Movie Review Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania

Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania 

Directed by Peyton Reed

Written by Jeff Loveness

Starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Douglas, Jonathan Majors 

Release Date February 17th, 2023 

Published February 15th, 2023 

In the Quantum Realm Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) believed she would live out her days alone and lost. Then, a spaceship crashed in front of her. Inside was a man with no name, though she would eventually know him as Kang (Jonathan Majors). For a time, Janet and this nameless man worked together to try and escape from the Quantum Realm. That partnership ended when Janet found out who Kang really was, an entity, a being, a God, known as Kang The Conqueror. 

Kang once held a mastery over time. His God-like powers allowed him to travel the multiverse where he destroyed entire branch universes in order to consolidate his own power. Trapped in the Quantum Realm after Janet betrayed him, Kang built an empire and kept searching for a means to escape. That chance to escape comes after Janet has managed to escape, with the help of Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), aka Ant-Man. It takes a little time but when Cassie Lang built a machine that could map the Quantum Realm, it opened a portal that sucked in Cassie, her dad Scott, Janet, her husband, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), and Janet's daughter, Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), aka The Wasp. 

Now trapped in the Quantum Realm and separated from each other, the family must find a way to reunite. All while being pursued by Kang who hopes to steal whatever means allowed Janet to escape from the Quantum Realm. That means being, Pym Particles, the creation that allows Ant-Man and The Wasp to shrink or grow in size and take advantage of the strength of ants. Kang believes that this technology could be used to restore the MacGuffin that gave power to the ship that stranded him in the Quantum Realm and allow him to travel to and conquer universes as he had done before he was exiled. 

And that's the plot of Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania. Can Scott Lang overcome the God-Like powers of Kang the Conqueror and keep him from destroying countless universes. It's a solid and relatively simple plot but one that lacks much in terms of depth. Scott Lang's character arc isn't much. He wishes he could go back to before The Snap and be with Cassie as she grows up. Kang, with his ability to manipulate time, might be able to give him that wish. However, though the trailer seems to indicate that Scott would be open to working with Kang, that doesn't happen in the movie. 

At no point is Scott not the Ant-Man we've always known, a slightly gawky devoted dad and practical screw-up. The movie doesn't change him much nor, does it appear that his experiences saving the world alongside the Avengers seem to have changed him much. He's perhaps become overly cautious when it comes to Cassie, urging her not to take risks or do anything that might risk her safety, even if said thing is the right thing to do. That's not really much of an arc but that's about all that we get in Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania. 

In terms of arcs, none of these characters seem to have much growth or change. Janet Van Dyne does open up to her family for the first time since she has been back in her own universe but that's only because of the dangerous circumstances at play and not due to any emotional growth on her part. As for Hank and Hope, they're mostly sidelined here. Hope especially, seems to have less dialogue and screen time than in the previous Ant-Man movies. Michael Douglas has a few moments where he looks cool but he's mostly superfluous to the plot. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Spoiler Alert: Character Arcs and Functionality in Knock at the Cabin

Knock at the Cabin (2023)

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan 

Written by M. Night Shyamalan 

Starring Dave Bautista, Nikki Amuka Bird, Kristin Cui, Rupert Grint, Jonathan Groff, Abby Quinn, Ben Aldridge 

Release Date February 3rd, 2023 

Published February 3rd, 2023 

Knock at the Cabin is a horror thriller about the apocalypse. Four characters, played by Dave Bautista, Abby Quinn, Rupert Grint, and Nikki Amuka Bird, travel to a cabin in Pennsylvania where they hope to avert a worldwide apocalypse. To do this, they must convince a family of three, played by Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge and their daughter played by Kristin Cui, to willing sacrifice one member of their family. The four visitors have had a shared vision of the future and received a vague prophecy related to this specific cabin and whoever lives there. 

In this article we are going to examine the character arcs and how they function in M. Night Shyamalan's nightmare fantasy of the end of the world. To do that, there will be spoilers. If you are wanting to see Knock at the Cabin, you should see the movie first and then come back and engage with this article. 

Leonard - Played by Dave Bautista, over the course of Knock at the Cabin we learn that Leonard is a schoolteacher and that he coaches middle school sports. Leonard is big and imposing but has a gentle quality as he demonstrates upon meeting Wen, the young daughter of Eric and Andrew. As he joins Wen to catch Grasshoppers for a school project, Leonard gently works to make Wen comfortable before he is compelled to reveal why he has come to this mostly empty stretch of Pennsylvania forest. 

Leonard is the de-facto leader of the four people who come to the cabin. It's Leonard who reveals the prophecy and the details of the apocalypse and that each of his fellow visitors will die until Eric and Andrew make a decision about which of them should die to save humanity. And that's pretty much it. Leonard appears wise and Dave Bautista invests him with a particular passion that is very compelling but, he doesn't change much as we see him. The biggest change in Leonard's life happens entirely off-screen. 

By the time that Leonard has arrived at the cabin, he's a devotee of this apocalypse plan and doesn't waver. Perhaps his arc is coming to accept his own fate, dying by his own hand, but again, it's not an arc. Instead of having an arc where he starts at one point of an emotional or physical journey, Leonard is a functional character. Leonard exists to motivate change in Eric and Andrew. I am not saying this as a negative critique, I'm just establishing how he functions in this story. 

Abby - Abby is a line cook and a mother of a son named Charlie. She enjoys cooking and likes making people happy. Like Leonard, the biggest arc of her life happened off screen. Finding Leonard and the rest via a message board and going to Pennsylvania to carry out their role in trying to prevent the apocalypse, happens before we meet Abby. What we see of Abby is that she is manic, anxious, and a little panicked. And that never changes until her character is killed to set off another plague of the apocalypse. Like Leonard, she functions as a motivator for Andrew and Eric. 

Sabrina - Sabrina is a nurse and a supremely kind woman. Though she uses a weapon to break into the cabin in violent fashion, when Eric is injured during the home invasion, Sabrina tends to him and cares for him. She goes out of her way to make Eric comfortable as he has suffered a concussion during the brawl. It's likely just how she was as a nurse, a caring, loving presence. Like her fellow visitors, her arc happened offscreen as she went from a full time nurse with a family to someone who drove 6 hours to be at this place, at this time, to try and stop the apocalypse. Her death doesn't go as planned but she seems prepared to accept it when it comes. 

Redmond - Redmond is the last of our foursome and the only one who gets a scene outside of the main narrative. Redmond is belligerent and agitated but that's explained by the fact that he knows he's the first to die if Andrew and Eric fail to make a choice. It will come about through the arguing back and forth between Eric and Leonard, that Redmond knew Eric and Andrew before coming to the cabin. As Eric recalls, Redmond approached him and Andrew at a bar in Boston and assaulted Eric with a beer bottle after having overheard the two men professing their love to each other. 

Find my full length Spoiler Alert Article at Geeks.Media. 

Spoiler Alert: The Absence of Consequence in Infinity Pool

Infinity Pool (2023)

Directed by Brandon Cronenberg

Written by Brandon Cronenberg

Starring Mia Goth, Alexander Skarsgard, Cleopatra Coleman 

Release Date January 27th, 2023 

Published February 3, 2023 

This article contains spoilers for the ending of the new movie Infinity Pool. I highly recommend you see the film before you read this article. Infinity Pool is a mindbending, genre-defying, exploration of unchecked privilege. Writer-Director Brandon Cronenberg takes influence from his father, David Cronenberg, in crafting eye-catching body horror while using his film to explore themes he finds interesting such as the notion of identity and the unchecked privilege of the uber-rich. The title alone, Infinity Pool, suggests an unending lavish and luxurious privilege reserved only to those who could afford it. 

SPOILERS AHEAD JUMP NOW AND SEE INFINITY POOL... 

The plot of Infinity Pool comes into focus when Alexander Skarsgard's James Foster is arrested for vehicular homicide. The previous night, he'd gone out with his wife, Em, played by Cleopatra Coleman, and a couple they'd just met, Gabi and Alban Bauer, played by Mia Goth and Jalil Lespert. They foursome got drunk and while driving back to their resort, with James behind the wheel, they struck a man crossing the street, killing the man. Gabi then convinces them to leave the scene without reporting the incident, compounding their legal problems the following day. 

James is arrested while his wife and the Bauer's are detained. The investigating detective, played by Thomas Kretschmann tells James that the punishment for his crime is death. The family of the man he killed is allowed to exact their revenge by executing him themselves. But, there is a way out. For a free, the cops will make a complete clone of James, one with all of his features and memories, and that clone will stand-in when James is put to death. The only catch is that James will have to watch his own execution. James agrees and is forever changed by seeing himself be gutted by the oldest son of the man he killed. 

This death sentence is James' initiation into an exclusive club. The Bauers inform James that they've also been through their own execution after an infinity pool that Alban installed at another resort, went to pieces and killed two workers. Since seeing their own execution, the Bauers have built a hedonistic group of fellow Americans who've committed death sentence offenses while staying at this resort. Having seen their own deaths, the group finds that there are really no consequences for their actions and thus they seek to engage in even greater debauchery to achieve an ever more elusive high. 

Em leaves immediately, not remotely interested in James' new friends. Thus, James is left free to indulge in drugs, group sex, and murder, all with no consequences. If the group is caught murdering a local official who ticked them off, they won't die. They can simply pay a fee for another clone and enjoy the incredibly morbid show of watching themselves die again. As you can imagine, this kind of unchecked privilege leads James to his darkest depths. Reaching a nadir, he will try to save himself, but what is he saving himself from? 

The final act of Infinity Pool is basically James becoming a plaything, a toy for Mia Goth's Gabi to play with as she pleases. The game she chooses has James killing one his own clones in a fight to the death. It's a horrific death and since James can never be sure whether he is himself or a clone of his original self, there is an extra kick of desperation, confusion and anger that underscores the fury he lets loose on this other version of himself. 

Find my full length Spoiler Alert Article at Geeks.Media linked here.