theJaw wrote:

Universal still owns the rights to the Hulk.

And honestly, while Ruffalo does play a good Banner... Norton actually felt much closer to the comic book Banner in some respects. If we had the multiple personality disorder Banner from the comics, I'd definitely go with Norton instead.

(Too bad the most recent Hulk run has been basically ignored now in favor of something... that isn't that good as a followup.)

theJaw wrote:


I really don't like Ruffalo as Banner or Hulk. I have especially disliked his Smart Hulk persona. I really liked Norton. The movie wasn't the best, but I prefer everything about his portrayal of the character. Also, I happen to think Norton is the best actor of his generation, so I am probably a bit biased.

Norton is definitely up there as far as his generation (or any generation) goes, and did great with what he had to work with in The Incredible Hulk, but I hate the design of Hulk in that movie. I hate how muscly he is (or at least how his muscles look) and I also hate that his stature is so perfect when the comics I'm used to portrayed him as far more ape-like at that relatively early period of living with Hulk.

There were a few cool scenes in that movie though, just nothing nearly as memorable as The Avengers Hulk scenes imo. That first Avengers movie nailed Banner/Hulk and is probably my number 1 favorite portrayal of the character. But can't blame anyone for enjoying the Norton take of course.