All movie studios are product factories, to some extent, but perhaps never before has a superhero movie felt so much like it came from an assembly line. Not that good, not that bad, just the result of a highly efficient, highly mechanized process. Which makes it that much stranger that it keeps trying to do comedy. Aw, look, the widget has jokes!
I like to imagine estranged Ant-Man director Edgar Wright as Lucy in that episode of I Love Lucy where she and Ethel work at the chocolate factory, trying to stuff larger universe tie-ins and pointless cameos into his shirt when he couldn’t keep up with Marvel’s conveyor belt, until he eventually got fired and replaced with Yes Man director Peyton Reed, who I have to imagine could package product faster and didn’t try to eat the chocolates.
Ant-Man is much better than Iron Man 2, and that’s what’s so scary about it. That Disney has figured out how to make the same teaser-disguised-as-movie in a much less overt, more inoffensive way. To have Paul Rudd wink at the camera to distract you between SHIELD name drops, a cute puppy to pet while they ready the drill. You imagine Disney’s ultimate goal is a theater full of orderly, ticket-buying youths and families, who come for the brand above all, then leave the theater thinking they’re happy, but with a lobotomized stare and a vague sense of disquiet. DID YOU CLAP AT THE STAN LEE CAMEO? WE CAN’T LEAVE UNLESS YOU CLAP AT THE STAN LEE CAMEO. Serializeit Macht Frei...
