Worth Mentioning - Make Mine Marvel

We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.

Cody is trying to catch up on his MCU write-ups.

BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER (2022)

Chadwick Boseman had played the character of T'Challa, king of the African country Wakanda and the costumed superhero Black Panther, in Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, and, of course, the Black Panther movie. He was supposed to come back for a Black Panther sequel... but, sadly, he lost a secret battle with cancer in 2020, at the age of just 43. Reeling from his passing, Marvel Studios and Black Panther director Ryan Coogler also had to scramble to figure out how to make a sequel without their star. In most cases, there would have been a recasting. But Marvel and Coogler chose to acknowledge the death of Boseman and let T’Challa pass away with him.

The story Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole crafted for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever begins with the off screen death of T’Challa. In the Black Panther mythology, we’re told that a meteorite composed of a nearly indestructible element called vibranium landed in the area that became Wakanda thousands of years ago, putting out radiation that created a heart-shaped herb that can give a person enhanced physical abilities (and visions of relatives in the Ancestral Plane). All of the Black Panthers that have existed over the years have consumed the heart-shaped herb. And in the first movie, the villain also consumed the herb, before ordering that the remaining herbs be destroyed. The movie starts with T’Challa’s techie sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) desperately trying to synthesize the heart-shaped herb in hopes that it could save her brother’s life as he battles a mysterious illness... but she’s too late. T’Challa dies.

The film has a deeply mournful tone, as T’Challa’s loved ones are dealing with their grief throughout. Shuri, T’Challa’s girlfriend Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), his mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett), who becomes the ruler in his absence. The entire country is in mourning. And they don’t have the chance to mourn in peace. Now that the world knows Wakanda has vibranium, they want some of it – and since Wakanda refuses to share, they go searching for it in other places. The CIA and the Navy SEALs team up for a vibranium sweep in the Atlantic Ocean, using a vibranium detector that was created by genius college student. Vibranium is located in the sea – but happens to be within an aquatic kingdom called Talokan, which is basically the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Atlantis and is ruled by Namor (Tenoch Huerta), a character who was featured in the first comic book ever published by the company that would eventually come to be called Marvel, way back in 1939.

Here, to make sure Namor wouldn’t be compared to Aquaman too hard (never mind that Aquaman was created after Namor), Coogler and Cole gave the character an interesting reimagining that is connected to the Mayan civilization. His history stretches back to 1571, when a tribe in the Yucatán consumed an herb that grew underwater to save themselves from smallpox and found that this vibranium-laced herb gave them the chance to survive underwater. Namor was the firstborn of Talokan – and he’s a mutant, with pointed ears, winged feet, and a skin tone that doesn’t match his fellow, blue-skinned Talokanils. 

The Talokanils don’t react well to their vibranium-enriched kingdom being discovered, and Namor wants Wakanda’s help in keeping their location a secret. He also wants to kill the creator of the vibranium detector – who turns out to be a kid named Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), who has also built a flying suit of armor similar to Iron Man’s, making herself a hero called Ironheart.

Things don’t go well in the dealings between the Wakandans and the Talokanils, building up to a climactic war – and to compete with Namor in this battle, Shuri goes back to trying to synthesize the heart-shaped herb so she can take it and become the new Black Panther.

With a running time of 161 minutes, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a bit long-winded and overstuffed, and the cinematography is often so dark that I can hardly see what’s happening on the screen, but it features some great acting (Angela Bassett won a Golden Globe and earned an Oscar nomination for her performance), some interesting ideas, and stands as a heartfelt tribute to Chadwick Boseman. It’s not a movie I’ll feel compelled to watch very often, because it drags too often and, like I said, I barely see a lot of the scenes, but Marvel and Coogler were faced with a very sad and difficult situation and still managed to make a really good movie under the circumstances.

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA (2023)

Ant-Man and its follow-up Ant-Man and the Wasp were additions to the Marvel Cinematic Universe that were considered to be, as JoBlo writer Matt Rooney put it, “the quirky, low-key entries that never demand too much from the audience.” The first movie was a goofy heist movie, and the second was just an action-packed romp through San Francisco. But with the third film, Marvel and trilogy director Peyton Reed decided to shake things up. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania would drop the returning characters into a family adventure with coming-of-age elements, which sounds appropriate for the Ant-Man series, but by the end, it explodes into “an epic sci-fi war movie.” Which is far from what the Ant-Man movies ever were before.

At this point, the MCU movies are taking place in a world that’s adjusting to the fact that half of world’s population was “blipped” out of existence (thanks to Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War) and then were brought back five years later (thanks to the Avengers in Endgame). The size-changing hero Ant-Man, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), is also adjusting to being back in the world after a five year absence, but he didn’t get blipped. His girlfriend Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) did, and so did her parents, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer). When they got blipped, Scott was left floating during an excursion into the Quantum Realm, which is described as “a place outside space and time” – and a place where Janet was previously trapped for decades. He was trapped there for five years, which didn’t feel like five years to him, but when he got out of the Quantum Realm he discovered that he had missed not only the blip, but also five years in the life his daughter Cassie, who was a little kid in the previous films and is now a teenager played by Kathryn Newton. Scott is handling it well, though, and has even written a best-selling memoir called Look Out for the Little Guy. 

Meanwhile, Cassie has followed Hank and Hope into the science field, collaborating on a device they consider to be the Quantum Realm equivalent to a satellite. This device will send a signal down into the Quantum Realm that will collect data and bounce the information back. The idea is to map out the entire Quantum Realm so no one can get stuck in it again like Scott and Janet did. But when Janet is told about the device, she freaks out... and she’s right to, because the thing instantly sucks their whole group into the Quantum Realm. Which is deeper than anyone other than Janet had ever imagined. There are living creatures there, some monstrous, some strange, some humanoid. It’s a secret universe that contains worlds within worlds. And Janet also happens to know that it’s inhabited by a very dangerous individual: someone called Kang the Conqueror. Played by Jonathan Majors, this character is a variant of a different character, He Who Remains, who was introduced in season 1 of the Loki TV series.

Janet met Kang long ago, when he presented himself as a traveler and scientist whose ship had crashed off course, stranding him in the Quantum Realm. Janet tried to help him repair his ship – until she got a glimpse at the “Conqueror” part of his personality. He has wiped out entire worlds and timelines. He went to war with multiverse variants of himself... and he didn’t just crash into the Quantum Realm. He was exiled there by his variants. So Janet sabotaged his ship to make sure he couldn’t escape, but he was gone on to conquer the Quantum Realm, gaining foot soldiers called the Quantumnauts and even turning the villain from the first Ant-Man, Corey Stoll as Darren Cross, into a giant-headed floating cyborg called M.O.D.O.K. (an acronym for "Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing"). Kang is still trying to escape from the Quantum Realm, and to make sure that he doesn’t, our heroes have to team with the local freedom fighters, led by Jentorra (Katy O’Brian), along with some super-intelligent ants, to wage war against Kang’s forces.

Scott isn’t the only one who can use a special suit to change sizes during this adventure, as Hope still has her size-changing, flying Wasp suit and Cassie has also been equipped with her own suit – which is why, in the comics, she has gone by the hero names Stature, Stinger, and Ant-Girl.

This story, scripted by Jeff Loveness, widens the scope of what we’ve come to expect from an Ant-Man movie in a major way. The first movie was simply about Scott learning how to use the shrinking/growing suit and communicate with ants so he could infiltrate a building and try to steal a similar suit that Darren Cross was working on. The second was about people competing for a suitcase that contained Hank’s shrunken lab. So we were far away from “going to war with a multiversal conqueror in a strange realm” territory. There are times when Quantumania brings to mind the likes of Guardians of the Galaxy or even Star Wars more than it does the previous Ant-Man movies. 

The shake-up allows for some weird, fun stuff to happen (including a cameo from Bill Murray, playing a Quantum Realm resident who has history with Janet)... but the movie also feels like it’s falling short of its potential. It’s not always as interesting as such a huge adventure should be – and there are stretches where I even found the movie to be downright dull. Marvel was hoping (until Majors ran into legal troubles, being convicted of assault) to build Kang and his variants up to be the new big threat in the MCU, following in the footsteps of Thanos, but the character never comes off as being a threatening as he’s supposed to be, despite Janet being terrified of him. In fact, he’s pretty low-key and not very interesting. Then he gets taken out by some ants, and I’m not left feeling the need to see any more of him. Some of the action and gags also don’t work as well as they should.

And they made the mistake of leaving out Scott’s friend Luis, a fan favorite played by Michael Peña in the other movies. Some members of the general audience probably showed up for an Ant-Man movie to see Luis almost as much as they were going to see Ant-Man, so leaving him out of the film completely was a bad move.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was a box office disappointment. Designed to be something much bigger and more mind-blowing than its predecessors, it actually made significantly less money than both of the previous movies. It’s not difficult to see why. It’s not as mind-blowing or exciting as the filmmakers intended it to be, and it’s not what viewers were looking for from an Ant-Man movie. It’s fun, but it’s not as fun as the others.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 (2023)

For a while, it looked like writer/director James Gunn wasn’t going to be able to complete his Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy. In July of 2018, a year after the release of the second film, some bad jokes Gunn had made on social media years earlier resurfaced – and, in response, Disney fired him. Thankfully, Marvel didn’t immediately hire other creatives to take over the project. They put Gunn’s script on a shelf and waited for the controversy to blow over while members of the Guardians cast made public statements in Gunn’s defense and he went over to the DC world to make The Suicide Squad. Just months after he was fired, Gunn was re-hired to make Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. It’s a good thing, because he had made the characters his own over the course of the previous two movies, and no one else could have done them justice. Another director could have made a fun Guardians of the Galaxy movie, for sure, but it wouldn’t have been as weird or heartfelt as the Vol. 3 that Gunn delivered – and it certainly wouldn’t have been as heartbreaking as the finished film is at times.

Vol. 2 had set up the idea that a super-powerful being known as Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) was going to be sent after the Guardians. Although that character is probably given less to do in the follow-up that a lot of fans expected from him, Vol. 3 does open with Adam Warlock catching up to the Guardians and attacking them, severely injuring their member Rocket, a talking raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper. It has previously been made clear to us that this raccoon was turned into the character we know and love through horrible, torturous experiments – and now that he’s on the edge of death, his fellow Guardians (Chris Pratt as Peter “Star-Lord” Quill, Dave Bautista as Drax the Destroyer, Vin Diesel as the voice of the tree creature Groot, Pom Klementieff as Mantis, and Karen Gillan as Nebula) have to seek out the lab Rocket was created in to have any hope of saving him.

On their mission, they also recruit the help of Gamora (Zoe Saldaña), a version of the woman Quill once loved... but, thanks to some time travel insanity, this Gamora was never in a relationship with Quill. The Gamora he loved is dead. Now he finds it very tough to interact with this Gamora who won’t give him the time of day.

The lines in the first movie where Rocket said “I didn’t ask to get made” were already enough to make me teary-eyed. That was really all the explanation I needed for where he came from. But while wrapping up the trilogy, Gunn decided to take a deep dive into Rocket’s origin story – and it is absolutely heart-wrenching. If those lines in the first movie made you teary-eyed as well, be prepared for a rough ride when you go into Vol. 3. As it turns out, Rocket’s creation was part of a project being carried out by an alien cyborg scientist known as the High Evolutionary, a fellow who sees himself as a stand-in for the God he doesn’t believe exists and is experimenting on animals to create beings to populate his version of Earth, Counter-Earth, an attempt to create the perfect world. Chukwudi Iwuji does a great job of making this guy a thoroughly detestable scumbag.

Through flashbacks, we get the story of Rocket’s creation. We see his awful interactions with the High Evolutionary. We learn about his friendship with fellow test subjects; an otter called Lylla, a walrus called Teefs, a rabbit called Floor. Terrible things happened... and it’s time for the Guardians to make the High Evolutionary pay for what he has done and rescue his latest test subjects.

There are scenes and subject matter in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 that make it a sure thing that I won’t be taking in too many viewings of it, but Gunn did deliver a very beautiful and touching film that also happens to have some massive action sequences. I hope we’ll be seeing more of at least some of the Guardians as time goes on, but Gunn was able to finish his trilogy in the perfect way.

THE MARVELS (2023)

The Marvels is the only Marvel Cinematic Universe movie to be a flat-out bomb at the box office. As of its opening weekend, it was already written off as a failure... and it’s a shame that’s how this movie is perceived and remembered, because it’s actually a pretty fun flick. It’s a perfectly fine entry in the franchise – and as far as I’m concerned, its biggest failing is the fact that it’s too quick-paced and lighthearted for its own good.

This is a follow-up to the Captain Marvel film, but that’s not the only thing it’s following. The story crafted by director Nia DaCosta, alongside Megan McDonnell and Elissa Karasik, sees Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) teaming up with Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), who gained super powers in the Disney+ series WandaVision, and Kamala Khan  / Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), who got her powers in the Disney+ series Ms. Marvel – and since all three of these characters have light-based powers, maybe it’s appropriate that their team-up film moves along at the speed of light, blasting through an intergalactic adventure so quickly that The Marvels winds up being the shortest film in the MCU, sporting a running time of 105 minutes. Still, the quick pace DaCosta brought to the film winds up making it feel rather inconsequential, even when it’s dealing with huge stakes. It’s so light and fluffy that it feels like it would have been right at home as a Disney+ streaming release. Which would have been fitting, given the WandaVision and Ms. Marvel connection, if not for the massive budget. 

Set thirty years after the events of Captain Marvel, The Marvels tells us that Carol Danvers destroyed the Supreme Intelligence, an artificial intelligence that was set up on the planet Hala and ruled over a race of aliens called the Kree. The super heroine thought she was doing something that would be beneficial to the Kree, but instead the absence of the Supreme Intelligence led to a Kree civil war that nearly destroyed Hala completely. Which might have been an interesting story to cover in a movie on its own, but instead it was reduced to some quick back story exposition in this one. Now, a Kree called Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) has gotten her hands on a Quantum Band – which can create a network of wormholes that allow for quicker travel across the universe – and plans to use it to drain resources from planets that Carol has a connection to. So she’ll take the atmosphere from Tarnax IV, where Captain Marvel set up a refugee colony for Skrulls, another alien race that has bad history with the Kree. (The establishment of that colony could have been something to see in another movie.) She’ll steal the oceans from Aladna, a planet where the residents communicate through song... and where Carol has a diplomatic marriage to the prince of the planet, Yan (Park Seo-Joon) – another situation that could be part of another movie’s story. Captain Marvel has been up to a lot that we haven’t seen! Then Dar-Benn plans to take the sun from Carol’s home planet, Earth.

While investigating Dar-Benn’s Quantum Band jump points, Carol and Monica both make the mistake of touching the jump points, which causes their powers to become entangled with those of Kamala, who wears the second of the two Quantum Bands in existence as a bangle, which is what caused her powers to emerge in the first place. This entanglement causes a predicament for the three heroines, as every time one of them uses their powers, it causes them to switch places with someone else in the trio. This is why they all have to be in the same place and working together to stop Dar-Benn – and it’s fun to watch them figure out how to work together while swapping places every time one of them has to use a power.

There’s so much fun to the Carol / Monica / Kamala team-up, it overwhelms the Dar-Benn part of the story, so the villain barely registers as a threat even when she’s causing mass destruction. Carol and Monica also have some complicated history they need to work out, but the movie handles that issue in the simplest way possible so it can get back to the fun and the action. I don’t have strong feelings about Captain Marvel in any direction, I can really take or leave the character, but I was left wanting to see more of Monica and Kamala after watching WandaVision and Ms. Marvel, so I’m happy we got this team-up movie. There’s just something insubstantial about it that makes me rank it toward the low end of MCU movies, even though I enjoy it.