Creed III (2023)

Director: Michael B. Jordan

Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Tessa Thompson, Jonathan Majors, Phylicia Rashad

Have I Seen it Before: No…

Did I Like It: The prospect of a Rocky movie without Sylvester Stallone is one I shouldn’t be in favor of, right? It’s like a Batman movie in the 90s without Michael Keaton, a James Bond movie without Sean Connery, or a Scream movie without Neve Campbell.

All right, I heard it.

It’s interesting that this film is released in the same month as Scream VI, as this film far more effectively move on from the massive shadow of its iconic central character and performance. That’s probably creditable to Creed II (2018), which I’ve spent the last few years in my mind as a serviceable but vastly inferior sequel to the first Creed (2015), but gave plenty of satisfying conclusion to Balboa’s story, to the point where we may not need to see him again*.

It also helps that both of those films helped establish Michael B. Jordan as an undeniable movie star, and Adonis Creed as a character we want to root for as much as for as his predecessors.

Jordan also acquits himself well as a director. The notion of directing a trilogy capper is daunting enough (with or without the full cast), but directing the ninth in a longer running series has to be an even taller order. What more can be done with this format? While the proceedings do run parallel with Rocky III (1982), Jordan adds an energy to the matches that make the punches feel different (he’s made no secret of Anime influences on the editing and staging, which is certainly something Stallone or John G. Avildsen would have tried). Does all of this make those fights less suspenseful than they had been in the past. I’m going to land on “no”, the fact that there is anything new here is something of a small miracle. Believing that things won’t work out for the main character is probably too much to hope for nine films later.

*A reaction I also had to Rocky Balboa (2006), but what the hell do I know?

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

Director: Peyton Reed

Cast: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors, Michelle Pfeiffer

Have I Seen it Before: Na.

Did I Like It: As a reframed high-pulp adventure with its protagonist and beating heart being a gender-swapped Obi-Wan Kenobi played by Michelle Pfeiffer, this third Ant-Man and thirty-first MCU film is exactly what I could want from two hours worth of diversion.

Sadly, though, this nearly perfect pitch for a movie only makes up at best half of the runtime presented. Even in those scenes where Pfeiffer reigns supreme, I don’t think I’ve yet to see a star more bored with the movie around him than Michael Douglas here. It’s to his credit that I couldn’t help but share in his boredom. Pfeiffer is game, but every utterance and gesture from Douglas screams “contractual obligation.”

Elsewhere, things don’t fare any better. Paul Rudd has never—even from his first appearance in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)—been anything other than a perfectly pleasant screen presence, and he has always brought the right amount of levity to Ant-Man. This is not a typical case of miscasting. But Ant-Man does feel like the wrong character to usher in this new era of Marvel movies. He is forced to look earnest as Kang (Majors) foreshadows things to come and kicks the shit out of him (anyone else really looking forward to Creed III, regardless of whether or not a Stallone-less Rocky movie feels like a shaky idea?). There are very few jokes. Certainly fewer than either of the two previous Ant-Man films. Luis is nowhere to be found. The filmmakers have explained that he didn’t fit into the story, and they are probably right. I think that says more about how much, again, this is the wrong story for Ant-Man.

But other films in the series have been weighed down by the burden of having to set up the larger story of that phase. Iron Man 2 (2010) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) immediately come to mind. And yet, here, I am underwhelmed. I’ve missed most of the movies released post-Avengers: Endgame (2019). I honestly wouldn’t have made a point to see this film if I didn’t have an oil change running and a couple of hours to kill. I even left the theater before any tag scene started*. These films aren’t surprisingly delightful anymore. Marvel will somehow have to get back that feeling if they are going to keep their dominance over the multiplexes.

*I had to pee. I checked wikipedia to see what the tag scenes were, and were more than fine missing them.