Can three comedians write a winning rom com screenplay? And Let's Make a rom Com? From CBC Podcasts. Ryan Beale, Mattie Kelly, and Mark Schavez are busy in their writer's room. All Maddie has ever wanted is to write rom com and with Mark and Ryan and so the three comedians will explore what makes a romantic comedy or romantic comedy, the cultural impact of rom comms, and whether three people with very different lived experiences can write a fresh, contemporary,
and funny love story. Listen to Let's Make a rom Com everywhere you get your podcasts. This podcast contase spoilers for Aunt Man and the Wasp, Quantumnia, What is this a realm for ants? Hello, my name is Jason.
Kntepkion and I'm Raisy Night and welcome to x ray Vision, the Crooked Media podcasts where we dive deep all the way down to sub atomic size to the quantum realms, talk about your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture.
In this episode, we are going to be riding on the back of giant ants to excavate.
The giant sub atomic air.
They're giant in the sub atomic realm. But if you couldn't see them if they were in real life. Yeah, but we will be on them and we will be riding them into the airlock where we will talk about Amman and the West Quantumania with spoiler free reaction first and then a lot of spoilers. So if you haven't seen it, go see it in ned doubt a theory from listen to Grant about the location of he who
remains leir. This is very good. I've actually gone a lot of dms with people who think about this, so Grant, I'm excited to hear it. And if you want to jump around, check the show notes for timestamps. Sorry if they're a little bit off. We're dealing with some ad insert issues, but we are trying our best.
All right. Coming up next to your lock, we're stepping out of the air lock and into the quantum realm for ant Man and the Wasp quantum Mania. First up, our non spoiler reaction.
It's fun.
It's a very fun movie.
It's like a wild sci fi romp through the quantum realm. And just the unbelievable performance from Jonathan Mage's like it will blow you away.
I mean, that's really for me. The headline is if there is an actor other than Angela Bassett who could potentially one day be nominated for an Oscar off of a Marvel movie. I think it's Jonathan No, me too. He's the most watchable person that's ever been in there.
It blows your mind and it is this emotionally driven, intense, scary kind. I mean, look, we know you know this. He's carrying the Conqueror. You've heard him talk about it. This is not a heroic portrayal. But I will tell you the whole way through the movie, I was just rooting for He is so human and incredible and it's
just a lot of fun. It's a tonal shift from the other anti Man movies, but you still get pops of that humor and that kind of low stakes and if you love poppy sci fi, weird creatures, Star Wars, Cantina, all that kind of good stuff, you're gonna love it.
Yes and again, Kang Kan Kang Kan Kang Kang. He has none of the major just has an ability to make you watch him when he's delivering anyone doing anything, and it gives his portrayal of Kang a real layer of like menace, because you there's there's points in this film where you're like, I know he's the bad guy, but I want to believe everything he said.
Yeah, you want to believe him because he just puts himself across in such a sincere, interesting way. But the movie's not afraid of showing you who Kang really is, or who this iteration of Kang really is. His chemistry with Michelle Pfeiffer is incredible. She's so great as Janet. We get more Granet hair, which was something that we'd both wanted. Really fun movie for Hank Pim. If you were listening to our podcast last week and you were like, we haven't got enough Hank in that Map movies, guess
what this is. You're gonna be You're gonna be charmed. You're gonna get so much Hank.
That is our quick reaction non spoiler reaction to ant Man in the Lost Pontumania Up next.
Spoilers.
The spoilers, folks. The spoiler phil recap, So go no further if you have not watched the film Okay and Men in the Lost Quantumenian directed by Peyton Reed, written by Jeff Lovenes, Paul Rudd as our friend Scott Lang of Angeline Lily as back as the Wasp, Jonathan Major's King the Conqueror, Michelle Pfeiffer's back as Janet Vandyne, Michael Douglas, Hank Pim, and Catherine Newton as our third and final Cassie Lang. Mm hmmm, let's jump into our recap. So
we opened in the quantum realm. This is a flashback to the time when Janet was trapped. Time works differently down there, so we have no idea how long she's been there or what is happening. But she sees a
ship enter the realm and crash. She goes over to investigate and is attacked by some sort of alien creature that then splits into two alien creatures that then splits into four, and she takes them out, but one gets the drop on her and it's blasted off of her who saved her life, but Kang and he's like, where the hell are we? We go back to the world, the above world, where Scott Line has basically been enjoying his life as a celebrity superhero who saved the world.
And not only did he save the world, he wrote a book about it, and he's happy to talk about it. Anywhere and everywhere that people want to thank him and talk about it. We see him walking down the street in San Francisco. Everybody's like, Scott, Oh my god, Scott, it's great. He walks into his favorite coffee shop where he gets stuff for free. He goes to bask and Robbins that were he was once fired, but now is treated.
As employee of the Century.
Employee of the century. People absolutely love him. We learn that Scott's daughter, Cassie is It's not that she's not doing great, it's more that she has very very strong ideals about helping people who are who have been wronged and maybe who don't have the power to help themselves, and this has led to her being arrested, so Scott
and Hope have to go bail her out. And we also learned that Cassie has a little bit has a suit of her own, and she's been using it, probably irresponsibly because she's a kid.
Yes, she shrunk a car at a protest and Scott's less than happy with it. Hope seems like vaguely proud, but you can tell Cassie's mad that Scott is no longer an active here, right, Yeah.
Why aren't you doing more heroic shit the world needs.
She's like, you literally saved the world, but that doesn't mean that there's nothing else left to do. She was at a protest to stop them sweeping homeless encampments. She is really the person here who's going to kind of have this moral arc to go on as the film goes forward.
They have a family dinner, Cassie and Hank dropped the pretty big news that they've been building a device that will allow communication in the form of mapping.
Yeah, of the quantum realm.
Janet is like, you got to shut it down? Why, Janet, Well, I don't want to talk about it. Here's where I want to stop and say, Janet, you gotta just come clean about some stuff that happened in the Utu realm.
Definitely she needed to be more honest to them, but I also feel like the whole family is just constantly fucking around with the cortum room. And she's like, I was stuck there for thirty years. It was very traumatic, Like give me a break. And they're like, well, if we just built this device that would take us to the quantum room in all basement without you knowing, And she's like, I'd rather you didn't do that.
Well, Janet tells them to shut it down, but it's way too late and they're all sucked into the device and they fall into the Quanta room. Hank, Janet, and Hope are separated from Scott and Cassie, and Janet leads the Pims to an old friend named Crylar played by Bill Murray, who apparently was once a freedom fighter in what we are soon to learn is this land that is in the midst of trying to throw off the
yoke of a dictator. Well, this guy, Krylar, who used to fight alongside Janet, has sold out and now he's like a rich guy. They have a meeting with him about trying to reunite with Scott and Cassie, and he says, yeah, I know who they are, where they are, but unfortunately
I have to hand you over to King. But before that can happen, the trio escape and Hope through an embigoting Pim particle disc at the cocktail squid like creature that was a delicacy that you drink in very horrific fashion, makes it grow into a large size squid that then takes revenge on Krylar Meanwhile, over at Cassie and Scott, they let find themselves in the midst of a group of freedom fighters, including a guy named quaz Ye played by William Jackson Harper who can read minds.
Spoiler a lot friends, wasn't Quasi? I know a lot of fans hoping it was. It Also was wasn't Nathaniel Richards who I was hoping it was? But it was William Jackson Hopper And he can read minds and he's sick of it. He's absolutely sick of it. Genturrah, Yes, who we spoke about last week, who is the niece of Hulk's love Interesting, that's right.
Jurella played by Katie m O'Brien and is basically ripped straight from the pages of Yeah and.
Just like a total warrior badass, like she will fight through anything and she's not having any of kang shit.
And Veb played by David Desmalchin. And so the freedom fighters are kind of not very trustful of Cassie and Scott.
Yeah, they think they're spies. They're like, why would you just turn up here? Who are you? Also, interestingly, they know nothing about the world above, They don't know about us.
They don't know what exists.
They don't know anything outside of this kind of This is the subterraneum, quantum realm, underneath the quantum realm that we have seen before.
It's a fully realized other universe, and Scott's trying to make them underhand. We come from this other realm where we're all lot bigger.
Him and Cassie's really funny like talking each other with Banta.
We're bigger, Like they're telling the truth, but I have no idea.
He's like, they know nothing.
Meanwhile, Kang has sent his ultimate killing machine, I guess, a machine.
Only designed killing mechanize design killing.
Modov no modoc, and Modoc attacks the freedom Fighter camp and absolutely raises it to the ground.
Using his cosmic beam, his cosmic blade.
He's got like the lasers. He's got these laser saw blades and the whole thing. Modoc, it turns out, is our good friend Darren Cross, the former CEO of PIM Technologies. He took over from Hank Pim and kind of usurped his power and was attempting to duplicate his technology, which he was going to sell, you know, to various countries that wanted to weaponize this technology. But then of course he was defeated and we thought sucked into some kind
of like subatomic realm to disappear forever. But clearly he survived, but with his head all huge in his little baby arm.
And I will say this is when we were right, because we did theorize when they revealed that it was Corey Stall and Darren Cross that what happened was he'd got sucked in and when ended up in the quantum realm, he essentially was just left with his head being bigger.
Than everything else.
That was right.
And we also were suggesting last week that perhaps instead of Aim being the ones who would control and create him and kind of turn him into Modoc, it was Kang and that was also right. And uh, what I did not see coming is that you get to see like a little Modoc butt shot.
That was so fun.
That was like I was, I was a fan. He's got a very tall but yeah, he has it's a it's a little Modoc butt. When he's getting pulled out and put into his.
Chair, it's like it's like very narrow but tall.
Very good at Tom Irish like a egg with a.
Cassie and Scott are captured the rebels are routed and Cassie and Scott are taken to meet King over at Janet and Hank and Hopeland. Janet is finally like, Okay, here's what happened. There's this guy Kang. He landed. I helped him out. His ship was broken down. It needed gas. I helped him get gas for his ship.
Yeah, and that gas was this swirling bands of light that many people, including myself, thought could be the ten rings, could be something that fast Us built, But in this case they were almost like taken from a clock, and they are the core that pushes Kang's time chair through multi verses, and Janet was able to help him, which I feel like is going to come into play in the future, like you're gonna have to have a Janet on the Avengers who knows how to make a time chair because she knows.
But it's so right when the ship is, the chair is gassed all the way up and they are like friends, yaks connected, They're going home. We're going home.
This is and you don't know how long it is.
You're going back to the second left yea.
And the crazy thing is you don't know Janet said, it was ages this could have been most of her time in the quantum room. This is someone she spent so much time with. She told him about Hope, they shared their lives. They had this deep connection. This is a ship that I now ship, and I.
Mean that let's talk about a so so. Part of the reason apparently the genet didn't want to talk about the Corner Room was won the war. I guess it was very traumatic. Loss of people died, okay, and she she blamed herself. Yeah, but you could mention that. The second thing more understandable is she fucked Crylar.
I'm sorry, that is unbelievable.
When did she fuck Krylar?
No, I do not believe she was. She admitted she I don't know. She was like, she was like, sorry, Hank, a woman has needs. I'm like, this is missgery.
You're getting it from Kryler.
It would have been Kang.
I say that that That to me is like chemistry.
That's why that's why you keep it a secret, right because you literally had sex with like an hand war lord but.
Re arranged my spine. Yeah, like literally, I want to know what happened. You want to know why I don't want to talk about the Corner room because King rearranged the alignment.
Of we had time sex and it was you could never even compare. It was sex through the multivise.
And the truth is he's seen every kind of sexual technique throughout.
Every time he's seen it.
I'm like, and the.
True Day's right, every Cosmo twenty text that will blow his mind. He's done it all.
Every commisation you can't possibly and hang measure up.
And the thing is like the chemistry is actually there, Like, but I agree between Michelle and Bill Murray.
Is like, just admit you, Yeah, it was King. That's my head kind of do not say anything. It doesn't make any And also like the tender moments that they shed together fixing, you know, doing like sexy ship and then talking about their former lives drinking.
There's that one scene where there's like they're and they're sweating, sitting right next to each other and like passing a steve of water back and what are you so out of breath?
We doing We've been doing, guys, going on.
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Janet helps can guess up the chair, and then she touches the chair and because the chair is so linked with Kang's mind, he can there's no controls, He controls it with his thoughts. She is able to touch his thoughts, and she then realizes, oh my god, Kang is a multi dimensional genocidal warlord who has wiped out trillions upon trillions of life forms, entire timelines destroyed because of this guy kan Uh, and she can't. It's such a stunning
reveal that she can't hide it. Like he looks at her and he knows immediately.
And yeah, he's like, oh you saw it, Janet, Like sorry, Janet, but he offers that he says to that, and this is like a great character moment for Janet because he basically says to He's like, you can just forget about it. He's like, I.
Can't worry about it.
He's like, not even that I can make you forget that you even know. He's like, you can just him. You will never have left and you will not know anything about the terrible things that I did. Yeah, it's it's really wild stuff. I'm one of the best, my favorite, one of my favorite Jonathan Mage's moments in a movie that's absolutely full of them. Janet. She's kind of quizzing him and she says to him, like, what are you gonna do when you get out of here? I'm sure she wants him to say, like, I'll.
Make a man destroy your verse.
And he looks at the camera and they do a full face close up of Jonathan Magor's and he goes win and she's like, Nope.
I do like this kind of reading of Kang that he's just like he's in it. You know, he's in it for the thrill of competition. Yeah, he's like the Michael Jordan of Destroyers exactly.
He's pissed off at his fucking fellow Kangs, and he's like, no, I must succeed.
It has to be me I and so I. You know, you could see Janet being like, well, if I invite you back to my world, you're gonna fight everybody, right like you're gonna do.
He's like, not your world.
Let me ask you a moral question. So, Kang, you meet up Kan in the quantum realm, things may or may not happen. And then he's like, I'll deliver you back to your world, and he insists, then I'm not gonna kill your universe, but I will kill other universes. Do you go back?
Look morally Morally the answer is no. Morally the answer is no, but it is I'm also not Janet. Yeah, I'm gonna be really with you. This is Jonathan Major's king. I'll be like, I'll come say in that time. Chan. It's like when it's like when Shirry was like, oh no, no more, I can't I can down the world.
And I'm like why, Like they literally destroyed your whole family, Like this is a this is a gift, So yes.
Morally, don't don't let him do it. And obviously you'd have to live with that your whole rest of your life. It would be terrible, So it's bad times.
So Jenna is like, Okay, I can't consign my universe to UH, to the depredations of King the conquer, So therefore I am going to take the energy core that I help guess up and I'm gonna steal it from him, and Ken gives Chase, but then Janet hits it with the UH the PIM and bigger particles in turns in to this huge kind of swirling vortex of energy and
time dilation and everything, and now Kang is trapped. And Kang, now that he's trapped, decides well, I might as well just conquer the quantum realm and then goes about doing.
Builds this unbelievable empire. Like the implication is that really what we see as the quantum realm now is mostly Kang Kang doing. There was people who lived there, and there are communities, but Kang is the one who's made it this kind of bustling, technocratic like kind of space. Obviously through nightmarish dictatorship. There's lots of like fascistic you know cops. Yeah, he made cops who are like, I guess, robot cops, you know, some some kind of blue faced cops.
So yeah, he's not he's not doing very nice things there, Old Kang.
Over at Kang's headquarters, Kang meets Scott and Cassie, who are in prison. Scott tries to bluff and is like, you fucked up this time. I'm an Avenger Avenger the other Avengers we're coming. I don't want to flash my badge, but that's what's going on. And Kang's like, oh, I've killed the Avengers. Yeah really, I.
Can't killed you before.
I can't even count the amount of times I've killed the Avengers. Are you four? And Scott has a funny joke about you know, people.
They confuse, they confuse. It's up types. So Kang.
Uh says to Scott, hey, you have a you have a solution. To my problem, which is my big end energy core for my ship. You can shrink it down, and I would like you to help me shrink it down. I'd like you to go in there shrink it down for me. And if you'll do that, I will let you and your daughter live and you can go leave and do whatever. But if you don't do it, I'm
going to kill her. And then to kind of, you know, show how powerful he is, he just makes a couple of gestures with his very very futuristic and extremely powerful power suit.
Kang cruisiotus cuss is Cassie like she's like up and she's she's.
In a little and he's like bending her arm back and Scott is like, fine, I'll fucking do it, and he goes off and he dives into the energy huge energy core.
Yeah, and this is very interesting. I will stop here because this is just for people who find this kind. This is one of those things that we always talk about as fans. This is very different from what they showed us in the trailer. In the trailer, they kind of cut the dialogue to make it seem like Scott was going to make a deal with Kang to get back the time that he wanted from Cassie, like that he'd missed with Cassie. But I'm glad that that wasn't
the route they went. I think that was a bit of a red herring because Scott would never do that. But what happens is Cassie is there, so he knows he'll do anything to save his daughter, and that kind of pits him against what Hank and Hope and Janet are trying to do, which is get the core and take it away so can can't have it.
So in the Core, Scott starts splitting off into all the countless versions of himself from all the other timelines. There's they mostly all look like him, but then there's a basket Robin Scott. I guess the Scott that never wake Robins. Yeah, and Scott is you know that they all form kind of like an ant body structure, like an ant tower that Scott, you know Cassie.
They all joining that they want is to save Cassie. Before that they were all freaking out. Every single version of him is like a different possibility of what could happen. But the one thing that they all share is they all want to save Cassie.
So he's climbing towards the core, but he can't quite get to it. And just then Hope, Hank, and Janet arrive in Krylar stolen ship and Pope dives into the core and she is able to uh together with Scott, help him shrink down the core back to normal size.
Modoch then, while this is all going on, attacks Hank in the ship and is eager to take revenge against Hank, his former mentor, who he now hates because he's an embiganed head with little baby legs and little baby arms sitting in a chair and I guess just like pooping
himself all the time. Later, Hank tells Scott that he was saved by ants and that yes, these are his ants from his lab when everything in the lab was sucked into the Qualm realm along with Hank, Hope, Scott, and Cassie, and that the ants, because of the time dilation of the Qualum realm, lived like a thousand years of time in a minute span of time, and in that thousand years that passed in the blink of an eye, they evolved into this super smart socialist race of technologicallylogy.
Yeah, technocratic ants, and it's incredible and Hank is really like there's a lot of fun to be had. This movie with kind of Hank's previous comic book history, which we talked about a little, but Hank could control ants with the helmet that he created, and he'd beat low key with ants, and this movie they really lean into that. Janet rags on him about it, Hope rags on him about it, like this man just loves ants and he loves them, and you see and he he is so proud of his ants now and.
He is like love.
He probably if he had a choice whether to leave or to stay with the ants, I think he'd probably choose to stay with the nts.
So Kang has the now shrunken down cores ready to put in his ship, and he's making preparations to leave and invade the above realm, which we can only assume to be Earth. He's taking his entire empire with him. Meanwhile, Cassie manages to escape from her holding cell and she finds Gentra, who's also being held somewhere, and together they start freeing all the prisoners inside Kang's headquarters and in a Captain America addressing shield over the PA at the
end of Winter Soldier moment. She is like, Hey, now is our time we need to strike. Let's start the rebellion. She basically sends this broadcast, hijacks Kang's broadcast, sends it all across the microverse. Excuse me, sends it all across the quantum realm. That's the same thing, and starts an insurgency.
Yes, it's very cool, and everyone knows this is always what happens. But the Free Him fight as emerge. They go up against Kang, and it seems like it's a rise of sky. It's like huge, like and you know they they came. It's kind of this huge moment.
There's the insurgency. They come. Scott charges Kang's eternal city.
He's a he's a giant.
He's giant. He's like one hundred feet tall. He's smashing through it seems like he might get all the way through to him, but he doesn't. And then Kang says to Scott, like, what did you fucking think you're gonna do? You think you're gonna beat Maybe you can't beat me. You talk to ants and that is the moment We've done done.
All the all the.
Ants come and some of the ants are absolutely huge.
Some of them are wearing like sick almah, and they're like communicating, and Hanks there with his little red scoff on looking like he's leading an army of socialist dance. It's very cute. I just have to shout out one of my favorite movies. Everyone knows that I'm not gonna say a tunnels. What I was gonna say is I feel like the Final battle draws really heavily from Aquaman because in the whole joke throughout the movie is like, oh,
he talks to fish like what are useless power? But the final bout is he calls upon all the sea creatures and that is what enables them to kind of win. And you might be thinking, like, well, that's kind of wild that Karen just got beat by some ants, but you you know, those things are still coming.
They say, King is like he puts up a force shield, but the ants there's just too many fucking ants, guys, so many ants. They sweep them away. Modoc comes in.
Helps them break through his force field.
But then it is grievously injured by his very very brief fight with King Uh, and the ants sweep everything away, and our heroes are left looking at the broken body of Modoc, who is dying, and he's like, oh my god, like I finally did something good. At least I died in Avenger and Scott and Hope are like, eh, that's right, sure, you definitely don't.
And he's like, you were always a brother to me, Scott, and Scott's like.
Yes, yeah, we did it. So the thought is now, Okay, Tang's gone. We did it. This is fucking great. Let's get out of here. So Janet is able in Kang's control room to open up another portal back to the world they all jump through. Scott is about to jump through, but guess who's there. It's fucking Kang and his suit is shredded now, so he's not as powerful as he once was.
His muscles a power.
He's obviously jacked and this can do a little stuff and he basically beats the living tar out of Scott Lang for a period of time. But then Scott manages, you know, to basically destroy the core once again to embig in it, and Ken gets sucked into the core and disappears, but it also destroys the portal and this basically leaves Scott and Hope trapped in the quantum realm. Cope had jumped back through to try and help Scott.
In the end of the movie, Cassie is able to rebuild her quantum tunneling device or quantum communication device, and they bring Scott and Hope back to the world, and we see Scott enjoying San Francisco as if he never left. It seems as if he was deposited back like almost the very day.
Yeah, it seemed, which, by the way, is suspicious because we know that time works differently in the quantum realm, so that's already should be a hint. And then we get what is probably like my favorite joke slash moment in the movie because they play it so well. These were the pickups that I'm pretty sure I saw them filming in San Pedro when I went to get my phone screen fixed and Scott is walking and he's talking about being an Avenger, and suddenly Reuben from the coffee
shop knows who he is. He's the bug Man, He's not Spider Man. That means he doesn't get free coffee es paid twelve dollars San Francisco prices. And then they zoom in on Scott's face and they drop this absolutely just existentially horrifying score. When Scott's like, oh.
Wait, Kenk's gone right, yeah, we beat him.
And he's like, did it great? He's like, wait a minute, I think I remember Kang saying that something bad was coming and if we didn't let him out, he would all die. And he's like, but we did let not let him out, and he died, So I think that's okay. And he did getting sucked into the port would have killed him, right, It wouldn't have just sent him somewhere
else because that would probably be a problem. And then he's like, like so many of us who suffer from anxiety do, He's like, don't worry about it, it's fine. And then he goes off and has like a charming dinner with his family and everything's great, and he's kind of making up to Cassie for all the birthdays he missed by doing a fake birthday dinner.
Then we go to stick a number one it is, we see Immortis, we see Rama Tut, and we see a younger kind of elite, a battle angel. Yeah, let's talk about this.
So who is that Kang?
It's my thing, I think it's either Kid I Mortis yep, or the Iron Lad.
I think that makes a lot of sense. I think that it's a very different design. We we pretty much covered like the main Kang variants, and there are not like many that are fully fleshed out outside of just like some fun Council of Kang appearances. So I think you're right. I think it's It would be really cool if it was Kidd and Mortus. He looked kind of young he was wearing this like so battle Angel Elitas
skinhead Iron Lad would be awesome. I would love to see them do that storyline would also be really another young Avengers character. When we've got on Cassie in this movie, it could be like Chris pointed this out where it's like it could be a kind of modified Scarlet Centurion
costume because that's the other major character. But in this scene, the other two characters, Immortus and Rama Tut have the most like classic like almost like party City, And I mean that in a compliment, like their costumes are like they stalk to the comic.
Directly ripped from the they look.
So I think that the idea of it being someone like Kid and Mortis or Iron Lad makes a lot more sense than them redesigning the iconic scarlet Centurion costume, which I will shout out once again.
So a Mortis and Rama Tut and the younger Kang who is either the Iron Lad Kidmore or someone else, are like, Hey, did you hear he's dead? Who kan? And they basically are referencing Kang the Conqueror, the one banish they had banished to the quantum realm, and they're like, this is fucking great, he's dead.
Uh. And then they're like, Bob, we all pissed we didn't kill him.
Yeah, they are kind of pissed that we didn't kill him. And then they start talking about okay, but whoever did kill him? That's the problem because now they and they say something to the effect of they are aware of the multiverse now, uh, basically saying the heroes of Earth kind of know about the multiverse, and that might be a problem because it threatens our vast inter time empires that we have all built. And therefore they have gathered all of the Kangs together in this vast place to
have to basically call the Council of Cross Time Kangs. Yeah, just vote on what their next move is, and I will.
Say something that's really important kind of touch on her as well. Is so Kang the konkeror we saw the horrific things that he did, but when he explained it to Janet and later on when he was monologuing to Janet and a really nice kind of echo of that he who remains stuff, he claimed he was doing it to protect other worlds from these other Kangs. He felt like they were conquering too much and he had to
stop them, and they were trying to stop him. So there's this kind of constant battle which is key to Kang. But when Scott said to him, what's coming, he said me like lots so to me. And so we're now
seeing I'm not defending what Kang did. I don't know the horrors that he wrought, but we are definitely seeing an immediate ripple effect of these giant Council of cross Cut time kangs by like you know two icons Walt Simonson and John Brasqumma from Avengers two ninety two, Like we are seeing that come to fruition immediately, Like this is gonna be a problem for the Avengers and it's not just going to be one Kang that turns up
one time and another one. They are together, and there are thousands of Kangs here.
Now what maybe muddies the waters a little bit is Kang mentions that one of the main threats alongside all
the versions of him is incursions. He says specifically incursions, which you know, for people who have read New Avenger Haickman's New Avengers and Avengers Illuminati and The Time Runs Out Timeline will understand that this is a reference to the smashing together of various dimensions into the Earth six one six dimension and the choices that some of the kind of the main superheroes of the six one six units, the choices, the hard choices that they have to make
to save the six one six universe. So, and of course we've seen an image of incursions previously, So it seems like whatever whatever the effect of all of these Kangs is, it will be tied up with these potential incursions of various dimensions smashing into the definitely.
And this is gonna lead into you know, this is like you know, Kevin Faggie calls it the multiverse saga, like this is gonna lead into whatever reason we get to secret Wars this is it Kang dynasty. You know, he even says it the Kang dynasty, and then Cassie like breaks through him. You know, this is our big moment where we meet the people who are going to cause it, and every single one of them is Jonathan Major's and I love it. There's every kind of Jonathan Majors.
They are hyped up. This is like a sports event. There's a scroll at the end, who's like, is it lizard Kang? Is it? Is it a Kang? Who's a scroll? Like? It's very interesting and fun and if you love the Council of Kang's and you love these kind of deep cut like Marvel cosmic stuff, you'll be very happy with that stuff.
Yeah, it's very Avengers Forever. It feels like the launch time Avengers.
I definitely think that's the route we're going, especially because there's like a really interesting thing here with Hank becoming the one who's obsessed with the ants and Scott kind of being moved away. Yeah, from the ads. I think you know we were talking before this, but you were kind of mentioning like some characters that Scot or some Monica's Scott could take on aside from app man.
Let's talk about that and in a second after we mentioned Stinger number two, So we go back. We go
back to the early twentieth late nineteenth century. Uh, and it's some kind of like you know, traveling showman kind of vaudeville kind of set up in somewhere in a small theater and a scientist named Victor Timely played by played by Jonathan Majors is showing off what he claims to be his time machine and in the audience, our friends from the Time Variance Authority and elsewhere, mister Mobius and Loki are sitting there watching him, and Loki said,
that's him, That's that's the bad guy, that's King, and Mobius is like, are you true? It's great, this seems awesome, and then we cut and this very much seems to be a trailer for Loki season two. This is going to be some sort of Kang launch into the rest of the universe. X Ray Vision will be back and we're back. Let's talk about our takeaways from this. First, we mentioned Avengers Forever. This is a movie that feels like heavily edited. We'll talk about that in a second.
Like they definitely moved a lot of the deck chairs around all throughout the production process of this movie, it seems to me that if they go the Avengers Forever route, which we won't spoil but you should read because it's very fun. It's really fun. It's twelve issues, it's really great, and you'll get a lot of the backstory of Kang and Immortis and some of the other Kangs. But in that story, Immortis and Kang end up kind of going head to head with their own set of allies, and
Kang is kind of the good guy. Kang kind of a lie with the Avengers against Immortis and the things that it Mortis wants to do. Which listen, I think that I think that Marvel looked at what Jonathan Majors is doing and kind of said, how do we make him kind of good?
Yeah?
How can we get a good version of Kang?
I absolutely agree with you. He's definitely there's so many different iterations of the character that throughout history, it would be so easy for them to cast a version of Kang, whether it's Nathaniel Richards, whether it's you know, a tired, kind of weary aged Immortis, or whether it is actually Kang. The conqueror who comes back and realizes the error of his ways, or realizes the only way he can get
what he wants is to help the Avengers. We're definitely going to see a heroic version because Jonathan Majors can just sell it so hard and literally, Like his performance in this movie is so good. I love their final episode of Loki is one of my favorite episodes of MCUTV because of Jonathan Major's and this movie. His performance is so good that you understand why someone would be like, he's amazing. Let just build a whole part of a franchise around him, Like, let's see what he can do.
Let's tell us about your Victor Timely theory, which I like a lot.
Okay, so spoiler alert for Victor Timeley's like seven appearances. Yes, as the as the listeners know, I like a strange character. So I am a fan of Victor Timeley in the comics Victor Timeley, as I mentioned last week when I was when I was just talking about Kang variants, and I didn't think that Victor Timeley would be in the movie. Victor Timeley was a version of Kang who everyone thought was dead, and it was to hide in space and time.
He went back in the past, he went to the night he went to like nineteen oh two, and he founded this time a town called Timely, Wisconsin, a nice reference to the old Marvel comics, And basically he used his skills and intelligence and all of the weapon and technology that he has known throughout the years to basically create a super technological town even though it looked like kind of an Old West town. He has a cool
mustache like Jonathan Major's. So my gut says, if they're gonna do this, they will end up doing what they did in the comics, which is this is really Kang, probably the Kang that we just saw. It's not like this true, different version of Kang. This is a persona that Kang puts on to hide. I think the coolest thing one because I want him to be in every episode.
I think that this victor Timely is probably gonna team up with Lokiommobius and be like, yes, we must stop the other Kangs, like I am just a good old time traveler, like yay. But then we're gonna learn at some point that he is actually Kang, the conqueror who escaped from this part of the quantum realm.
The thing about Kangs, just as an aside. The thing about Kangs and a more included is they are all the time plotting against the other tech tanks, like they have they are.
Like the pettiest mother. They call these.
The Council of Cross Time. Can't there everybody show up meanwhile.
Like they're like they're putting brute to see each other, like putting.
Explosives again under one of their seats, like one of them they're like planning on stabbing in the clock, like they're always, always, always planning against each other. So I do I like that. One of the things that we talked about is Cassie as stature, and we kind of got it in this movie.
Yeah, she she turns giant. She has a giant hug with her dad. I think it will be really cool to see Cassie on her own, like, especially if they's established her as this kind of freedom fighter esque, like someone with big morals. That could be really good for
a young Avengers team. It's also going to be interesting because early on in the movie and that kind of first like really swift ten minutes that sets up the quantum rum stuff, Scott is wary of her being a hero, and I think that conflict is gonna come into play. I also think it's interesting because I do think that probably Scott is gonna move away from the am Man mantle and it will be like Goliath or Giant.
Man, and you may yeah, you know.
Actually, in memory of Darren Kross, my brother, I have to say, look, man, I'm I'm a big Modoc fan, a lot of a cosmic beam. I'm not a hundred I'm not one hundred percent sold on the Darren cross Modoc. I hope that we will see a different version of Modoc in the future, but maybe that's unlikely. It is such a weird character to do, so maybe it's one of the ones where it's better to just do it
in a unique way. But that to me was the biggest, Like that felt like a real solid, like Rick and Morty joke, Like you see Modoc and then you're like, yo, that's Darren my friend from work. Like that was the one where I felt like it really crossed over into that rather than being a reflection of all the things that inspired Rick and Morty, because I think that's where those similarities come across. As Rick and Morty draws so heavily from the comics.
Let's let's talk about the the Rick and Morty of it all. So Jeff Loveness, screenwriter behind this, This film, of course came up from the Morty pipeline, like so many Movel like so many Marvel talents, and it was interesting to see people say, oh, man, this is like really influenced by Rick and Morty, when in fact, Rick mor By this weird shit, by this weird shit, and it's just kind of repackaged it.
The reason there's a Council of Ricks is because there's a Council of Kangs like that comes directly from it. So it's kind of that interesting cyclic or stuff, especially because the sci fi of it all and the pulp of it all that's been in the veins of this storyline since we were talking about you know, Captain America forty three or something like there's some or twenty three or something where it's like some old forties comics where pop
written by a pop writer. So yeah, it was definitely interesting to see that the modoc thing was the only one for me where I was like, that feels like it could be in Rick and Morty. Everything else I was like this is just someone who loved playing in that playground and with these genre trips, finally getting to do it in a way that's actually cannon, which is really cool to see. And I love the inclusion of like verb, I love like a Weird Monster, And I
think David does more so good. I missed seeing his character from ant Matn, I miss seeing Louise, but I understand what the choices, why that they made him, why it needed to be this kind of expanded science fiction film.
I will say so to think about the things that were changed, it is I'm pretty sure there's a version of this movie where all the secondary characters that you meet in the quantum Realm, like Gentro, like veb Black Quause got a Corg treatment where you learned some of their backstory. And it feels like that really hit the cutting room floor. And secondarily, and I think this is like what people are responding to in some of the
bad reviews it. I think that if you gave Victoria Alonzo and Kevin Feigy like the ability to snap their fingers, you know, like Thanos style, and and recreate the reality the way they wanted to, I think that Kang would make his debut in like either an Avengers movie proper or thor or somebody or like an A list Yes, somebody who is not a man no distruct to a
man who I love. And I think the first ant Man movie is really really fun, and I think the briefcase fight is maybe my favorite action scene in all of the Marvel movies. I think the second one is good. Uh, And I think Scott Lank, you know, fills a very specific niche in the MCU. I think if your supposition is that Kang he's so scary that Janet doesn't even want to talk to about him anymore unless you know, fucked him.
But that's the versional honesty. That was what was on the coying room floor for me.
He is this scary warlord who is is so scary that other versions of himself throughout the multiverse scared of him. Then it's a little bit like, so he got beat but the ants, you know, So this is.
I think another thing that I think people are reacting to. You are one hundred percent right in the context of the MCU, right, But isn't that like the most common book thing ever that Kang would just get beaten by some random like lower tier hero who managed to see
through him. It's so comic booky the same way you pointed out after the cinema when I was talking about Modoc, you were like, that's so Modoc, Like Modoc will come in and just get wiped out and he's just the out right And I think in that way, this kind
of same with I found Multiverse of Madness. I think when the movies become very similar to the way that comic book narratives are told, where they're a little bit more like you can be here for a couple of minutes, and then you're here and some really wild powers happen, and the stakes aren't necessarily as emotionally driven and grounded. That's not always going to sit well with people who grew up with Winter Soldier or people who really loved
the early era of Iron Man. You know, this is a very different beast, and I do think that also. I wonder this is not a think, it's more of a question. I wonder if people who really wanted it to feel different from Phase four. I think that also might be a bit of a feeling, because this feels to me like it's in that same wheel.
Ho No we're in that multiverse kind of era and to that, you know, in that vein. Part of what basically all of what makes King so hard to fight is that he's got weapons that are a million years more advanced than anybody else's because you can time travel. He's fought everybody, every version of everybody, and so he's like a video game player with endless lives. He just
like a living cheek code. Yeah, he knows how to speed run every fight there is, and then he gets beat by the giant super smart ants, which I love.
That said, it feels like the other thing that makes I think people maybe not so satisfied with that ending is that you I could see a world in which you needed a setup for the ants, like and this is going to sound like a joke, but like Anthony level character development for the ants, so that there is a little bit of journey when the ants show up and merk ca.
Ants, No, this is what this is me. This is what I would have done. This would have been my bit that ended up on the you know, the chopping room floor. I would say this. It's like the ants were so technologically advanced that they knew about Kang, they knew that he had this power and they basically hid their identity from him in every universe so they could beat him in this one universe. You could have like a thirty second to one minute kind of bit about
something like that. But like you said, I really felt that the first two acts there was a lot of I felt like maybe like a bit of puzzling putting together, where there was probably a little bit more time spent with each character.
I do think you need that ant piece because you know, it begs the question in future fights with King, can you just always beat in with ants? Can we go back to the Quanta ram and get the ants? Hang nts we're at the.
Dude in like in like four years, we'll like we'll be like, oh shit, the ants they came back, like the Dux Macana.
Like beating the fucking ship out of all that.
Shans has come back. He's on that side. It's him and Adam Willock and then just Theo's.
Like heck the ads and it's like, oh yeah, the.
Ads they come up like the Lost of Us.
But that's I mean, that's part of it that the movie is getting absolutely crushed on rotten tomatoes, which I think is I do think it's part of what you're saying. This is a very common this is this is a six issue arc that I would read in a comic, and I think it is. It's it's if you're not in love with this world, it might be a little difficult to deal with the other stuff. There's some critiques like of like Michael Douglas sleepwalking through this movie. I
thought Michael Douglas was great. I think if you're gonna like to me, it's definitely not a a like an Odin level, literally an like Odin actually sleeps through his role.
Yeah, babe, iconic like that's.
Part of his character is for large chunks of the movie.
He's he's he's just like he's a dying.
He's like, I'm dead, babe. Okay, So currently is that fifty two percent when we recorded this, which is five percent higher than eternals. So will it become the lowest straight MC A movie. I mean, we're on Tomorrow's. It's just subjective. It's just a bunch of different craics. I end up on there sometimes, you know, it's a bunch of different critics who come together. I was very happy to see when I was checking the titles on tomorrow school seventy seven percent audience people are.
Coming around, they're learning the Good Book of the Eternals and club. You know what, I need to watch it again. I watch it, watch it. I need to watch it again because I will say that I liked. And then in the last Quantuminia is significantly more in the theater than I did initially the Eternals, which is now, as you mentioned, climbing the ranks of the Toma, the audience, the audience scores of the Tomato machine. But that's it. It is a wild working movie.
If you love that MC you're gonna be happy. It's a wild MCU ride. Jonathan Majors Jonathan Major's Jonathan Major's Jonathan Major's I like your prediction. I feel like when we get like, you know, Kang Dynasty, it surprises us all. It's like not an Avengers movie. It's just like a solo Jonathan Major's Kang movie. That's definitely gonna be the Oscar. I see it in his future.
Kang is there, all the Kangs, the Avengers are routed and then you hear on your left and their portals open and it's ants every Actually.
I was just gonna say before I think we hear every other we were right. But the one thing I want to say last week, when Jason did his very good MCU timeline of the ant Man family and I was kind of peppering in some little comic book footnotes, one thing that we did have a lot of fun talking about was how much Hank loves ants. Yeah, so I've basically taken that as we were right, because that has not been a part of the MCU in the way that it was in this movie. So I'm saying, I'm saying.
We were let the ants like colonize the Savage Land and let them just like live there. And that's a free idea for Kevin fi.
Yeah, free with royalties Up next nerd Out.
In today's that out where you tell us what you love them why, or a theory that you're excited shout, which you know we love to hear, Grant tells us a very relevant theory about he who remains from season one of Loki, and Grant actually sent multiple emails to explain this theory. So Jason, I'll let you do the reading.
Here's great. I was watching the finale of Loki again before Quantumnia comes out. And something that always bugged me that we didn't know was that we didn't know where He who Remains Palace is. I've always thought that the end of the Multiverse saga would find us back with He who Remains at his palace, which is which led to my theory, He who Remains Palace is located on the ruins of Battle.
I love that.
That's actually really cool. Also, He who Remains says he won the Multiverse Award by taming aliof What if the Snaplke event at the end of King Dynasty and the lead into Secret Wars is he who Remains unleashing AliOS on the multiverse. One okay, sorry, one last thing. What if the question of which timeline will become the Sacred Timeline is what Secret Wars is fought over? Oh that's wow. All of Earth's mightiest heroes brought from all the timelines to figure out which one is secret.
Okay, I'm like, get hired because that's think about that.
That kind of takes my very good Kevin FIGI hire the idea of Deadpool being like hied by the TVA to kill off all the timelines. I like this version better, where It's almost like all of them have to come together to fight alongside. But as they're doing it, they realize the only thing they can do is save one timeline, and they all basically have to choose which one. That would be really really interesting.
I think that is really cool. I particularly like that the He who Remains Palace is built on the ruins. That is really cool.
Because I think a lot of us, like a lot of people had thought like, is it is the quantum realm? Like I had a lot of people DM me asking me if that was something that they thought could happen. And I really liked that theory. But that one is really exciting to me because I like the idea that his ruins are in the remain of something that has already happened for him, but that we don't know about.
That's very key. And just for those of you who are aren't familiar with Secret Wars of Bad World, basically in a post incursion world, the universe is remade by Doctor Doom, who creates this battle planet that is ruled by you know, by these different warlords and these different fiftoms where kind of every universe exists on one globe on one globe. There's a universe of thors, there's a universe beyond the wall, et cetera, etcetera, universe of zombies, yeah, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,
all in one planet. That's a really cool that's a really cool theory. Grant, Thank you so much.
Yeah, that was the best. Thanks so much, Grant. And if you have a theory like Grant or passions that you want to share, like so many of our other awesome nerd outs, hit us up at x ray at crooked dot com. As always find those instructions in show notes.
That is it for us, Rosie and he plugs.
Uh. Read the stuff that I've written about a man. If you want to know about Modoc, the real version, not the Darren Cross version. I're at a big explainer IGN. I have a cover story for Den of Geek that you can now read, and it has some cool interviews with people like Helen Mirren and Lucy lou That was incredibly cool, Rachel Zegler, who was just total delight. Who
are going to be playing the villainesses in Shazam. I also interviewed the director and the lead of that movie, so you can pick that up A Comic Shop, or you can read it online and Rosie marks at Instagram and letterbox. That's where you can find me other than here every week twice.
In addition to the fact that we are now dropping twice a week Wednesday and Fridays in your podcast feed, we are proud to announce that x ray Vision merch is available at the Cricket Store. That's right. You can get an x ray Vision was right t shirt. You can get the t shirt a little wizard guy on it, just chin. You can get all menner of x ray
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Five star ratings, five star reviews. We need them, we love them, we got to have them. Here's one from student at a community college. Hilarious. Jow never fails to make me laugh. Their creators are extremely knowledgeable about their top and their interviewees are always interesting. Thank you so much doing in your community college. X ray Vision is a Crooked Media production. The show is produced by Chris
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