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Marvel Tweaks Their Superhero Film Formula With Ant-Man
An anonymous reader writes: Over the past decade, Marvel has been rolling out superhero film after superhero film. They've found a successful formula, and each of the last half-dozen films has brought in over a half-billion dollars in ticket revenue. Today they added to the franchise with Ant-Man, based on a superhero who can shrink himself to the size of an ant (while maintaining normal strength), and control insects. But where the spate of Avengers-related movies only occasionally interjected humor into their world-preserving plots, Ant-Man focuses more on being funny and simply entertaining. Reviews are generally positive, but not overwhelmingly so — Rotten Tomatoes has it at 79%, with a 91% audience score while Metacritic has it at 64/100, with an 8.4/10 user score. The LA Times calls it "playful." Vox has good and bad to say about Ant-Man, but notes that its failings are very common to Marvel's other films. Salon says, "...in its medium-stupid and mismanaged fashion it's not so awful." Wired posted the obligatory physics of Ant-Man article, as did FiveThirtyEight.
HALF MAN, HALF ANT.
Uncle-Woman.
Comic book movies are about as nerdy as it gets, so this definitely qualifies as "news for nerds".
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
What the hell happened to this site?
It's ACs no longer know what being nerdy is about.
How many times have we seen this with everything from Ant-Man to the same issue in the other direction with Far Cry 2? "Critics" hate something because it doesn't pander to their agenda while people love it, or they fall over each other fellating it because it does pander to their agenda or they got paid while actual consumers despise it because it's crap.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
just finished watching it, about an hour ago and its not half bad
as per usual theres the bit after the headline stars credits and the bit right at the very end of the credits
Some people spend all day watching Fox-News, others try and catch every speciality program on NPR. The great thing about critic reviews is that it segregates two groups of movie goers, one who go for entertainment, and the other who demand something intelligent and unique from the experience.
Having both allow people with different tastes to judge the same film, or people with common tastes to judge different films. For the linkes of Ant-Man and Jurassic World I followed the user scores. For the likes of the Pianist or Saving Private Ryan I follow the critics. The formula allows you to judge movies like this:
Good Critical Review - Poor User Review : A likely Oscar nominee, a strange unique story, something that requires you to think.
Poor Critical Review - Good User Review : Senseless action, comedy or general entertainment value. It won't make you question your life but it'll keep you happy.
Poor Reviews from both : Usually not worth seeing unless it's for the B-Grade story, but even then some B-Grades attract good critical review for their B-ness.
Great Reviews from both : A rare gem, entertaining and intelligent. Could be the kind of movie that sticks with you for a while.
So no, keep the critical reviews coming. They represent an important component of the reviewing system.
Marvel didn't tweak their superhero film format. When they found out Edgar Wright was trying to tweak their format they threw him off the movie. It was too late to pull it completely back into line, so some of Wright's humour is still there.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
the last one i paid to see by sitting in an actual theatre which got good reviews from both: Schindler 's List.
No, they really don't. The whole point is that critic reviews are if anything incredibly shallow, essentially little more than hipsterish circlejerks.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
No, they really don't. The whole point is that critic reviews are if anything incredibly shallow, essentially little more than hipsterish circlejerks.
Well, to give the GP credit they are useful for people who want to be in on the circlejerk, and there seems to be a lot of those people.
You got it. circlejerk. The critics grab a common theme and stick with it and exhibit an incredible amount of groupthink. The statistics that films which receive good critical review are more likely to receive an academy award is unquestionable.
So what about my my comment was so wrong? Listening to the circlejerkers can give you an idea of what to expect from a movie, especially if you don't fit their mould of group think.
the last one i paid to see by sitting in an actual theatre which got good reviews from both: Schindler 's List.
The last for me was Ex Machina. I think it got good user reviews because the trailer accurately depicted the film, so most people who wouldn't like it, didn't go see it, and the user reviews were skewed by selection bias. I thought it was a very good film, but my kids would not have liked it (they didn't see it).
I mean, unless he's a drone ... Although, given the actor, that might make sense.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Ant-man (the title) is one of Marvel's oldest heroes. This is the new ant-man, so Alpha Flight pre-dates him by a bit, but Alpha Flight were introduced in X-Men, which might make them part of the X series of characters for movie ownership purposes.
Ant Man does seem very different from the Marvel franchise. And to me that was a good thing. While the formula was still fundamentally unchanged the story was IMO compelling. The humor wasn't Paul Rudd over the top (OK a couple of places it is but they're mercifully brief) which is what I was fearing. It was more nervous tension humor which to me was balanced and complimentary to the story. The movie spends almost no time trying to explain the tech. Also a good thing. Action fans will get what they want but they will have to be patient because Marvel spends much of the movie developing the character's relationships. Had someone told me that prior to seeing it I might not have been so anxious to see it and yet I enjoyed that part as well. I went in expecting to be disappointed so I had set the bar pretty low. I emerged thoroughly entertained and looking forward to the sequel or next movie the character appears in (Hint: The post credit scene pretty much tells you what that might be)
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
The problem is still political. Movies pushing left wing 'progressive' agendas are given slavishly positive reviews by so-called 'critics', many of whom are blatantly obvious and open about their political views in their reviews. These movies often go on to win awards from organizations whose committees also suffer from 5th columns, creating a nice false consensus.
The statistics that films which receive good critical review are more likely to receive an academy award is unquestionable.
The academy awards is the very definition of circle jerk. Its hollywood giving hollywood accolades based on hollywood opinion.
"His name was James Damore."
It stayed the same?
The purpose of criticism is not to tell you whether you will like something or not. It may touch on this, but that is a side affect, not the main purpose. For a variety of reasons, movie reviews sometimes are about whether you will like the movie or not, and offer nothing in the way of criticism (in the traditional academic sense). Sometimes reviewers who combine both, sometimes in the same review. I can see how this can create confusion for the casual review reader, as you have to try to figure out when a review is offering criticism and when it is just a review.
Movies made purely for entertainment often don't have anything worth critical appraisal, other than technical execution, which is why those sorts of movies often have poorer receptions from the critics than from the public. (Personally, I prefer a movie that has a bit more meat on the bone, and offers something to think about critically. I recall enjoying the first Avengers movie, but I can't recall a single thing that happened in it.)
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
Yet Marvel's parent company has been the biggest corporate proponent of copyright term extension. The civil libertarian press didn't call it the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" for nothing. It's also a major proponent of laws to prohibit production of devices useful for circumventing digital restrictions management. So stories that portray Marvel in a positive light run counter to whatever slant Slashdot's "Your Rights Online" section is trying to show.
Uncle-Woman.
No, that's a different film that comes out next month.
Re-read my reply. The fact that a film qualifies for the circle jerk of the academy awards actually says a lot about it, and that is something you as the person reading reviews can use to determine if you want to see it or not.
Now it could very well be that you have no idea how the circle jerking works, can't understand the group think, and have no idea what makes an academy award winning movie thus. Only then can you not gain some useful bit of knowledge about the movie from the review.
Probably avoided making it a woman to avoid the possibility of comparisons to Gamergate.
Not every movie needs to be serious.
Also, I loved the fact that the original Star Trek had some just plain funny episodes. My favorite episode was very serious ("The Doomsday Machine") but I was happy to watch the funny ones as well ("I, Mudd" and "The Trouble With Tribbles"). It was something I missed with Star Trek: The Next Generation... that show was so serious all the time.
"The Trouble With Tribbles" was a masterpiece, in that it was primarily a comedy episode but there was an actual serious plot underneath, and both worked together. And IMHO the Ant Man movie worked the same way: it was almost pure comedy, but there was a serious plot. There was a big twist that had me actually concerned (oh no, it really would be bad if those particular guys got that particular bit of technology) but the comedy kept on coming.
I'm not sure I will ever bother to watch Ant Man a second time, but I regard that as two hours enjoyably spent and I do recommend it. If you watch the trailers and it looks like fun, you will like it.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely