Quarantine Control #164: Ufgood Dynamite Mania

Quarantine Control still exists, but let’s circle back to a topic touched upon in a previous post. Between the constant stream of violence, culture wars, the 2024 presidential campaign heating up, and potential economic calamity, there’s understandable desire to quarantine from all this mess in the so-called greatest country in the world. It’s also not as if COVID-19 is truly defeated, and there’s every chance that it could somehow return without a moment’s notice in a time when testing and vaccines will be harder to access for the poor.

Sorry, these are depressing. Perhaps future ledes might be more optimistic, but no guarantees shall be made.

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Geoffrey Barnes

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania (2023)
Source: Disney Plus
Episodes: 1 movie

It was easy to see the thought process behind what led to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania’s existence, even if it wasn’t entirely logical. A vocal too-online audience that never hesitates to provide takes on everything felt previous Ant-Man movies were some of the least impressive works among the Marvel Cinematic Universe, thanks to how low-stakes they were. Both movies occurred during a time when the looming threat of Thanos existed, but those elements barely factored into the movies themselves. The stories were fitting for the Ant-Man character as he solely existed in the MCU, but the audience that considers everything which doesn’t immediately deal with the “main” overarching story to be “filler” will never shut up.

These people are wrong and foolish, and Marvel shouldn’t have listened to them. When they do, we end up with content like Quantamania.

The movie’s opening moments can delude a viewer who didn’t watch any media beforehand into thinking this will be another conventional Ant-Man tale, albeit with a good portion of San Francisco recognizing Ant-Man/Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) from his heroic exploits in Avengers: Endgame. The family drama emerges through how Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton — the third actress playing this role) gets in trouble with the law, regardless of how justifiable her actions are. Her eventual scientific experiments unfortunately lead to the whole family, including Hope van Dyne/Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), Janet van Dyne/former Wasp (Michelle Pfeiffer), and Hank Pym/former Ant-Man (Michael Douglas) being sucked into the Quantum Realm. This is the place in which most of the movie occurs, which helps set the stage for the remainder of the MCU’s fifth Phase.

Janet van Dyne knows the Quantum Realm far more than the others, after being trapped for decades before being freed in Ant-Man and the Wasp. She knows her way around and knows what to expect, which serves as a nice way to give Pfeiffer a much larger role compared to previous films, something she handles quite well considering her talents. It’s also because she knows Kang (Jonathan Majors), who makes his first starring role in this film after being introduced in the finale of Loki’s first season. The increased focus on Janet, family drama with Scott and Cassie, and the need to feature a plethora of characters from the Quantum Realm beyond Kang and M.O.D.O.K. results in Hope and Hank being demoted in terms of importance. But that wasn’t a bad thing. It is, in fact, very funny that old Wasp gets more focus than the current one, though it’s likely not due to the latter’s actress being an anti-vaxx freak.

The actual bad thing comes through how evident it was that an Ant-Man movie was a downright bizarre choice to set the stage for the next villain. The increased level of seriousness regarding Kang’s threats clashes with both the lighter tones from the previous Ant-Man films and the humor this particular movie attempts. Though Ant-Man and Kang face each other a number of times, the former feels out of his depth considering the threat posed by the latter and who Scott Lang is. Those previous films didn’t happen in a bubble, thus leading to the feeling of peculiarity pervading throughout Quantamania.

M.O.D.O.K., incidentally, was a far more fitting villain for Ant-Man. I had a good laugh at his design when it was first revealed, but it was always going to be difficult to render him in live-action form without stepping into the Uncanny Valley. But he made a solid impact, and the film would have been improved overall if he was the sole villain. It would have also been improved considering what Kang’s actor has allegedly been up to despite Majors’ solid performance, but he’ll make for an easy recast considering the Multiverse’s existence should the need arise.

It similarly does Quantamainia no favors when it almost entirely occurs within the Quantum Realm, which required for nearly the entire movie to be green screened. That’s fine conceptually, but not when the result is a garish-looking realm with barely-okay CG effects surrounding the characters, and creatures made entirely of CG that perpetually surround those like Jentorra (Katy M. O’Brian) — who I’m hoping to see more of in the MCU’s future. There is not a better argument for giving VFX artists increased time and pay to ensure that their work is as good as it can be, something Marvel Studios has struggled mightily with during the last year. Whether producer Victoria Alonso’s dismissal will truly lead to fixes remains to be seen.

I had a fun-enough time watching Quantamania while it was on, but this was the kind of movie where I realized that the result was thoroughly underwhelming as the credits were rolling, before the usual post-credits scene every MCU work includes. It’s fortunate that Quantamania wasn’t truly the start of the MCU’s downfall, given the critical and commercial success of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. But it’s my hope that this movie should teach the production team at Marvel not to listen to every piece of internet criticism that comes their way, alongside teaching them that VFX artists matter.

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Angela Moseley

Black Dynamite (2009)
Source: Blu-ray
Episodes: 1 movie

For the longest time I’ve known about the Black Dynamite movie. My actual introduction to the franchise was the animated TV show on Adult Swim. As a birthday present, I received the movie on blu-ray along with the first season of said TV show. Everything I know about Black Dynamite I learned from watching the show. Seeing the live-action movie was quite the experience. Slightly different, but very familiar seeing how the actors from the movie reprised their roles as voice actors for the animated series. Anyway, I’m here to talk about the movie and not the animated series.

Black Dynamite (Michael Jai White) is a former army veteran, former CIA agent, a martial artist, and militant member of the Black Power movement. He learns that his younger brother Jimmy (Baron Vaughn) was murdered during a drug deal. (The twist being Jimmy tried to infiltrate the drug ring, but was discovered.) Fearing the lengths Black Dynamite might go to for revenge, the CIA sends an agent named O’Leary (Kevin Chapman) who served with Black Dynamite in Vietnam to beg him to stand down. This plan is unsuccessful, so he’s reinstated to the CIA instead.

With his literal license to kill restored, Black Dynamite quickly taps into his Black Power movement connections to find his brother’s killer. It’s not long before he’s kicking down the doors of drug dealers, mob bosses, and would be assassins to quickly make black neighborhoods safer. During a particularly big take down operation, Black Dynamite learns the drug-dealing goes way beyond the street gangs and all the way up to the US government. Worse, the government has plans to disrupt the black community way beyond dealing drugs.

Black Dynamite is a brilliant parody of blaxploitation movies from the 1970s. Michael Jai White along with Byron Minns, and Scott Sanders wrote the screenplay, while the movie itself was directed by Sanders. The trailer for the movie was shot first in order to raise funds to film the movie. The budget for the movie was tight, and the entire film was shot over a period of twenty days. Despite the limitations, the movie managed to snag a fairly respectable cast of stars, including big names like Arsenio Hall.

This comedy is loving recreation of the 1970s. In terms of visuals, everything has a grainy, slightly-washed out, old school look. The budget for Black Dynamite was obviously limited, and small mistakes are quite visible. For example, a boom mic drifts into one shot and the actors pause to acknowledge it for a moment. In a fight sequence another actor is actually slapped, he stops to swear in annoyance before a new take is roughly spliced into the sequence. Given this is a satire comedy, it works well. So much in fact, I can’t tell if it was intentional and just left in for amusement or if they actually didn’t have time to reshoot and reedit certain scenes.

The world of Black Dynamite is unforgiving, as most disputes are settled with violence and kindness is in short supply. The plot starts off grounded, but quickly moves into absurd territory. The overall message, as ridiculous as it is on the surface, is based on reality when it comes to awful government programs. Mysteries are figured out with wild leaps of logic that just work. For the most part, you’re just here to watch Black Dynamite kick ass and take names.

Speaking of Black Dynamite, he’s a stoic asshole with a heart of gold. Your typical man of action that beats or kills those who would hurt family, friends, or community without a second thought. At the same time, he’s incredibly handsome, muscular, and has no qualms his sexual prowess. In fact, the movie’s first shot of him is as he’s finished up a romp, with not just one, but four women– which is also played for laughs. His character isn’t particularly deep and is fitting for the time period depicted. Black Dynamite fights and fucks. The twist is him being an extremely capable member of the Black Power movement. He will challenge anyone who dares to bring harm to the black community– this ranges from drug-dealing pimps all the way up the President of the United States.

Black Dynamite can feel cheap, but this movie was made with a lot of love and appreciation for the genres that inspired it. If you’re a fan of movies from the 1970s, love blaxploitation films, or good parody, I can recommend this movie to you. If you’ve seen the animated TV show and liked it, this movie is also an easy recommendation.

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Joseph Daniels

This week, for Quarantine Control, I watched a bunch of stuff on Disney+, although as you’ll see, rabbits didn’t factor into anything.  You’ll probably understand why I’ve skipped them this week.

Stargirl (2020)
Source: Disney+

Actually, this is disappearing tomorrow, so there’s no real point to talk about it.  It’s cute, it’s sweet… and apparently Disney thinks it’s disposable.

Hollywood Stargirl (2022)
Source: Disney+

This is also disappearing tomorrow down the memory hole.  Will Disney ever release this on home media?  Will they ever put it back on their service or shop it around to other services?  I doubt it.  It was sweet, maybe a little less cute than the first one, and I would love to analyze why the first felt better than the second, but since they’re not going to be available on Disney+ anymore, I’ll just be wasting my time.

Willow (2022)
Source: Disney+
Episodes: 8

It’s amazing how quickly Disney turned on Willow.  They promoted it with trailers and it felt like they were going to offer the proper continuation that never actually materialized more than three decades ago when the film was released.  Then it landed, did decently well, but got cancelled a few months later.  And now, after less than a year of being available to stream, they’re deleting it.  The original movie is still going to be available, but the TV series is being hoarded like a dragon stealing wealth.  Apparently a second season is on hiatus, despite the cancellation, but with the Disney+ and Hulu purge claiming this as one of its victims, who knows if that second season is going to happen.

It’s a curious timing, a purge like this happening not long after the latest Hollywood writer’s strike began, especially given the main focus of the strike is on the residuals being paid to writers from streaming media.  With a lot of the original programming that Disney+ made being yanked from the service – and, it should note, none of the legacy stuff that was originally released on actual television or in the movie theatre years ago – it’s actually a good sign to me that Disney believes the writers are going to have their demands met.  But, of course, they’re not going to get paid if the content isn’t available, because any increased percentage of zero is still zero.

Will Netflix purge their original programming?  At this point, I don’t know.  They could believe the writer’s strike won’t be successful, they could be waiting to see what happens.  I don’t dare think that they might be considering doing right by their writers and increasing their pay, because they’ve been downright money grubbing lately.  Here in Canada, they started cracking down on account sharing recently, making it harder for people to share their account with family who might not live in the same house.

With many wealthy entertainment industries pleading poverty lately, it calls to question just where all the money is going.  Even as far back as a decade and a half ago, the video game industry started complaining about how much money they required to make a game, but they also kept bragging about record profits every year, so we all knew it was bullshit.  The biggest issue is how much the top executives have been getting paid.  They could easily chop their salaries in half and still live well, and the money could go back into the video game development process.  We also don’t need realistic graphics all the damn time.  Sure, Final Fantasy XVI is going to look great, but so does Arietta of Spirits, which used sprite graphics in 2021.  This is a game available on and made for modern consoles, but which looks like something I would expect to see on a Super Nintendo.  Between that and games which use a more stylized look like The First Tree, I would suggest that larger game companies don’t have to pour a ton of money into making their games look high definition as long as their games still look good.  Blacksmith of the Sand Kingdom is a good game.  Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark is a good game.  Even older games like Okami look and play great on modern consoles.  None of these games broke the bank to develop top of the line graphics, but all of them still look amazing.

I suppose unless we get an itemized budget publicly released, we won’t ever know where all of our money goes.  I’d love to see where Netflix and Disney spends our subscription money, and I’d love to know how Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft and Square Enix budget their lavish productions.  Of course, they can’t tell us, because if they do, we’ll know just how badly they mismanage what they do have.

The Disney+ and Hulu purge exposes the lie that digital distribution is the wave of the future.  This is one of the main reasons why I’ve refused to let go of physical media.  If I can purchase a physical copy of a game or a digital copy, I’m buying the physical copy.  They’re the same price anyway, and if I’m going to be charged ninety Canadian Dollars for Final Fantasy XVI next month, I’m damn well getting the most I possibly can for that cash, and that means receiving a disc.

Oh, hang on, before I wrap this up, Geoff’s giving me a look. [Editor’s Note: That’s true!] I should probably include an image with this so that he doesn’t have to go looking for one.  Let’s see… what do I have on my hard drive…

There, that should suffice.

This Week’s Short Film
Sinking (2023)

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It’s a rough time in the world for humanity, as it always appears to be outside the people who are only getting richer at the top. But the lede was depressing enough, so hopefully you can have a good week on a personal level.