I’m not sure if I’ve said this before but these two are probably two of the strongest to watch together in a Replay episode.

As Taylor and I have journeyed our way through the Replay series, we have had some, let’s say “odd”, mashups. I mean, even the past two episodes covering GOTG1 and CATWS and GOTG2 and AOU are not precisely on the same level. Actually, they aren’t even on the same planet as each other. But this week, we have an excellent pairing that not only goes well together but are pretty vital homework films for the upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania film. That being said, I put a little warning that Civil War had the potential to nearly be its’ own episode, just due to all the massive repercussions from it, so we are a little skewed in our time allotted to each film in this episode. Either way, this is a great episode that we are hoping you guys love hearing. If you haven’t had a chance to listen, click the button below to find your listening platform of choice, or start listening live from the link provided.

Starting with Ant-Man himself, I want to discuss Scott Lang as a person. I might just be dumb but I will say the first few times I’ve seen the movie, I didn’t put together that Scott is gifted in electrical engineering. And once I noticed that I realized his tinkering around with the suit and his ability to build and create things like he did during the initial heist at Hank Pym’s home made a lot of sense. I mean, this guy is really gifted, and while we are used to him being the comic relief, which might distract a little from his vast knowledge, it’s definitely important to note. He isn’t just a common criminal and Hank knew that.

Now to the suit itself. The most interesting thing about this film, in my opinion, is the history of the suit more than anything else. We get a lot of origins from Marvel but most don’t have an origin inside the origin. Think about it, watching Cap become the first super soldier doesn’t tie to any other stories in history about super soldiers. Same with Iron Man, there was no Iron Man before Tony there was. No such thing as a man flying around in a metal suit. They started that themselves. But Scott in his origin movie inherits a suit that not only has a history but also has a tragic story tied to it. A story you would think would have been released with Black Widow’s choice to release all SHIELD and Hydra files. We actually don’t learn until the next movie we are going to discuss that these files were still heavily encrypted, but I have to say, I read this as a move from the Russo brothers to try and close that chapter a little since it appeared no other director wanted to touch what they had done in CATWS. Either way, logically speaking, a man like Darren if he wanted to would have had a team working on those files and the Ant-Man wouldn’t have been a myth any longer.

I don’t want to stray from the history of the suit because it really is important to what we know about the wider MCU and for the future with Ant-Man 3. For one, Hank used this suit during the Cold War, a time when the only hero known was still frozen in ice. He operated very much like Cap did in WW2 and it’s interesting to see the effects Hank and Janet had on history that the majority of the world doesn’t even know happened. However, I did mention the tragic aspect of this history, which is that Janet, who also wore a suit, went subatomic to stop a nuke and disappeared into the Quantum Realm. This forces Hank into his own form of retirement, but it introduces us to something we actually see later in the film, which I totally don’t remember from earlier viewings. We enter the Quantum Realm when Ant-Man goes subatomic to stop Darren and actually, he sends Darren there as well. That first glimpse, little did we know, would begin quite the journey with Ant-Man, as his second and third films are based in the Quantum Realm as well. It makes his films probably the most cohesive, but also makes even the first one more important than we will ever know, as the Quantum Realm is also how they got time travel to work in Endgame.

I promised myself not to go off too much about the Quantum Realm as we will have plenty to talk about with that with our Ant-Man 3 predictions episode. So instead I want to keep us in the realm of Darren, who is very clearly unhinged. Hank mentions that Darren’s use and trials of some of the technology that Darren has been creating have affected his mind and leaves us to conclude this is why he is so off-kilter. But in reality, it only makes me more intrigued about the relationship he and Hank shared, as Hank created the monster of a person that Darren becomes. I mean, at one point he even had his daughter so alienated she help vote him out of his own company. This is one of the few movies I wish we had a prequel to, just because Darren shares a strange relationship with Hope and Hank, which we only see glimpses of as Scott comes into the fold. But it makes Darren an interesting villain, one that grew beneath others’ failures and disappointments. Sounds a lot like Hydra.

Did I say Hydra? Yea, I did, because the movie did too. It was a small comment made, could’ve been a throwaway line in itself, but Darren was selling his Yellowjacket suit to members of Hydra. I don’t remember this from before, but keep in mind at this point SHIELD, with Hydra wrapped inside of it, fell roughly two movies ago. We see in AOU that the Avengers are taking out Hydra bases while on the search for the Tesseract, but we’re kind of led to assume after that that Hydra is pretty much gone. And I wouldn’t have an issue with them mentioning Hydra in this film if it led to more than it does. Now, I will give the benefit of the doubt to Marvel and say, by this point, we are barreling towards our purple grape storyline, so things such as Hydra can be phased out as the world itself is about to be attacked by more aliens with powerful rocks. So I will say, the only way this throwaway line won’t disappoint me is if Hydra is brought back up in Phase 5, since it was pretty absent from all of Phase 4. The line confirms the existence of Hydra and that means I want to see where they are and what they’re up to.

The last thing I want to touch on before I open the can of worms of Civil War is that Hank at one point mentions that he no longer wears the suit due to the toll it took on him. Now, the way he sets this up makes it sound like it is more than just the emotional toll of losing his wife. With this statement comes my concern now for Scott, who has been wearing and utilizing the suit for quite a few years now in the current MCU. If a toll can be taken on someone who uses the suit often, then I think we have good reason to believe Scott might be in danger. And honestly, it does make sense, as I can’t see how shrinking and enlarging yourself all the time can be physically good for anyone. Just some food for thought as we come up on the culmination of Ant-Man’s trilogy.

I have to be honest, this is about to be a lot as we move to Civil War. First, a disclaimer is that Taylor and I are very passionately Team Cap, and so in all honesty, I will leave that out of this post as much as possible. If you would like to hear our reasoning, give the episode a listen as we both explain our feelings, but I feel you all don’t need to read how much we don’t really like Iron Man. I’ll give an honest attempt to avoid bashing Tony, but I will apologize now if I do.

I want to start with the opening scene/battle, which is where Cap & Co. takes on Crossbones aka Rumlow from CATWS. Two things I want to say. One: Crossbones was an extremely wasted character in my opinion, as he’s an interesting villain who would have actually been even more interesting to see now that Sam is Cap. I do like the continuity of him being the person they’re after, especially as it relates to this being Cap’s movie, but I think it would’ve been more interesting to utilize him more aggressively later in one of Sam’s storylines. My other thing is simply this: I hate what happens in this film regarding Wanda, specifically as it all relates to this scene. Had she not removed the bomb from the location in the market, people would have died. Obviously, we saw what happened when she tried to move the bomb elsewhere. Unfortunately, this Wanda is not yet at the place she is when she embraces being the Scarlet Witch and so she did what she could to save lives. I find the whole thing that happened and the blaming that took place frustrating. Not to mention, Crossbones was essentially stealing a virus that who knows what he would have done with.

With this same thought, when General Ross is discussing the battles and subsequent deaths/destruction that follow, he mentions New York and Sokovia. Granted, Sokovia was 100% Tony’s fault, but what Ultron did with the city was something they were the only ones qualified to stop. Same with New York, had the Avengers not been there, there simply would have been a successful alien invasion and thousands would have died. Better yet, the government would’ve nuked the island of Manhattan. Imagine that. So I have to say, some of his points on why the Avengers need governing don’t really strike me as their fault.

I can’t in good faith talk about this film without of course bringing up Bucky and how much I love him. I’m kidding (not really), but I do have to say multiple times in this film we see The Winter Soldier and we see Bucky, and I think Sebastian Stan’s ability to shift these two personas back and forth is incredible. On top of that, I think it really shows that Bucky does pull his punches and has no urge to kill people, even though he’s highly qualified in doing so. But when The Winter Soldier appears, that’s a different story. The Winter Soldier singlehandedly took out just about all the Avengers and if anyone forgot or wasn’t paying attention, technically would’ve shot Tony in the head. With Bucky, we see him pull his punches especially with Spider-Man, as he isn’t trying to kill him, but also realizes there’s a whole kid under the mask. It’s just an interesting comparison we see and this film really is where we see the two sides, rather than in TFAWS, where we see more of Bucky in control of himself.

Speaking of Spider-Man, I have to say something for all you Team Iron Man folks out there and you might not like it. If Spider-Man knew the whole situation, if he didn’t blindly follow and trust Tony Stark because he’s Tony Stark, you couldn’t tell me he wouldn’t have been Team Cap. I mean, he even makes a comment about helping the little guy because he can that us watching can see register in Tony’s face that he knows this kid doesn’t agree with him. I find it pretty interesting that Peter doesn’t ask for more details for a fight he is being flown across the country for, but I also understand that he’s blinded by the offer. Speaking of being flown across the country though, I have to say I still don’t love how Spider-Man was introduced into the MCU. It felt a little lazy and abrupt, unlike Ant-Man’s inclusion, which felt natural since we had just seen his movie. It’s still a main complaint of mine, but over the years I have grown to accept it for what it is.

The last thing I want to get into here is the final fight between Cap, Bucky, and Tony. As a Bucky girl, I will always defend him as far as this situation because he had no control over himself when he killed the Starks and he is burdened with remembering the kills. But I won’t say I don’t understand Tony’s anger, I just think he reacted like an idiot. Cap 100% should have told him, but fighting the way they did was ridiculous, allowing Zemo to get exactly what he wanted. The comparison between Tony and T’Challa was insane, as we see T’Challa speaking to the man who killed his father days ago and stopping his suicide, while Tony was tearing through two super soldiers for a loss he experienced years back. It was an interesting character study in my opinion, even if I found the fight ridiculous for being the reason it all ended.

I lied, this is the last thing I want to discuss. This pivots slightly from Civil War, more so dealing with the bigger effects of the ending scene. We see Cap extend the olive branch to Tony and in this film, you truly sit there and think they will work it all out. Yet, we obviously see this isn’t true, as in Infinity War, Tony does everything he can to avoid calling Cap, and then in Endgame, dared to blame Cap for not being there. I know I said I would try not to bash Tony, this just makes me so angry as he makes it everyone else’s fault but his own. This is pretty much the theme of Tony’s character starting in this film. Either way, this film’s ending is so critical to moving the rest of the MCU to its’ final moments.

This is the final Replay episode for the time being, as we are less than one week away from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. This is surely going to be filling up our timeline as far as coverage for the next few weeks, so keep an eye out for our predictions episode, coming out today. If you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, get a move on! We’re excited and we hope all of you are as well because Marvel is about to blow your mind, so let’s talk about it.

Image: “Ant-Man”, Wikipedia

Image: “Captain America: Civil War”, Disney