Issue #12: Sandy's Reflections on Ant-Man (2015)

This film is adorable. It’s a light entry in the MCU post-Ultron heaviness in both tone and theme. It also is situated right before Captain America: Civil War, and I think that it is timed perfectly to provide a bit of heart before a crushing divide in the next entry.

While I could talk about much that I love about Ant-Man, I think I really enjoy the idea of father-daughter relationships and second chances. Both Scott Lang, the title character, and Hank Pym, the former Ant-Man, have unresolved issues at the start of the film. Scott could be seen as a dead-beat dad after a short stint in prison. He doesn’t know his daughter well, and his now ex-wife is leery of him interacting with his daughter, Cassie, because he can be self-serving and self-absorbed. These same traits can also be found in Hank Pym—and that’s one of the reasons why I think Hank chooses Scott to be the new Ant-Man. He sees that Scott has potential and needs the second chance to be a part of his daughter’s life. As writer Paul Asay states, “Ant-Man’s smallish sagas hide a big heart in its father-daughter relationships, one that took up its beat from the very beginning. When Hank Pym first queries Scott about becoming Ant-Man in the first movie, he tells him this: ‘This is your chance to earn that look in your daughter’s eyes. To become the hero that she already thinks you are’” (https://aleteia.org/2018/07/14/3-cinematic-heroes-and-the-daughters-who-made-them-that-way/).
 
After all, Hank knows about estrangement: while he sees daughter Hope regularly, there is a distance between them since her mother’s tragic death. Hank also needs a second chance, but he is more focused on protecting Hope—and that leads to more distance emotionally between them. Father-daughter relationships aren’t always smooth, as this film spotlights.
 
I told the story of my mother in a previous entry—and how she was my best friend. I miss her every day. I am still lucky enough to have a wonderful father, but there was definitely a point of time where we had to evolve our relationship. While my dad would be the one to repair or glue or craft anything I needed, my mom was the one who listened. Here’s an example: my whole life, I would call home, and if my dad answered, we would exchange pleasantries, but he would hand the phone to my mom. I love my dad—don’t get me wrong—but I was definitely much closer to my mother. She and I talked for hours on the phone every day, and she would give me the best advice or just listen to my stories as a sounding board. 
 
When my mom died, the shock of the loss propelled my dad and I forward, but then the first few phone calls were stilted as my dad and I had to learn how to talk to each other. He hates the phone—so the fact that he tried so hard to make conversation is one of the most heartwarming moments in our relationship. Funny enough: now we Zoom, and we never run out of topics.
 
Therefore, I think that what Ant-Man spotlights, then, is the idea of father-daughter relationships and the work that it takes to make them function well.

Scott realizes that Paxton—his ex-wife’s new fiancée—is great to Cassie. And Scott is man enough to acknowledge it. Hank realizes at the end of the film that trying to shield Hope from the truth of her mother’s accident doesn’t stop her from growing up or taking risks; it only pushes her further away. It’s only through bringing her into his life’s work, and acknowledging to her that she deserves her own suit (Go, MCU!) that he can choose a new path and build a better relationship with her. It’s not too late for him, and the film helps us realize it’s not too late for us, either.
 
So in the middle of all the comedic caper moments, and a cute ant acting like a dog, there is a real message here that life is more than just where we are; if we want a second chance, or a new future, we have to make it happen. It also showcases two very interesting father-daughter relationships, and I’m sure that this entry will be something that I talk about with my dad…the next time we Zoom.

Issue #12: Alex's Reflections on Ant-Man (2015)

This is the first (and only) Marvel Cinematic Universe film I skipped when it went to the theaters. I could not (would not) purposefully pay to see an Ant-Man movie. The irony of this is I DID pay to see Aquaman which…I still cannot explain why I paid to see Aquaman. Regardless, this was the Marvel film that I could not see any value in. A character who can shrink to the size of an atom and control ants through mind control? No thanks.

Reflecting on this decision to actively avoid Ant-Man makes me think about why I prefer some heroes over others. Kevin Smith has been famous for his critiques of superhero literature throughout his entire career, and he once famously said, “It’s all bullshit.” While that may be an oversimplification of the genre, Smith is correct in highlighting the ridiculousness of the hierarchy of superheroes. How are Batman or Spider-Man or Iron Man intrinsically any better than Ant-man? The brutal truth is that they are not; all superheroes are born of a similar concoction of gimmick-ridden powers and moral ambiguity. Ant-Man is no different. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is an ex-con with a heart of gold who is simply trying to see his daughter and resorts to questionable actions resulting in acquiring the Ant-Man suit. 
 
Gian kept telling me, “This is a caper movie!” and hyping up the film. Sandy told me, “It’s good, Alex!” After one hour and fifty-eight minutes of Ant-Man action, I came to my own opinion: meh. Ant-Man is alright, but that’s being generous. Paul Rudd is a talented comedian with good timing, and I laughed at some of his jokes throughout, but Ant-Man felt like the comic relief in a Shakespeare play: Your teacher tells you it is hilarious and then you read it and say, “That was the funny part?” 
 
However, in a nearly two hour movie, one narrative trope was genuinely hilarious: Scott Lang’s friend Luis (Michael Peña). Luis’ storytelling sequences that are simultaneously narrated and acted out are the gold in this movie. The sequences are stylized to be equal parts frantic, absurd, and entertaining. After watching this movie, I could barely remember why Ant-man was fighting Yellow Jacket, but I could completely remember the details of Luis’ stories.
 
After we finished the film, Gian said, “This was the palette cleanser between the jumbled mess of Avengers: Age of Ultron and the dour seriousness of Captain America: Civil War.” I agree with Gian that it is a palette cleanser, but I also think of the film in another way. If you simply skipped watching Ant-Man while going through the entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, would it impact your understanding of the overall arc of the movies? No, and the reason I know this is because I did skip it and never thought twice about it until this past week when we watched the film.

Issue #12: Gian's Reflections on Ant-Man (2015)

“Second chances don’t come around that often.”--Dr. Hank Pym.

As I’ve re-watched the MCU films during this blog movie research project, I’ve come to see more and more that the overarching theme of the Marvel films is redemption. Character after character in the MCU makes mistakes, then tries to figure out how to do better and make amends for those misteps. Tony Stark screws up from arrogance, Steve Rogers struggles after being ripped out of time, Thor thinks he’s too powerful to be laid low by pride, and Loki almost lets bitterness totally consume him. But each character finds a path forward by learning from their mistakes.
 
And so, by the time we get to Ant-Man (2015; directed by Peyton Reed), the writers (Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam McKay, and Ant-Man himself Paul Rudd!) build the entire story around Scott Lang’s struggle to find redemption. Lang gets out of prison and wants to win back the right to see his daughter Cassie (nicely played by Abby Ryder Fortson). But because of his prison record, he can’t hold down a job and pay child support. His lack of finances also means he ends up living with his old cellmate, Luis (played with perfect comedic delivery by Michael Peña). Luis and his criminal associates then keep asking Scott to pull off what they claim is a sure-fire big score heist. Scott refuses, but when he loses yet another crummy job (at Baskin Robbins of all places!), he finally agrees out of a combination of frustration and desperation. And so, he ends up right back in the downward spiral of crime. As Hank (played by Michael Douglas in one of the best of all the big movie star MCU appearances) later admonishes him, “The moment things get hard, you turn right back to crime.”
 
The film is light-hearted good fun, full of laughs and cool shrinking effects. But the backdrop of criminal recidivism it portrays is troubling. According to a 2020 article on “Incarceration” by HealthyPeople.gov, “The U.S. releases over 7 million people from jail and more than 600,000 people from prison each year. However, recidivism is common. Within 3 years of their release, 2 out of 3 people are rearrested and more than 50% are incarcerated again” (https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/social-determinants-health/interventions-resources/incarceration).

While bungling criminals are funny to watch, the truth is that lack of economic opportunity pushes too many people down paths on which they do not wish to be. This happens to Scott in the film, and we should especially worry about the problem of recidivism during this pandemic-caused economic downturn in which unemployment has been at its highest level since the Great Depression. While Congress argues endlessly about providing relief aid, ordinary people struggle to make ends meet.
 
Of course, Ant-Man doesn’t take us too far into the dark world of crime. It’s more of a fun caper movie, in the grand tradition of great caper movies like The Sting and Ocean’s Eleven.To find real crime, you need to turn to Marvel’s masterful Netflix series Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage (but don’t bother with Iron Fist unless you are the most diehard superhero fan). Ant-Man really can’t get too dark because Paul Rudd is simply too likable. It’s hard to imagine him as a criminal at all which makes it much easier for us to imagine him as a superhero-in-training. His bungling attempts to learn to use the Ant-Man suit’s powers make for some of the film’s best laughs. And although Hank Pym’s troubling experiences from being Ant-Man in the past make him too afraid to let his daughter Hope (played with wonderful force by Evangeline Lilly) put on the suit, as she kicks Scott’s butt in training, it’s clear she’s the one actually meant to be a superhero.
 
Fortunately, Scott does master the suit’s powers in time to save the day. That enables him to to leave his life of crime fully behind him and reunite with Cassie. And along the way, we get one of the best speeches about why we have to try to rise above our mistakes when Hank tells Scott: “Second chances don't come around all that often. I suggest you take a really close look at it. This is your chance to earn that look in your daughter's eyes, to become the hero that she already thinks you are.”

As we reach the end of 2020 (thankfully), Ant-Man is a great film for helping us to think about how to leave our mistakes behind and do the most we can with those rare second chances when they come our way.

Issue #11: Sandy's Reflections on Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

I have the poster hanging on my movie room wall for Avengers: Age of Ultron. You might think that that means it’s one of my favorites in the MCU. However…it’s honestly not. I think the film is a bit of a mess, truly. It starts off in the middle of a battle that we don’t feel that much investment in, and there are so many flaws that if this film came out as a stand-alone, non-MCU film, I think it would have been more or less forgotten.

But that’s not the point of my blog entry.
 
I’d like to tell you why I was super excited for this film: James Spader.
 
See, when I was about 13 or 14, I was obsessed with James Spader. He had starred in a film I rented from my local small-town video store, Potomac Video, and it was just sitting there on the shelf, looking quite badass and grown up. My mom would pick out a “family” film, and she trusted me not to pick out something awful (or pornographic) that was just for me. I was into teen films because, as you know, when you are 14, you just want to be grown up. And I picked Tuff Turf.

 
This film was so great, and low budget, and so cheesy, but honestly, looking-back now, the outfits are cringe-worthy. As a kid, all I wanted was a hair crimper so that I could grow my hair long and crimp it like the super-cool Kim Richards. So in spite of the flaws, this film stuck with me, even through my teen years because in my teen magazines, I saw photos of James Spader and his co-star and BFF in the film all the time: Robert Downey, Jr.

They had such awesome chemistry, and you can see that RDJ is the same now as then—which is kind of eery. (Maybe he drinks from the same fountain as Keanu Reeves and Paul Rudd for long-lasting charm and looks.) They went to parties together. They later starred in Less Than Zero together. Heck, I even found out when they were doing PR for Ultron that RDJ named a cat Jimmy after Spader (https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/robert-downey-jr-once-named-a-cat-after-this-old-hollywood-friend.html/).
 
So my expectations were high for this film, not just because it was a new Avengers entry, but also because I thought it was wonderful that, years later, it seemed like my fantasy version of their relationship as life-long BFFs was partly true. It was RDJ who worked to get Spader the job. (He does have a great voice.)
 
I re-watched Tuff Turf a few years ago in my excitement for Ultron. Guess what I saw? A bit of foreshadowing in one scene where Spader stands in front of graffiti on a wall that reads, simply, The New Avengers. I guess that Tuff Turf predicted the MCU’s entry 30 years later (https://movieweb.com/1985s-tuff-turf-predicted-the-avengers-casting-of-robert-downey-jr-and-james-spader/).

I just hope they make another movie again together that I could like a bit more than Ultron, though. But it definitely wouldn’t be as cool as James Spader’s hair and Robert Downey Jr.’s drum playing. Maybe I’ll look and see if I can find a hair crimper at Ulta!
 
Until their next movie, though, I’ll have Ultron happily hanging on my wall.

Issue #11: Alex's Reflections on Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

This was another Marvel movie that my fellow academics and I were not too thrilled about. Thinking back to this film, I remember it having a few select scenes that were intriguing and interesting but was, holistically, rather flat. Again, this film suffers from a strong opening and middle and then falters in the third act. After Iron Man fights the Hulk with the Hulk Buster armor, the movie gets a bit long in the teeth. However, I remember the film for being surprisingly poignant during one of the final scenes.
 
Paul Bettany, who served as the voice of Jarvis in Iron Man’s armor for the entire series of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies to this point, becomes the Vision. The origin of the character is, of course, convoluted, but it involves Ultron (James Spader) taking over Jarvis’ programming and incorporating the Mind Stone from the Infinity Stones. Regardless, Vision becomes a new member of the Avengers and helps them take down Ultron in an overly busy final action sequence complete with a floating city. However, Vision is a uniquely pensive character that, despite his technological origin, is uniquely thoughtful.
 
After the Avengers destroy all of Ultron’s multiple robots, the final robot confronts Vision in a forest. The scene involves only the final Ultron robot and Vision having a conversation about life and death. Vision states, “Humans are odd. They think order and chaos are somehow opposites and try to control what won’t be. But there is grace in their failings. I think you missed that.” Ultron responds, “They’re doomed.” Vision simply states, “Yes, but a thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts. It’s a privilege to be among them.” There is a bit more to this conversation, but the theme of this resonates with me.
 
In particular, the concept of something being beautiful even though it doesn’t last makes an impact on me. The older I get, the more I realize this is true. All of the wonderful parts of life are special because they’re temporary; the value is in having been a part of a rare and substantial experience. At points, I need to remind myself of this because it is easy to dwell on what could have been and not what something was. Going back to my baseball passion, the legendary voice of the Dodgers, Vin Scully, once said, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” The Vision in Age of Ultron reminds me to smile about what happened.

Issue #11: Gian's Reflections on Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Watching Avengers: Age of Ultron (written and directed by Joss Whedon) many years removed from its 2015 premiere, it seems pointless to talk about how it couldn’t top the original Avengers. Instead, I tried to step back and think about what the film means today. At its heart, Avengers: Age of Ultron  is the story of one of humankind’s greatest fears: That we will be destroyed by our own creations.
 
Ultron first appeared back in 1968 in Avengers 55 (technically Avengers 54 although he wasn’t named in that issue). The story, created by Marvel greats Roy Thomas (writer), John Buscema (artist), and George Klein (inker), is about how Hank Pym a.k.a The Wasp/Giant Man creates Ultron from the android body of the original Human Torch. By using the Torch, Thomas, ever a student of comics history and continuity, brilliantly manages to link the Avengers to the original Marvel Comics #1, the first and most important of all Marvel comic books.


 
As happens so often, Ultron turned on his creator and tried to destroy him. Many years later, in the 2013 comic book Avengers Age of Ultron, Ultron does manage to take over the world and kill most of the heroes. Only a handful of superhero survivors remain to battle him, and Wolverine decides that perhaps the best strategy is to travel back in time, kill Pym, and prevent Ultron from ever being created.

The comic storyline is an excellent one, with Wolverine and the other heroes motivated by the loss of so many of their friends. The film version is less successful because the motivation for the heroes is less immediate. Partly, Ultron never seem menacing enough. James Spader plays Ultron as slick and mean. He acts witty and taunts his enemies. In one scene, he cuts of the arm of the villain Klaue, then jokes, “Oh, I'm sorry. I think that'll be fine.” But the jokes don’t create a sense of fear. Instead, they make him seem too human, less artificial and this undercuts the danger her represents. He lacks the coldness of Star Trek’s The Borg, who are completely alien and uncaring, assimilating other races not for spite or fun but only out of the cold calculation of their machine minds. It often feels that rather than playing an actual machine, Spader is acting as if he is just a bad guy in Iron Man’s suit, a bit like the fabulous 2009 comic storyline Dark Avengersin which Norman Osborne did steal a suit of Stark’s armor and then pretended to be good while secretly plotting evil.

 
The Vision (played by Paul Bettany), whom Stark creates in the movie to help fight Ultron, actually is far more machine like. Bettany hits just the right note of innocence and intelligence, acting like a true new-born synthoid. He seems awkward, alien, slightly removed from us, and this works well. It’s why the scene where he casually picks up Thor’s hammer, when all the other Avengers were unable to do so (though Steve Rogers came close!), works so well. The Vision is worthy of the hammer because he has no idea the power it possesses. Just as in the comics, the Vision will go on to try to find his humanity. And we can hope that Disney’s Wandavision show will provide us the pleasure of watching that exploration as did the marvelous 2015 Marvel comic series The Vision.



As a film Avengers: Age of Ultron does have some nice moments, but it drags at times as well and never quite finds its footing. The threat of Ultron being inside all of the world’s computers is barely explored. At one point James Rhodes (played nicely by Don Cheadle) says, “He’s in your files, he’s in the Internet. What if he decides to access something a little more exciting?" S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Maria Hill (played well by Cobie Smulders) responds, "Nuclear codes." But nothing ever comes of this story line. Instead, Joss Whedon just has the Vision burn Ultron out of the Internet somehow, in what amounts to little more than lazy writing. As reported by The Washington Post (“WikiLeaks: The CIA Is Using Popular TVs, Smartphones and Cars to Spy on their Owners”), the CIA actually does have technology which enables them to tap into every digital camera in the country, so this storyline about how computers can watch our every move is a very real threat and deserved greater exploration. Either that or just drop it entirely and instead make Ultron a stand-alone robot like he was in the comics.
 
We are all addicted to our phones, the Internet, and our computers. We love technology, and we do let it control our lives. And we know it. That’s why we’re afraid of robots taking over the world. We know we can’t live without our phones and it scares us a little. Don’t think so? Try remembering that feeling you got in the pit of your stomach the last time you couldn’t get your phone or computer to turn on, that sense of panic as you feel yourself cut off from the digital part of your world.
 
What happens if one day it’s not power failure but a computer that cuts us off? What if the machines, those sweet Siri’s and Alexa’s and Cortana’s we love to talk to, suddenly decide to cut us off? What then? Ironically, computers don’t have to come to life to take over. They are slowly doing it just as they are now. But they are getting smarter. Just ask the one in your phone, and she’ll tell you.