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Marvel Tweaks Their Superhero Film Formula With Ant-Man 58

Posted by Soulskill from the explosions-and-people-punching-each-other-really-hard dept.
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.
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Marvel Tweaks Their Superhero Film Formula With Ant-Man More

Marvel Tweaks Their Superhero Film Formula With Ant-Man

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  • Sexist (Score:5, Funny)

    by turkeydance ( 1266624 ) on Friday July 17, 2015 @05:18PM (#50132601)
    Uncle-Woman.

  • Can we stop giving a damn about non-user scores? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Shadow of Eternity ( 795165 ) on Friday July 17, 2015 @05:56PM (#50132823)

    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.

    • 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

      • the last one i paid to see by sitting in an actual theatre which got good reviews from both: Schindler 's List.

        • 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).

      • No, they really don't. The whole point is that critic reviews are if anything incredibly shallow, essentially little more than hipsterish circlejerks.

        • 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 statistics that films which receive good critical review are more likely to receive an academy award is unquestionable.

            ..and meaningless.

            The academy awards is the very definition of circle jerk. Its hollywood giving hollywood accolades based on hollywood opinion.

            • 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.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by epyT-R ( 613989 )

        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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjm1231 ( 751545 )

      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

  • 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

  • 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.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, it's not tweaked because Guardians of the Galaxy was the same way. So, this article is just too little, too late.

  • Shouldn't that be Ant Woman? (Score:4, Funny)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Friday July 17, 2015 @07:06PM (#50133147) Homepage Journal

    I mean, unless he's a drone ... Although, given the actor, that might make sense.

  • 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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Gryle ( 933382 )
      I look forward to seeing Ant-Man pop up in sequels or cameos, if for no other reason than to show-case what an experienced Ant-Man could do with the suit. Some of the fight scenes gave brief flashes of how effective the suit could be, but the movie didn't explore it as well as I think it could have.

      The movie sacrificed something in pursuit of a punchline or a gag every five-to-ten minutes. It's like the movie was trying so hard to be tongue-in-cheek that it almost approached self-importance from the othe

      • Ant-Man had a more interesting character than anybody else in a suit except maybe Tony Stark. It was different from other Marvel movies, but I thought it was good in a different way.

        The second treat scene (why we sat through all those credits) makes it clear that Ant-Man will be back, and suggests in what capacity. In Marvel fashion, it also hints at what will be going on in the next movie.

  • 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 und

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