Film review-Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, attempts to continue the saga of Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man, and his allies as they venture into the Quantum Realm. However, the film struggles to find its footing, suffering from a lack of narrative direction and inconsistent pacing. While the movie retains some of the humor that made the first two Ant-Man films so enjoyable, it also becomes bogged down in attempts to tie into previous Marvel movies and remind viewers of past events.

The film’s reliance on green screen technology to create its fantastical worlds is unfortunately marred by poor editing, resulting in distracting inconsistencies and uncanny character renderings. Despite this, the movie does have its moments of charm and heart, particularly in the subplot involving Scott’s relationship with his daughter Cassie. However, the broader narrative struggles to find a balance between the intimate family drama and the larger-than-life action sequences.

Perhaps the strongest aspect of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is the introduction of Kang the Conquerer, played with menacing brilliance by Jonathan Majors. Majors’ portrayal of the villain injects a much-needed dose of gravitas and terror into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, making Kang a worthy adversary for the heroes to face off against.

Overall, while Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania may please diehard fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it falls short of the high expectations set by its predecessors. The film’s attempts to expand beyond its titular hero and its reliance on callbacks to previous movies ultimately detract from the potential for a standalone adventure.

⭐⭐

Review-The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special

The Guardians of the Galaxy are back, and this time they’re taking on Christmas with a good old-fashioned seasonal special. While it may not have the same weight as some of the other MCU projects, the special offers a light-hearted, entertaining escape from reality.

Peter Quill, still reeling from the loss of Gamora, is surprised by his teammates Mantis and Drax, who have hatched a plan to cheer him up. After hearing about Christmas, they decide to kidnap Quill’s childhood hero, Kevin Bacon, and bring him to him as a present. While the break-in is the most surreal thing you’ll see this holiday season, it sets off a chain of events that lead to a heartwarming Christmas party and a surprise revelation about Peter’s family.

The special has its highs and lows, with some jokes hitting the mark and others falling flat. The scenes of Mantis and Drax experiencing Earth culture are entertaining, but at times they drag on too long. Nevertheless, the special’s message of togetherness and family makes it a perfect watch for the holiday season.

Overall, while the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special may not be the most memorable addition to the MCU, it’s a fun and heartwarming way to spend 40 minutes this Christmas.

⭐⭐⭐

New Spider-Man trilogy in development

There has been a lot of speculation recently, including from Tom Holland himself – that Spider-Man: No Way Home, would be the end of his career as everyone’s favourite wall-crawler. The upcoming film does indeed mark the end of his current contract. However, according to producer Amy Pascal, this won’t be his last time suiting up, as there are already ideas in the works for a new trilogy.

Whilst talking to Fandango she said:

“This is not the last movie that we are going to make with Marvel or the last Spider-Man movie. We are getting ready to make the next Spider-Man movie with Tom Holland and Marvel. We’re thinking of this as three films, and now we’re going to go on to the next three. This is not the last of our MCU movies.”

This is wonderful news for fans who were worried about the companies splitting up, we came very close to seeing Tom Holland exit the MCU when the previous deal ended in 2019. However, both companies were soon able to reach an understanding of the continued use of the character.

Whilst it hasn’t been stated officially, I personally believe it was Sony that pushed Disney to open up the Marvel multiverse, so they could bring in characters from the Venomverse. It will be interesting to see how both companies utilise Peter Parker going forward. But one thing is for sure, Miles Morales will be the future for the franchise.

More from Pascal can be found here.

Spider-Man: No way home is out in the UK on the 15th of December.

Film Review-Eternals

Chloé Zhao has had a short yet prominent career in the thriving world of independent cinema. Her renown grew even more last year when her film “Nomadland” dominated awards season, taking home Academy Awards for both Best Picture and Best Director. However, her latest work, the $200 million instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, titled “Eternals,” is disappointing. While Zhao unquestionably puts in the effort and gives it her all, the movie doesn’t utilises her strengths. The screenplay, co-written by Zhao, Patrick Burleigh, Kaz Firpo, and Ryan Firpo, spans 7000 years, sloppily hopping back and forth across their timeline, resulting in an overly long and overstuffed 157-minute running time. One key problem with “Eternals” is that it is overloaded with characters, and Zhao tries to give each of them some semblance of a backstory. Inevitably all end up feeling shortchanged to various degrees.

The story follows the Eternals, a group of ten good-looking cosmic beings who were sent to Earth aeons ago by Arishem the Judge to defend the planet against a ravenous species known as Deviants. Their centuries-long war ends in 1500 when the last of the Deviants are finally killed. The Eternals then go their separate ways, with each immortal settling and assimilating into different locations around Earth, waiting for Arishem to summon them home. 500 years pass and each Eternal has carved out a life for themselves (more or less). But when a particularly nasty new Deviant suddenly appears in London, it’s clear that it’s time to get the team back together.

The film has a lot of star power portraying the Eternals, and some are much more convincing than others. Gemma Chan is easily the most complete character as Sersi, an eternal with the weird ability to manipulate matter. Richard Madden plays Ikaris, a poor man’s Superman and one-time love interest of Sersi. Angelina Jolie plays Thena, a powerful Wonder Woman-like warrior who wields weapons made of cosmic energy. On the downside, some of the actors feel woefully out of place in most of the scenes they’re in, and some of their characters’ stories feel plucked from another movie.

As the movie predictably brings the former teammates back together, it tries to tell their individual human stories while also building up its cosmic storyline. Surprisingly that leaves little room for superhero action. We do get a couple of set pieces that look fine and check most of the boxes, but there’s little there that we haven’t seen done better elsewhere. Even the big CGI blowout finale is missing the energy and style of the better Marvel films, and it has no stakes.

The movie would have fared better as a Disney+ streaming series. There’s very little here that screams big screen.

There are two post-credit scenes, that will probably be retconned within the next year.

⭐⭐

Episode 261: Kate Herron interview

Martyn is joined by Loki director Kate Herron. The pair discuss her work on the Disney+ show.

The podcast is available from all good podcast services, such as but not limited to Spotify, Amazon Music, PodchaserPlayer FM, Stitcher, and Apple Podcasts.

We also have a Smartlink.

Artwork by Penny Smallshire.

We sound familiar can be found here.

Comedians talking about football can be found here.

Equipment used in the creation of this feature was purchased through a grant from Graeae and The Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

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Deleted scene from Iron Man

Recently, it was announced that Marvel Studios were planning to release never before scene footage, as part of The Infinity Saga boxset. The box set will consist of every MCU film up to Avengers: End Game.

Marvel Studios Big Boss, Kevin Feige has shared one such scene. It’s an unused post-credits scene from 2008’s Iron Man. Nick Fury mentions “Mutants” and radioactive bug bites”.

I imagine this was dropped due to rights issues, at the time 20th century Fox owned X-Men, Daredevil and Fantastic Four. Whilst Sony owned Spider-Man, this was years before the now defunct rights sharing deal. A similar thing happened with Blade, the original last shot saw Michael Morbius standing on top of a building staring down at Blade. This scene was dropped when Sony’s lawyers reminded New Line, that Sony own the character.

Spider-Man reboot rumoured to be called Spider-Man:Homecoming

Tom Holland is about to make his debut as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the upcoming Captain America: Civil War. The character will also star in his own MCU connected, solo movie in 2017, directed by Jon Watts (Cop Car). However; specific information on the reboot remain tightly under wraps at the joint Marvel/Sony compound.

rumoured titles such as; The Spectacular Spider-Man, and Spider-Man: The New Avenger have been doing th rounds since the Sony/Marvel deal was announced.

According to the BBC, Sony Pictures  have registered the domain name ‘SpiderManHomecomingTheMovie.com’. Which seems to suggest that Spider-Man: Homecoming could in fact be the upcoming film reboot. However, that doesn’t guarantee it. Studios will often register multiple domain names, just in case.

Is Miles Moreals in the new Spider-Man movie?

When it was announced that Sony and Marvel would be working together to bring Spider-Man into the MCU. As we know Tom Holland was ultimately cast as Peter Parker, but many fans had hoped Andrew Garfield would return and die heroically as Peter Parker, paving way for Miles Moreales to take over. 

In an interview with Yahoo, the new Spider-Man director Jon Watts was asked if there had been any thoughts about Miles taking over the mantle. What’s interesting is that he hinted that Miles may still be in the film:

“I can’t talk about that, because, you know, that will reveal too much. We’re still writing the story…we haven’t finished all the way through the story yet, so who knows.”

I admit, that isn’t much to go on. But I do suspect that we’ll see Miles pop up at some point. By the time the planned Spider-Man trilogy ends most of the current Marvel actors will be at the end of their contracts and looking to move on. The introduction of Miles Moreales would allow them to refresh the brand without having to completely reboot.

Spider-Man rumour 

It only took three reboots but, Spider-Man will finally be introduced into the MCU with the Russo brothers Captain America: Civil War. 

Since Tom Holland was cast as the web swinger, rumours have been circulating as to exactly how long he has been Spider-Man within the MCU. 

According to Heroic Hollywood Peter Parker has been Spider-Man for a while, before we meet him in Civil War.

“According to sources, the latest rumour is that Peter Parker has been active as Spider-Man for a little over a year during the events of Captain America: Civil War. Just like Batman in Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice, Spider-Man is considered a myth, an urban legend.”
I’m sure Tom Holland will be great in the role, but part of me still wishes Andrew Garfield had been kept on. 

Captain America: Civil War will be released on May 6th, 2016.

THOR Blu Ray review

Origin movies are incredibly difficult to get right, for every Spider-man there’s a Daredevil. Unfortunately Thor is more Matt Murdock, than Peter Parker.

The movie is a bit of a mess, the pacing is way off and they recycle the same gag, every three minutes. I could never escape the feeling that there were a few scenes missing.

The humans believe Thor’s story all too quickly and I would have liked to see more of Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman talking about Life, the universe and everything. Or at the very least convince me that there was something going on between them. I just didn’t believe in their romantic relationship. I believed they were friends, but nothing more. Some great characters were criminally underused, as a Marvel geek I was excited to see them in the movie, but I just got the feeling they were there for merchandising. It could be that their backstory was included in the missing scenes I spoke of earlier.

The cast is great, Anthony Hopkins as Odin, Idris Elba as Heimdall and Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson, all put it great performances. But a special mention must go to Tom Hiddleston, he plays Loki brilliantly. With villains, there is always a danger of over, or underacting. He turns in a great, believable performance.  Now whilst I have issues with the way certain characters are used, that doesn’t mean I thought they were miscast.



There are slight nods and references to other characters in the Marvel universe when Loki’s robot turns up on Earth the S.H.I.E.L.D agents ask “One of Stark’s?”.  This movie handles the future setups better Iron Man 2 did, the references don’t just feel like a checklist to pave the way for future Marvel films.

I’m hoping that Thor will work better as part of an ensemble team, in The Avengers. But, he has yet to win me over. It’s really a telling sign, when the 1:45 minute, the post-credit sequence made me more excited than the whole movie.

Special Features:

  • Commentary by director Kenneth Branagh
  • Marvel One-Shot: The Consultant
  • Featurettes
  • Road to the Avengers
  • Deleted Scenes with optional commentary
  • Teaser Trailer
  • Theatrical Trailer
  • Avengers Animated Trailer

Thor is out now on DVD, Triple Play and Blu Ray