Movie Fights: Civil War vs. Dawn of Justice

Alright, I understand that technically, this post should be called Movie Fights: Captain America: Civil War vs. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, but I didn't name it that because, well, first of all: that's a really long title. Too long. Secondly, there are way too many colons in there. And finally, I for one have had enough of these ridiculous movie subtitles. Call it Batman vs. Superman OR call it Dawn of Justice, but don't do both! That's just confusing! It's like cramming two movies' worth of material into one rushed, confusing theatrical cut... wait a second.

Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start again: This is the much-awaited (maybe) comparison of Marvel's Captain America: Civil War, and DC's Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Now, on the surface, these two movies seem to have a lot in common. They’re both big-budget summer action films where superheroes who should be working together fight instead, because of a relatively petty issue that they could easily resolve by communicating if they really tried. However, these movies have a lot of sizable differences, which add up to make them into two very different films.

I’ll tackle Batman v. Superman first.

To start, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is long. It’s a long movie, and I swear not a minute of it is wasted. It’s stuffed to the gills with plot. There are at least two and half different plotlines in the theatrical cut alone; I hear there are even more in the director’s cut. Most of the plot is setup for Batman and Superman fighting; and boy is there a lot of setup. I don’t want to spoil any of it, but let me just say: there are more villainous machinations and philosophy-rationality discussions in Batman v. Superman than there are actual brawls between Batman and Superman. In addition to all the philosophical rhetoric and plot twists, there’s also a generous amount of setup for future DC movie-universe films. I’m not a hardcore DC fan, so I didn’t catch all of the hints while I was watching the movie, but I got at least some of them. And then, of course, there’s a subplot meant to set up the DC’s incoming Justice League movie.

All this adds up to a film so full of things happening that it’s hard to follow everything at once. Batman v. Superman is so dense, so stuffed with important plot pieces that my only impression walking out of the theater was “sensory overload”. It took me the better part of two weeks to really work through everything I vicariously experienced in the movie. For a movie called Batman v. Superman, there’s a lot of expositing, a lot of storytelling twists and turns, and not a lot of fight scenes. (In fact, 90% of the fighting is relegated to the last half hour of the movie. The rest of the movie only has a Superman rescue montage and like one scene of Batman doing Cool Stuff.)

So Batman v. Superman is too much material crammed into not enough space, with a much darker tone than you would think given the subject matter. Let’s look at Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War.

Unlike DC, Marvel has already established a strong movie brand and found their niche as far as storytelling goes. They’ve got a handle on the tone of their movies, and though I think the actual writing in their films has been going downhill of late, they know what works for them.

So Captain America: Civil War is, in essence, more of the same. It’s got all of the characters you know and love from the previous movies. It’s got peppy, fun-to-watch action scenes sprinkled throughout, along with snappy, humorous dialogue. It’s got a smattering of thought-out character moments, and a plot that makes sense if you don’t think about it too much. In short, it’s got everything we’ve come to expect from Marvel over the past few years.

To be honest, I enjoyed Civil War a lot more than Batman v. Superman. Civil War was a lot less complicated, easier to follow, and didn’t require as much active thought from me. It also had a more light-hearted tone. Batman v. Superman is dark and gritty and believes that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Civil War believes that power corrupts, but ultimately justice can be served if we try hard and commit to it. That’s a big difference in tone right there, but that’s not the end of it. Batman v. Superman is almost entirely consumed with its philosophy—that power is a corrupting influence with no moral compass, no matter a person’s intentions. By contrast, Civil War doesn’t touch on its own philosophy hardly at all, and even contradicts itself at points. What it comes down to is that Civil War doesn’t take itself half as seriously as Batman v. Superman, so it’s more fun to watch.

The thing is, though, I don’t think either of these movies is really the best it could have been, and ultimately neither of them are a completely enjoyable presentation of what they promised. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: any movie that promises me Batman and Superman fighting each other has a heck of a premise to live up to. The same goes for Civil War: the filmmakers had a lot to set up if they were going to get me to believe that the Avengers would really split apart and fight each other. Both movies tried to live up to their premises, but neither of them accomplished it really well. Batman v. Superman spent too much time on the buildup. It’s so dark and complicated that by the time it gets to the actual fight, you hardly even care anymore. Civil War didn’t spend enough time building things up; it presented a philosophy of sorts for both sides of the conflict, but then had the characters contradict themselves multiple times. Essentially, Civil War seesawed back and forth between a dark, serious plotline and the upbeat, enjoyable action sequences we’ve come to expect from Marvel. It couldn’t pick a tone, and I think that was its major flaw.

I do think both of these movies are worth watching. Civil War certainly isn’t the worst movie Marvel’s ever made, and it did have its share of worthwhile moments. Batman v. Superman is… an experience. I actually did enjoy it, but not all of it. If you watch it for anything, watch for Ben Affleck as Batman and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. They were definitely the highlights.

Both these movies are worth watching, but I think they both represent missed potential on the parts of their studios. To quote the Honest Trailer, Batman v. Superman “burned through like six movies’ worth of good material”, and suffered for it. It was too rushed, trying to get us to care about too much in too short a time span. By contrast, it was obvious that Civil War was, at least in part, riding the wave of popularity Marvel has accrued with its past movies. It’s my personal opinion that the writing in Marvel movies is starting to go downhill, simply because Marvel knows that any movie they slap their name on will sell like hotcakes. Essentially, they’re getting lazy, instead of using that branding potential to break new ground and explore new territory film-wise.

In closing: both of these movies represent their respective studios’ shortcomings. Captain America: Civil War rides a wave of previous successes, not bothering with internal consistency because the writers know people won’t care; it’s Marvel, and Marvel movies are good. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice tries desperately to build up everything in the DC universe at once, hoping that something will stick and get people to come back for the next DC film. So both of these movies have their good points, but neither reached their full potential. Neither of them could decide exactly what they were trying to do. Maybe they’re more similar than I thought. 

Movie Fights: Guardians of the Galaxy vs. The Lightning Thief

For some reason, this week has been a Bad Movie Week for me. And when I say that, I mean that my sister and I somehow finished two phenomenally bad movies in the same week. However, as I told my sister while we were watching Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief: there are two types of bad movies. There are good bad movies, and bad bad movies. And as it just so happens, I watched one of each this week. So here I am to put my classical education to work in the real world and compare those two movies.

I’m going to start with the first installment in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians movie series. Before I get into this, I’d just like to make a note: the Percy Jackson series is very near and dear to my heart, because I started it when I was young, and the writing only improved as I continued reading it into teenager-hood. It’s a good series that blends Greek mythology and modern wit with great characters.

Anyone who’s followed my blog for a length of time knows that few things rile me as much as a movie adaptation desecrating a book that I love. So it is with great loathing and bitter glee that I am about to rip into this laughable excuse for an adaptation.

To start with, I feel that everyone reading this should know that Rick Riordan, the author of the Percy Jackson series, publicly disowned the movies. (Sadly, there’s a second movie. I haven’t seen that one.) As a writer who would love to see some of my ideas on the big screen, that’s a pretty bad sign right there. And oh, let me tell you: the movie was just as bad as I anticipated based on the author’s sentiment alone.

To start, they butchered the characters. Usually I’m not a huge stickler for movie characters looking exactly the way they did in the book, but the one time I actually cared about that, the movies went and changed the character. Anyone who has read the Percy Jackson books knows: Annabeth being a brunette is as much an oxymoron as a warm snowflake. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

This movie changed pretty much the entire plot of the book, and had to throw in a bunch of extraneous scenes and details just to support that change. I get that they might not have been able to replicate the book’s plot exactly, but they surely could have done better than they did. They took out the actual villain from the books and used the decoy villain, the guy who didn’t actually do it, as the actual villain. Like I said, they took out a ton of plot from the books, and then stuffed a bunch of nonsensical filler in to try and hide the gaps. That’s not the only problem, though.

Not only is the plot terrible, but the writing in general is just insipid, and the writers utterly butchered nearly every aspect of Greek mythology they could get their hands on. They flat-out ignored every aspect of worldbuilding from the books. They ignored stuff from the original mythology, like the actual conduct of Hades’s and Persephone’s relationship, and the fact that Hades is more of a grumpy introvert than a fire-breathing demon lord. Also, the characters were flat as week-old soda. Percy had none of his sarcasm or snappy repartee from the books. Annabeth was… smart, I guess… but had none of her depth or insight. Grover had some great lines—he was one of the few things I enjoyed about the movie—but he also lacked any and all depth. The movie was over all badly written and a shameless cash-grab only loosely based on the books.

But hey, the special effects were pretty good.

In conclusion, don’t watch The Lightning Thief. Don’t ever watch it. Just read the books and pretend the movie(s) don’t exist. The Lightning Thief is a bad bad movie, and I utterly hated it.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the only movie I watched this week.

The other movie I saw was Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which I’d been wanting to watch for some time. I’d heard it be called “Marvel trying to do Star Wars”, and maybe that was meant to be a derogatory description, but it just intrigued me more. Plus, it has space pirates. Space pirates are one of my favorite fiction things, and you wouldn’t believe how hard it can be to find things that are about them, so that was also a plus.

I don’t know how close Guardians of the Galaxy is to the original source material. I do know that by most rubrics, it’s a bad movie. I mean, it’s corny. It’s nonsensical. It’s silly. It’s just a little bit surreal. (Which is fitting, I guess, because from what I’ve read the original comics were one heck of a drug trip. You think I’m joking, but I’m not. Look it up.)

The point is, Guardians isn’t a good movie, or even a really well-written one. But it’s fun. It’s big and it’s loud and it’s colorful and it’s funny and it doesn’t take itself seriously. The protagonist is about as generic as they come, yet he’s relatable enough that I enjoyed watching him. The point is, Guardians of the Galaxy is by all measurements a bad movie, but it’s a good bad movie. It owns the silliness, the absurdity of the premise, and it just has fun with it. Yeah, it’s a bad movie, but I like it. I can like bad stuff.

(There you go, Dad. It’s in writing. Happy now?)

There’s not a lot of a difference between The Lightning Thief and Guardians of the Galaxy. By all logic, I should despise the both of them. But The Lightning Thief took one of my favorite book series and tossed it in the mud, so yeah, I’m never touching that movie again, not even with a ten-foot pole. Guardians of the Galaxy took a really weird, nonsensical premise and made it into a fun, silly movie. Sure, it’s not a good movie. I wouldn’t say it’s even as good as Ant-Man. But—much like its protagonist—it’s able to muster enough charm, jokes, and good looks to bluff its way through my common sense and critical analysis. So there’s that. I wouldn’t recommend Guardians of the Galaxy to anybody I know. I will make fun of everything in that movie because it’s the corniest film I’ve seen in a long time.

But I am definitely going to watch it again.

Movie Fights: Ant-Man vs. Pacific Rim

[My review of Pacific Rim] [My review of Ant-Man]

Good morning, everyone! Or, well, good whatever-time-of-day-it-is-where-you-are. Today I'm debuting the first in what will hopefully be an extended category of blog posts, sorta similar to my History Recaps. Movie Fights is a series where I put my classical education to work in the real world and write out a comparison of two movies. Today I'll be talking about a pair of action movies. One features a guy who uses a super-suit to shrink down to an inch tall, and the other is about giant robots slugging it out with giant alien monsters.

As you can see, I'm taking my classical education very seriously.

On the surface, Ant-Man and Pacific Rim don't seem that similar. One is a superhero movie, and the other is more of a general sci-fi action movie. Of course, they're both popcorn summer flicks that you wouldn't think to put a lot of thought into the first time you saw them. To be fair, I have only seen Ant-Man once, but if you've read my review you know I put a lot of thought into it. I've seen Pacific Rim like... four times? So I've had time to analyze it.

So today I'm going to compare the two. Specifically, I'm planning to look at how these two films handled their female characters and characters of color.

Let's start with Ant-Man.

Ant-Man tells the tale of Scott Lang (played by Paul Rudd), a down-on-his-luck thief with a cause who, now that he’s out of jail, is having trouble finding employment. Luckily he’s able to crash with some friends, but he doesn’t quite have the money to pay child support, which means he’s mostly cut off from his young daughter.

That’s the initial setup of the movie. It’s Scott Lang’s story, first and foremost. He’s the main character. He’s a good main character, and Paul Rudd plays the part very well, but he’s nothing new. Nothing groundbreaking. Hollywood loves their white male protagonists, and Marvel especially loves their white male protagonists. Playing opposite Rudd is Evangeline Lilly as Hope Pym, the high-powered corporate executive estranged-from-her-father daughter of Hank Pym.

I like what Evangeline Lilly did with this role. Like most of the actors in this film, she exceeded my expectations and breathed life into a character that wasn’t all that original. My problem is with the way this character was written, because while Hope Pym has a lot of cool character traits, she’s not really a complete character. In the end, she only really exists to prop up the stories of Scott and Hank. Scott and Hank both have their own story arcs; Scott’s is most prominent, seeing as he’s the main character, but Hank has a progression too, and weirdly enough, both Scott’s and Hank’s arcs are very closely tied to Hope’s character. Yet Hope is the only main character, aside from the villain, who doesn’t have her own story arc. Yes, she does reconcile with her father towards the end of the movie, but overall it feels like that’s more for Hank’s benefit than for Hope’s character growth.

I’d like to contrast this with the way Pacific Rim treated its protagonists. At first glance, the main character of Pacific Rim is Raleigh Becket, played by Charlie Hunnam. For the most part, Raleigh seems like your average white male action movie protagonist. He’s a somewhat world-weary veteran Jaeger pilot, who, due to the traumatic loss of his brother in a battle, is not eager to get back to piloting. But he has to, in order to save the world, so he comes back to the world of Jaeger piloting. That’s where he meets Mako Mori, a hopeful pilot.

On the surface, Mako Mori seems to have a similar narrative purpose to Hope Pym. She’s a very integral part of Raleigh’s story, and for about the first half of the movie you assume that that’s it, that it’s Raleigh’s story, not Mako’s.

But as the story progresses, we learn more and more about Mako and her adoptive father, who happens to be a former Jaeger pilot and Raleigh’s commanding officer. We learn Mako’s backstory, we learn what drives her and why she’s so eager to become a real pilot, and by the end of the movie, it’s Mako Mori who has achieved her goals and become a full-fledged character in her own right. It’s Mako Mori who has a concrete story arc and really blossoms by the end of it.

(Raleigh appears to have his own arc—overcoming his hang-ups and trauma about getting back in a Jaeger—but that doesn’t really develop. Actually, once he meets Mako and forms a relationship with her, he seems to settle into his old career with a new ferocity. It’s an interesting dynamic.)

Ant-Man seems to be attempting to tell a father-daughter story with Hank and Hope, but because Pacific Rim allows to Mako Mori to be her own character, and really develops the bad and the good of her relationship with her father, it tells a much better story. That’s the crux of the matter, I think: Pacific Rim allows its heroine to be her own person, her own character, with a backstory and motivations outside of her relationship with Raleigh Becket. Oh, Raleigh and Mako are close, and I love how their relationship develops, but Mako is never forced to sacrifice any part of her character to advance Raleigh’s story. She’s her own person, and she’s treated as such.

Ant-Man… well, as I said, the actors did a lot with what they were given, but the writing isn’t anything to crow about. And Hope Pym? She’s written as a side character meant to be a part of Scott’s story. She’s not given her own arc or her own impetus. On one level, that’s fine. Every story needs supporting characters. Not every character in a story can have their own arc. On another level, though, the treatment of Hope Pym is disappointing, because it’s almost always a female character that receives this type of sidelining in action movies. (The Lego Movie did this too. I love it to pieces, but The Lego Movie did this exact thing with Wyldstyle.)

Women are less likely to be the hero in a contemporarily written story than men are. Women of color are a lot less likely to be the hero, or even be included in the story in the first place. In my opinion, this is (one of the reasons) why Pacific Rim is better-written and more well-rounded movie than Ant-Man is. Pacific Rim gives us Mako Mori, a Japanese woman who is allowed to be the hero of her own story, a Japanese woman who is allowed to be a fully fleshed-out character just like her co-lead. I liked Ant-Man, but it didn’t do this. It stuck to the old formula of using a female character to support and prop up a male hero, just the way many Marvel films so far have. For this reason, I firmly believe that of these two movies, Pacific Rim is the better story.

(Postscript: Ask me about my other, more minor, compare/contrasts of these two movies. I was going to talk about other stuff, but this issue is near and dear to my heart, so it took the forefront. Oh well.)

Captain America: Civil War [Spoiler-Free]

So I got very lucky and was able to see Captain America: Civil War opening weekend. I don't want to spoil it for anyone less lucky, so I'm just going to post a vague outline of spoiler-free thoughts, and then expound on them later.

- The Russo brothers, directors of both this movie and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, continued to impress me with this movie. The plot is... a little sketchy, overall, but it's paced well. 

- The writing and characterization were excellent. I was skeptical and a little nervous about how this movie would be written going into it, but I wasn't disappointed. All the characters were great, and some were particularly great. 

- I'm definitely going to compare this movie to Batman vs. Superman later on, because there were a lot of similarities, but also a lot of contrasts. 

- I would definitely recommend seeing this movie. As with Winter Soldier, it's easily one of Marvel's best movies. 

Ant-Man

*Warning: Spoilers are contained in the following post.*

Confession time: I did not think I was going to enjoy Ant-Man.

When I first found out that Marvel was doing an Ant-Man movie, I was pretty excited. Thanks to Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, I knew who Ant-Man was and I was happy to see him getting a movie.

I got a little less excited when I learned that the movie would actually primarily be about Scott Lang, the second Ant-Man, rather than Hank Pym, the first. But hey, Hank was still in the movie, so I could live with it.

Then I found out that Marvel was not only making it all about Scott, but entirely removing the character of Janet Van Dyne, aka the Wasp. This was the final straw.

To those who don't know why this is a big deal, Janet Van Dyne was a founding member of the Avengers. In fact, Janet Van Dyne named the Avengers. (In more than one continuity!) Janet Van Dyne is the whole reason Hank Pym became a superhero in the first place. And aside from all that, Janet Van Dyne is a really fun character; she's a superhero, and a dang good one, but she's also fun, and humorous, and she's a fashion designer in her free time. (She's also Chinese-American in the Ultimates continuity, which means that Marvel had a wonderful opportunity to include a woman of color in their movie series, and they waved at it as it passed by.)

So yes, I was not happy about Marvel's decision, and as the Ant-Man movie looked pretty boring and generic anyway, I resolved not to watch it.

However, let me tell you from experience: when you are sitting on a plane at four o'clock a.m., having gotten two hours of fitful sleep before giving up on it entirely, none of your carefully thought out reasons for anything will make sense to you. This is how I got roped into finally watching Ant-Man. And...

I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.

Let's start with that.

***

So, as it turns out, Ant-Man is actually pretty well-written. It's not as good as Iron Man, which is sort of my benchmark for good writing in the MCU, but it's definitely a lot better than Age of Ultron, which is my benchmark for bad writing in the MCU, because seriously, it was terrible. Ant-Man... well, it had its flaws, but overall it was pretty good. The pacing worked, it had a decent character arc for Scott, and the characters, and their relationships, were all pretty well built up. (With a few notable exceptions, which I'll talk about later.) 

Speaking of the characters, they were... good enough, I suppose. I will always be vaguely bitter about needlessly white movie casts, but as far as acting and characterization went, they were good. That's the interesting thing, I guess: none of the characters in this movie were particularly original or groundbreaking, but they were able avoid being cliché through a combination of good writing and good acting. I thought Evangeline Lilly as Hope Pym and Michael Peña as Luis in particular did a lot with the roles they were given. 

In fact, now that I bring it up, I think the same is true of the plot. Nothing about this movie's plot was particularly original; I think it's safe to say I've seen pretty much every element of this movie somewhere else. But the movie overall manages to avoid seeming generic, which is something I honestly didn't think it would be able to do. 

So overall? I liked how this movie was done. It exceeded my expectations, and I can honestly say I enjoyed it. 

However. 

That having been said, while I liked this movie, there was also a lot I didn't like. And if you think I'm not going to nitpick the heck out of this movie, just because it exceeded my expectations, well. You've got another thing coming, buddy. 

So here we go.

***

To start with, I am still very put out about how Marvel decided to treat Janet Van Dyne in this movie. 

Rather than be included in the movie at all, Janet is killed off to further the story of Hank Pym and his daughter Hope. Her full name isn't even stated anywhere in the movie, and she only appears in one (short) scene, where we don't even see her face. This was annoying enough for me, but it didn't end there. You see, in the movie, Hope Pym--Hank and Janet's daugher--is established and blatantly stated to be, hands down, the most qualified person to steal the volatile technology in question and save the world. However, her father (Hank) is unwilling to put her in danger, so he pulls a random thief guy (Scott) off the street and decides to have her train him to do the heist, so if someone does get hurt, hey, it'll just be that random guy we met a couple days ago. 

(I'll talk more about that a little later.)

This plot decision really, really irks me, because on the surface, yeah! It's a good setup! It works, and the writing supports it! And it leads to an interesting dynamic between the characters! But on a meta-narrative level, it doesn't work, because here we have the only female character in the movie, who is also the most qualified to be the hero. You know what that means? It means that Hope Pym should have been the title character of this movie. It means that the only reason she isn't is because Marvel wanted to make another movie about a mediocre white guy who gets superpowers. It means that this movie has double the sidelining of female characters, and that makes me angry. The movie even acknowledges this, because the mid-credits scene is of Hank finally accepting that his daughter is ready to be a hero and admitting that he's got a prototype Wasp suit ready to be finished! There was literally no reason Marvel couldn't have named this movie The Wasp!

(And as a side note on female characters--and this is more of a nitpick, but still a very annoying one--all of the ants in this movie are female and should have been referred to as such. Sorry, I don't make the rules. They're all girls. Especially Antony. You know why Antony has wings? Because she's a queen. Queens are literally the most female ants ever, and the only ones that have wings. Antony should've been named Antonia. No, I will not get over this.)

My other big problem with this movie is the villain, Darren Cross, aka Yellowjacket. Without getting into how they totally changed around the Yellowjacket suit origin, let me just say I was unsatisfied with how Darren Cross was presented. He's clearly written as having some undefined mental illness, but this is only used to make him seem ~stranger~ and ~scarier~ than the heroes and that irks me, because the MCU has yet to really do anything as far as disabled superheroes (except for Bucky. I guess.) so it's really kinda upsetting that they're playing into the Insane Villain cliché when they didn't have to. 

There were also a couple of jokes that left a bad taste in my mouth, largely because there was no reason to include them in the movie. Okay, so you're gonna make a deportation joke, when Latinos are still fighting stereotypes and blatant hate speech from presidential candidates in the year 2016? Okay. I guess. You're going to write in a throwaway line/joke about "g*psy magic" literally right after Joss Whedon casts a couple of white actors to play canonically Romani characters? Okay. You do you. I guess. 

(For those who don't know, "g*psy" is a slur that's unfortunately still commonly used to refer to Romani people.)

I just... there was literally no reason to put this stuff in the movie. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should, Marvel. 

So... while it's well-written, Ant-Man definitely isn't my favorite Marvel movie to date. Actually I'm kinda disappointed, because it's pretty good. The story is good, the characters are well-written, and there's actually some interesting subtext and considerations in there, so it's a shame that there's also stuff like sidelined female characters and a shoehorned romance. (I almost forgot about that. There is a shoehorned romance in this movie. I hate clumsily shoved in romances already, but this one in particular bugs me a lot, because Scott and Hope actually had a really well-built up and well-written friendship, and the fact that the writers felt the need to shove in a "Oh by the way we're together" scene at the end is disappointing.)

Speaking of that, it's time for a section of the review that I don't normally do. 

***

Here I'm going to (hopefully briefly) talk about some nuances. (This is a tribute to how good the characterization actually is in this movie.)

See, in the movie, Hank Pym, played by Michael Douglas, acts as a Wise Old Mentor character to Scott. He pulls him out of his kinda terrible life--hey, that's another thing. I've never seen a Marvel movie, or hardly any movie, really, that addresses how hard it can be to get a job when you've got a felony on your rap sheet. So, good job with that, at least, Marvel. 

Anyway. Hank Pym is the Wise Old Mentor. He's kinda there to guide Scott, teach Scott, and provide something of a cautionary tale about distancing yourself from your daughter to Scott. However, with the way he's written, there are parts of the movie were he comes off as really freaking shady. 

Like, I'm not even sure if this is what the writers were aiming for, which is what makes it so weird. But if you think about it, it's true. Hank's stated motivation for hiring (hiring? did he offer to pay him?) Scott is that he knows the heist might go down in flames, and he doesn't want his daughter to get hurt if that's the case. However, Hank also knows that Scott also has a daughter who he very much loves, and who loves him. And he knows that Scott, while a criminal, really is trying to turn his life around. (And he knows all this because he's been stalking Scott in some way shape or form, but Hank is rich, so it's not called that.)

So to review, Hank hires a guy who's just trying to pay child support and keep in touch with his daughter, manipulates that guy's attachment to his daughter to convince him to break the law again, all the while knowing full well that if everything doesn't go off without a hitch, this man probably won't see his daughter ever again, one way or the other. 

Yeah. If Hank Pym weren't a Good Guy, he'd definitely be a villain. In fact, why wasn't he the villain? I mean, why use the outdated, overdone Insane Villain cliché when this masterpiece of manipulation was sitting right here in the script?

I guess this is the kind of thing that makes me really upset about the mediocrities in this movie. It's easy to dismiss a movie that's just straight-up all-around terrible. It's a lot more frustrating when the movie has some genuinely good writing and interesting characters, but also has just enough White Male Ridiculousness to be aggravating. And, really, that's exactly what Ant-Man is: a thoroughly mixed bag. It's... probably one of the MCU's better movies. It's definitely better than Avengers: Age of Ultron and it's not as weird as Thor: The Dark World. It's fun. It's light. It's also kinda annoying, because if it had tried--if the writers had tried just a little harder, reworked just a few more things--it could've been really fun and really enjoyable. 

So that's Ant-Man. Better than I expected, but still annoying.

@Marvel: Seriously, Guys. You Need to Rethink Some of Your Decisions.

To start this off, I would just like to point out that I am a fan of Marvel. I don't hate them; I just think they could do better in certain areas. And I'm willing to point those shortcomings out, even as I enjoy their productions.

That having been said: Marvel, would it kill ya to add some diversity to your movie lineup?

I mean, Rescue was an awesome first addition to the MCU, but Pepper Potts has had three of her own films and two ensemble movies by now--when is Tony Stark/Iron Man going to get his own film? And I love Jane Foster as much as the next person (Darcy Lewis makes an awesome villain), but after two movies, I'm starting to wonder what a story centered around Thor would look like.

And I love Isaiah Bradley, believe me, but he's gotten two movies and we haven't seen hide nor hair of Steve Rogers--who, may I remind you, came from the same time period. (Oh well, at least we got Sharon Carter as a major player in the last Captain America movie. She might even become an Avenger now!)

Admittedly, moving from Ronda Rousey to Anne Hathaway as She-Hulk in The Avengers was a good move. Ms. Hathaway really embodies the character and she's one of my favorites. But what about Bruce Banner? I mean, he is her cousin and all. You'd think he might have been hanging around somewhere, even if he hasn't become the Incredible Hulk in that universe yet.

And now we've got a movie about the Wasp coming out this summer. As though a 5:1 ratio of women to men in The Avengers wasn't enough. As though the fans haven't been begging for a Hawkeye movie since his first appearances. That's bad enough, but it appears that in this new movie, Ant-Man--a founding member of the Avengers and core character--has been killed off before the film even opens. Way to take out a potentially interesting, diverse character from the get-go, Marvel.

And Fox: you're not off the hook either. Just because you have a bigger line up per-movie, doesn't mean you're inherently more diverse. I mean, I know Halle Berry is a great actress, and people are pretty much guaranteed to watch anything with Storm in it, but isn't it time to give Hugh Jackman his own movie? And way to sideline your male characters in the prequels, just so you can focus more on the conflict between Moira MacTaggert and Mystique. At least Magneto got to be the villain for a change in X-Men: Days of Future Past. And by the way, why would you put Scarlet Witch in the movie without Quicksilver? Why would you even do that?
(By the way, that "Magic fixes everything" scene in DoFP was totally gratuitous. Awesome, but gratuitous.)

Oh well. At least X-Men: Apocalypse is coming. We're guaranteed to get Cyclops, Nightcrawler, and Colossus in that, and hopefully Magneto won't get sidelined too badly.

And then... Sony. Sony, Sony, Sony. We've had two different Spider-Girl movie franchises, with another on the way, and you've had yet to show us anyone other than Anya Corazon. Where are Miles Morales and Peter Parker? Sure would be nice to know that they exist.

I don't know, guys. I don't feel like I'm asking for a lot here. All I want is some actual representation here--more than just token characters and love interests. (By the way, way to go with Guardians of the Galaxy, guys. A bunch of female characters and one token guy--now where have we seen that before?) This isn't hard, guys. All it takes is looking at other characters from the comics, stepping outside your comfort zone, and maybe acknowledging that everyone wants to be represented--not just your select group.

Good day.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (Heck Yeah!)

*Warning: The following post contains multiple spoilers.*

I just got back from Avengers: Age of Ultron. 

Yeah. That's right. The movie I raved about before it even hit theaters. The movie I've been waiting months for. The movie I was so excited for.

Was it all I hoped and dreamed it would be?

To an extent, yes.

Age of Ultron was good. It had its great moments, and I'd say it lived up to the first Avengers film. But it had its downsides, too... and I guess that's what I'm here to talk about. And believe me, I've got a lot to talk about. So get up, grab a tasty beverage, use the bathroom, and find a comfy seat, 'cause this is going to be a long post.

***

Age of Ultron: The Good

• The action scenes were amazing--but then, I suppose that's par for the course with a Marvel movie. From the Hulk to Scarlet Witch, those scenes were beautifully animated and great the watch. I wish Quicksilver had gotten more scenes, but overall it was awesome. 
• Ultron and the Vision were both very well-characterized. It was really highlighted that Ultron had all of Tony Stark's flaws and none of his qualities, and the Vision felt--poignant. Clear. And the extremely human-like AI of both characters kept them very interesting, moreso than the usual robot characters you find in sci-fi.
• The dialogue was, as with the previous movie, quite entertaining. The "language" running gag was particularly great. 
• Speaking of dialogue, I just loved the pep talk that Hawkeye gave to Scarlet Witch during the final battle. It ranged from inspiring ("You stay in here, you're good, I'll send your brother back for you... but if you step outside, then you fight and you fight to the death...") to hilarious and very on-point ("We're fighting robots. In a flying city. And I've got a bow and arrow. None of this makes sense!"). It was just... beautiful... and I really loved it. 
• I was thrilled to see War Machine and Maria Hill as a part of the Avengers. Though I really, really wish that the Falcon could've gotten more than one appearance during the party... why didn't he stay?
• And on that note, I loved the bit at the end implying that the Avengers will now include the Vision, Scarlet Witch, and War Machine. 
• I did like Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, too... but more on them later. 
• And Dr. Helen Cho. I loved her, and I'm so glad she's not dead. Hopefully she'll be in later installments, because she was great and somewhat-underutilised character. 
• The fact that the Avengers were desperately trying to save civilian lives was a fantastic touch; a good counterbalance to the obvious death and destruction that was all around. 
• And I enjoyed seeing Hawkeye's family... but again, more on that later. 

Age of Ultron: The Bad

• I liked Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, I really did. They were fun to watch and they were pretty well characterized. But... I don't feel that they were as well done as they could have been.
  For one thing, Wanda and Pietro Maximoff were Jewish and Romani in the comics. That doesn't seem to have carried over to the movie universe; there was nothing that might have indicated that they were anything other than Eastern European and white. (Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, the actors in these roles, are both white, though Taylor-Johnson is, apparently, Jewish.) 
• I'm still mad about the apparent erasure of Hawkeye's deafness. In the comics he is (was? I'm pretty sure he is) 80% deaf. In the movies, nope, apparently he's 100% able-bodied and able to hear. And that irks me. The reveal that he does have a family, that he's got this sort of other life... that could've been the perfect place to show him practicing sign language with his kids, or something... anything. But no. There was nothing, and at this point, this far into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I'm starting to resign myself to the fact that we aren't going to get 80% deaf Clint Barton. 
• Okay, this point right here is long and complicated and somewhat spoilery, so if you feel like skipping it... actually, don't skip it, because I think this is important.
  Awhile back I did a review of Bramblestar's Storm, one of the more recent installments in the Warriors series. If you've read that review, you'll remember that I was quite disgruntled about the reveal that Squirrelflight really can have kits.
  Well, I never thought that I would see the same problem in a Marvel movie and a Warriors book, but there it is and here we are.
  You see, in this movie there's a blossoming subplot that details a romance between Natasha Romanov (Black Widow) and Bruce Banner (the Hulk, obviously). In one of their scenes, Banner mentions that he wouldn't be able to father children if they were married. Natasha then reveals (in conjunction with a memory/flashback she had earlier) that she was forcibly sterilized as part of her training--that she physically cannot have children, either. She then asks Bruce, "Still think you're the only monster on the team?"--implying that she is a monster... because she can't have children.
  I don't like the implications here.
  Watching the scene, I got the feeling that Natasha Romanov has seen herself as monster for a long time; because of all that she's gone through and all that she's done. But the highlight in this scene--and, indeed, in her flashback--was the sterilization. In this scene, there is a very real implication that because she cannot have children, Natasha considers herself a monster.
  And I don't like that.
  As I stated in the Bramblestar's Storm review, there are women all over the world who can't have children, for one reason or another. Not only is this insulting and dismissive towards them, it's basically saying that real women who have been forcibly sterilized are, if not monsters, then something unnatural. That's not right. And while Age of Ultron doesn't outright equate children with a happy, loving marriage (the way Bramblestar's Storm did), the implications behind this scene are not good. 
• I kind of feel that Helen Cho was shoved aside and not allowed to play a huge part in the plot. Don't get me wrong; I was thrilled with her character, and honestly she had a bigger role to play than I thought she would. But then she was brainwashed by Ultron. And (literally) shoved to the side so that he could head out and enact his plans. And wounded so she couldn't help the Avengers anymore. (On the one hand, I was so scared she would die, and I'm thrilled she didn't, but really. I'm seriously hoping she comes back and does more in later movies.)

***

Conclusion

I really, really liked Avengers: Age of Ultron, for all the reasons listed. It had action, it had humor (Maria Hill's "*cough*Testosterone*cough*" comment...), the plot was pretty good, Ultron was well characterized...

And yet. 

And yet Wanda and Pietro Maximoff had their race (apparently) changed, for no reason that I can see. And yet Joss Whedon (the writer of this film) is still ignoring Hawkeye's disability. And yet Helen Cho was pushed to the side to make room for Ultron and Vision and Thor and Quicksilver's death. And yet Natasha is called--calls herself--a monster for having been sterilized. 

Avengers: Age of Ultron is a good movie--maybe even a great one, in terms of entertainment value and fun. But it had its flaws. And for those, I give it three and a half stars out of five. 

I like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I really do. And for that reason, I hope that the movies will only improve from here. For they have their flaws and their failings. But then--as the Vision tells Ultron in the film--perhaps there is grace in their failings. For that, I can always hope. 

All the Small Things

~Periodic ramblings about my life.~

***

1. (Hydrogen)

I'm more-or-less halfway through Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It's my first time reading it. (I started the series later than most.) I know all the spoilers, though, because it's pretty much impossible to be on the internet and not run into spoilers about this series. 

2. (Helium)

We are having a really strange winter. I'm currently living in Alaska, and our snowfall this year has to be at a record low. We got a few inches just recently, but before that there was only about an inch on the ground, and that was starting to melt. 

I just hope this doesn't ruin breakup. See, there's this huge ditch in our neighborhood that fills up with water when the snow melts, since it's at the bottom of the hill our neighborhood is situated on. The water generally only stays for a few days, but it's fun while it lasts. Or, it will be if our abysmal snowfall rates don't affect it. 

3. (Lithium)

I am really excited about the superhero movies coming out this year (specifically, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man, and the new Fantastic Four movie). I'm especially excited to see what Fox does with the Fantastic Four this time around, since their first stab at it wasn't exactly... stellar. 

4. (Beryllium)

You're probably wondering why each of these thoughts is preceded by the name of a chemical. I'm just going to come right out: it's a pun. Periodic, get it? Because at the beginning I sub-titled it Periodic Thoughts About My Life? Heheheheheh.... heh. 

5. (Boron)

My sister is reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. (She's actually reading it here as I type this.) I keep threatening to spoil it for her. Fortunately, she has no idea what's coming. 

Heheheheheheheheh. Heheheheheheheh--

Excuse me. 

6. (Carbon)

Season 5 of Downton Abbey is taking forever to air. We get one episode a week, every Sunday night. And, you know, that wouldn't sting so much if the UK hadn't already gotten the entire season before we even got the premiere!

Sorry. But I am still a little bitter about that one. It just isn't fair. 

7. (Nitrogen) 

We're still working our way through season 1 of Agents of SHIELD. The episodes are getting a bit creepier, and much more frustrating, but at this point there's no way we're going to stop watching. 

8. (Oxygen)

I've started the second semester of Challenge B (the homeschool program I do). It's definitely tough, but I'm starting to enjoy it a little bit (a little bit) more. Fortunately, spring break is March 2-6. And we might be taking a hop to Germany in a couple weeks to visit some friends. So that'll be fun, assuming it happens (it's still up in the air right now). 

***

And that about wraps up my periodic reminisces about my life. (Periodic. Heheheh.) For more information about the Periodic Table, I recommend the awesome book The Elements: A Visual Explanation of Every Known Atom in the Universe, by Theodore Gray. For more about my life, keep reading this blog. 

Bye, and thanks for reading!