ant man
lol
so I know it's been...shit, over a year. I remember when I started my livejournal and kind of figured I would always update it a little bit. Then twitter happened, and any stupid thing I had to say under 140 characters had a new venue, so content here dwindled. So I promised myself to update once a month, just for posterity's sake, but I guess I felt like I wasn't productive or successful enough and felt bad about my own perceived failure and decided to stop. If I had nothing good to say, why say anything? Kind of the same reason I don't let people take pictures of me? idk.
So yes I am due a #lifeupdate but I don't want to do that now. We're in the midst of summer movie 2k15 and I want to talk about Ant Man.
Because Marvel movies are the da Vinci Code and I think I've just cracked the formula. Not for plot or anything, because how complicated is it to understand the hero/villain dichotomy. Ant Man was revelatory because it was the first new movie the MCU has released that's like, a totally new story. Totally new characters, totally new heroes, totally new powers, totally new draconian Marvel contracts for slaves I mean actors.
And I guess there's a lot to go into. The (blank cultural pariah) with a heart of gold thing, the "it's technology because it's 2015 but no actually it's just magic. The REGULATOR. The REGULATOR makes you shrink" thing, the "you're in a suit so none of this obvious trauma will actually affect your body" thing, like there is no law of conservation of energy or whatever, the there-is-such-a-dearth-of-proactive-female-characters thing that I cheered Kate instead of yelling at her to shut up.
why is the only thing Evangeline Lilly allowed to do in anything she appears in be like, "I WANNA COME TOO" NO YOU CAN'T COME B/C YOU ARE GIRL but I guess you can come because I am Good Man and you asked me so nicely and prettily.
One could write a book (and I imagine one eventually will) about just how happy meal formulaic Marvel movies are. But none of these things really struck me with Ant Man.
It was the goddamn lambs.
Bad Guy Corey Stoll (at this point I feel nothing but sympathy for the actors they get to play villains in Marvel movies. You're born, you live, you sneer, you die, and then Marvel is done with you) has already shown that his poor imitation of Pym's shrink technology does nothing but turn organic tissue into boogers, so he works in his lab to fix this problem so his vision of...tiny soldiers? can come to fruition.
okay I'm sorry the more I think of this I'm going to have to take like thirty sidebars: in the beginning, when he was explaining his master plan to his board, and it was like "wow we have this technology to decrease atomic distance AKA break the laws of physics, what practical applications could this possibly be used for..."
I was like "teacher teacher this is great for quantum computing and information storage! Pied Piper's compression algorithm ain't got nothing on Hank Pym"
then Corey Stoll was like "nah girl we gonna shrink people, even though we talk about how it scrambles their brains, because that works better for a comic book movie"
then later when Scott fights Anthony Mackie, Anthony Mackie can still see him because of his Avengers tech
which basically invalidates Corey Stoll's whole "secret soldier" thing UGH WHATEVER
another Marvel cliche: weapons manufacturers who keep forgetting that your technology will never stay sequestered to one side of a conflict
end sidebar.
So Corey Stoll is doing science, and I mean, this is kind of my point. Laboratory science is fascinating, and most of all, it is controlled, you know? Experiments are run in order to test one variable, so everything else is kept constant. If it's not, then you're not sure whether the variable you're testing or some other variable is causing the change you observe.
So the lamb thing happens like this: Kate from LOST is like "what are you doing" when the scientists bring out a lamb. "I thought we were using mice." And he kind of just looks at her, or maybe he says something falsely grandiose like Marvel villains do, I don't remember.
But I remember thinking, "yeah, why are you using lambs?"
The reason scientists in real life use mice to do live experiments is because they're very fecund, they have short generations, and they're cheap to breed and maintain. None of these things are true about lambs. Sheep need pasture, and idk how long it takes for a young sheep to become fertile but it's probably a lot longer than the four months or whatever it takes mice.
So why were they using lambs?
Because it was symbolic. Lambs symbolize innocence. Corey Stoll in the logic of the movie was spending more money just to be more of a dick.
So I mean, I know this doesn't seem like a grand observation or whatever, but the choice gave me a glimpse into the people creating these movies. Smart people, sure. White guys who dress like thirteen year olds, who probably have MFAs, but whose total sum experience with actual laboratory experimentation is what they see in movies. Scientists use mice for experiments for arbitrary reasons, right? And mice are so associated with experimentation that we're going to need to up the ante to really show how much of a dick Corey Stoll is (even though killing innocent mice is still seen as cruel.) What's a more innocent animal than mice? Lambs. Not sheep, mind you. Just baby sheep.
I didn't like Ant Man I guess. It's hard not to like Marvel movies though. They are so fucking aware of every choice they make, and I guess that's my point. How can I dislike a movie starring Paul Rudd, he of unnaturally long youth and charisma? How can I find such an inoffensive, regulated dramacomedic tone offputting? How can I sneer at the cast of supporting ethnic minorities that inject not only levity, but a subconscious sense of teamwork and alliance and consensual marginalization? Don't feel bad, white people! Don't feel bad! They like helping you be the hero!
The laboratory setting is somehow appropriate. There is no real, gritty, natural creativity. There is no true inspiration. These movies are grown in a fucking petri dish, and my primal self yearns to take a bite of something that grew on a tree.
That was Mad Max I guess, and thank God for that.
so I know it's been...shit, over a year. I remember when I started my livejournal and kind of figured I would always update it a little bit. Then twitter happened, and any stupid thing I had to say under 140 characters had a new venue, so content here dwindled. So I promised myself to update once a month, just for posterity's sake, but I guess I felt like I wasn't productive or successful enough and felt bad about my own perceived failure and decided to stop. If I had nothing good to say, why say anything? Kind of the same reason I don't let people take pictures of me? idk.
So yes I am due a #lifeupdate but I don't want to do that now. We're in the midst of summer movie 2k15 and I want to talk about Ant Man.
Because Marvel movies are the da Vinci Code and I think I've just cracked the formula. Not for plot or anything, because how complicated is it to understand the hero/villain dichotomy. Ant Man was revelatory because it was the first new movie the MCU has released that's like, a totally new story. Totally new characters, totally new heroes, totally new powers, totally new draconian Marvel contracts for slaves I mean actors.
And I guess there's a lot to go into. The (blank cultural pariah) with a heart of gold thing, the "it's technology because it's 2015 but no actually it's just magic. The REGULATOR. The REGULATOR makes you shrink" thing, the "you're in a suit so none of this obvious trauma will actually affect your body" thing, like there is no law of conservation of energy or whatever, the there-is-such-a-dearth-of-proactive-female-characters thing that I cheered Kate instead of yelling at her to shut up.
why is the only thing Evangeline Lilly allowed to do in anything she appears in be like, "I WANNA COME TOO" NO YOU CAN'T COME B/C YOU ARE GIRL but I guess you can come because I am Good Man and you asked me so nicely and prettily.
One could write a book (and I imagine one eventually will) about just how happy meal formulaic Marvel movies are. But none of these things really struck me with Ant Man.
It was the goddamn lambs.
Bad Guy Corey Stoll (at this point I feel nothing but sympathy for the actors they get to play villains in Marvel movies. You're born, you live, you sneer, you die, and then Marvel is done with you) has already shown that his poor imitation of Pym's shrink technology does nothing but turn organic tissue into boogers, so he works in his lab to fix this problem so his vision of...tiny soldiers? can come to fruition.
okay I'm sorry the more I think of this I'm going to have to take like thirty sidebars: in the beginning, when he was explaining his master plan to his board, and it was like "wow we have this technology to decrease atomic distance AKA break the laws of physics, what practical applications could this possibly be used for..."
I was like "teacher teacher this is great for quantum computing and information storage! Pied Piper's compression algorithm ain't got nothing on Hank Pym"
then Corey Stoll was like "nah girl we gonna shrink people, even though we talk about how it scrambles their brains, because that works better for a comic book movie"
then later when Scott fights Anthony Mackie, Anthony Mackie can still see him because of his Avengers tech
which basically invalidates Corey Stoll's whole "secret soldier" thing UGH WHATEVER
another Marvel cliche: weapons manufacturers who keep forgetting that your technology will never stay sequestered to one side of a conflict
end sidebar.
So Corey Stoll is doing science, and I mean, this is kind of my point. Laboratory science is fascinating, and most of all, it is controlled, you know? Experiments are run in order to test one variable, so everything else is kept constant. If it's not, then you're not sure whether the variable you're testing or some other variable is causing the change you observe.
So the lamb thing happens like this: Kate from LOST is like "what are you doing" when the scientists bring out a lamb. "I thought we were using mice." And he kind of just looks at her, or maybe he says something falsely grandiose like Marvel villains do, I don't remember.
But I remember thinking, "yeah, why are you using lambs?"
The reason scientists in real life use mice to do live experiments is because they're very fecund, they have short generations, and they're cheap to breed and maintain. None of these things are true about lambs. Sheep need pasture, and idk how long it takes for a young sheep to become fertile but it's probably a lot longer than the four months or whatever it takes mice.
So why were they using lambs?
Because it was symbolic. Lambs symbolize innocence. Corey Stoll in the logic of the movie was spending more money just to be more of a dick.
So I mean, I know this doesn't seem like a grand observation or whatever, but the choice gave me a glimpse into the people creating these movies. Smart people, sure. White guys who dress like thirteen year olds, who probably have MFAs, but whose total sum experience with actual laboratory experimentation is what they see in movies. Scientists use mice for experiments for arbitrary reasons, right? And mice are so associated with experimentation that we're going to need to up the ante to really show how much of a dick Corey Stoll is (even though killing innocent mice is still seen as cruel.) What's a more innocent animal than mice? Lambs. Not sheep, mind you. Just baby sheep.
I didn't like Ant Man I guess. It's hard not to like Marvel movies though. They are so fucking aware of every choice they make, and I guess that's my point. How can I dislike a movie starring Paul Rudd, he of unnaturally long youth and charisma? How can I find such an inoffensive, regulated dramacomedic tone offputting? How can I sneer at the cast of supporting ethnic minorities that inject not only levity, but a subconscious sense of teamwork and alliance and consensual marginalization? Don't feel bad, white people! Don't feel bad! They like helping you be the hero!
The laboratory setting is somehow appropriate. There is no real, gritty, natural creativity. There is no true inspiration. These movies are grown in a fucking petri dish, and my primal self yearns to take a bite of something that grew on a tree.
That was Mad Max I guess, and thank God for that.