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[QUOTE=Chris0013;5530168]Having non powered characters makes it less expensive to put them on screen.[/QUOTE]
Doesn't necessarily make for a bettee film though. I don't need "normals" if I already have Captain America and/or Black Panther. I'd like to see a Marvel spy with actual powers
As for Jan, I think it comes down to female characters being afterthoughts in a lot of ways. It's disappointing tbh. She's a major character but Scott Lang somehow gets more respect
[QUOTE=gurkle;5530181]C'mon, the movie lineup is clearly based on the comics lineup, and the sequel gave us three more Avengers from the classic 1960s run, so why shouldn't fans of Hank Pym be disappointed that he and Jan are the only founding Avengers that didn't make it in?
If they do an X-Men lineup based on the All-New All-Different lineup, but (let's say) Colossus is left out and doesn't get to be in the sequel either, you can bet his fans would be disappointed.[/QUOTE]
I was just poking fun at some inconsistent (imo) arguments. If I remember correctly the Hulk was an Avenger for two issues and then never again until the movie came out, but he is a founding member and that alone apparently makes him a more iconic Avenger than other heroes, who were part of the team for hundreds of issues. I think some people tend to overrate the status as a founding member.
In the end it's two different types of media and one should accept that movies will always take some liberties from the source material.
I often thought or sorta thought that the Skrull Invasion should have went all the way and revealed that Pym was a very long term Skrull imposter.
But I guess that would have been not satisfying to explain, retcon, the infamous abuse.
I'm mostly with the idea that like Bendis to Wanda, this was bad Shooter to Pym.
[QUOTE=chicago_bastard;5530214]I was just poking fun at some inconsistent (imo) arguments. If I remember correctly the Hulk was an Avenger for two issues and then never again until the movie came out, but he is a founding member and that alone apparently makes him a more iconic Avenger than other heroes, who were part of the team for hundreds of issues. I think some people tend to overrate the status as a founding member.
In the end it's two different types of media and one should accept that movies will always take some liberties from the source material.[/QUOTE]
Doesn't mean every liberty taken is good. It's not like Hollywood has thr best track record
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;5530188]Here's the original Avengers issue #212. As you can see after Hank strikes Janet he forces her to go ahead with his bonehead scheme, and the next day at the Avengers court-martial, Thor's own dialogue at seeing Janet's black-eye is "Odd's Blood, did he strike you". That's the dialogue. No art mistake. The story was intentionally framing Hank's actions as abuse. Hankistas need to accept the cold fact -- Hank Pym abused his wife. You can't say "Art mistake" or bully Jim Shooter into claiming that on his blog (as he so stupidly and wrongly did). The receipts are there for all to see. [/QUOTE]
Plus of course, it was being done Marvel-style, so Shooter saw the art before he wrote the dialogue, so if he didn't want Hank to be intentionally hitting Jan, he could just have thrown in some dialogue explaining that it was an accident. Comics use dialogue to explain away art mistakes all the time; it's just that at the time, Shooter didn't consider it a mistake.
[QUOTE=Mik;5530220]Doesn't mean every liberty taken is good. It's not like Hollywood has thr best track record[/QUOTE]
Well according to most people the Avengers movies work pretty fine.
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;5530188]The solution is not foreground Hank or Janet because that way they can avoid having any spotlight shined on the fact that the most famous and important story featuring Hank Pym was the one where he beat his wife.
A more interesting question is why is it that Hank Pym needed to be in the mentor role while Janet was "the lost lenore"? You could have had Hank lost in the Quantum Realm and Janet Pym as the older Wasp as the mentor figure with a difficult relationship with the daughter and the movies would play the same way.[/QUOTE]
Because Hank was the original Ant-Man? It was an Ant-Man movie, not a Wasp movie.
It would be like if Terry in Batman Beyond was mentored by Barbara Gordon instead of Bruce Wayne.
And at least she wasn't dead and we actually got to see her as Wasp, which is apparently far more than what we were going to get in Wright's version.
[QUOTE]Edgar Wright was removed and he didn't shoot any footage and his script was rewritten so if the MCU wanted, they could have featured Hank as the main Ant-Man at any time. The obvious reason why the MCU were okay with a decision as unusual and drastic as kneecapping Ant-Man in favor of his legacy (which wasn't the norm or trend in comics up to that time) was because of him being a domestic abuser.[/QUOTE]
I thought it was because the production was so far along (to the point where they kept some of Wright's casting and the script) that it was easier to just smooth it over with some additions into what the movie ended up being than completely changing it.
To be honest, if not many people had a problem with Michael Douglas' Hank, I don't think what happened in the comics mattered that much in terms of the MCU.
[QUOTE]It's the truth. Every attempt at redeeming or ginning up Hank or fixing Ant-Man has come at Janet van Dyne's expense. She became the leader of the Avengers (and she came up with the name) after their divorce and was in that role for major stories like UNDER SIEGE and for most of Roger Stern's run. We almost never get to see or hear that side of the Wasp in comics or other adaptations. There was that huge stretch in comics where Janet was killed off and Hank was kept alive to grieve over her because that's the interesting story apparently.[/QUOTE]
I don't think that's necessarily true. It's not like Busiek ignored Jan's history when he had her and Hank on the Avengers together during his run.
She still named the team in the [I]Earth's Mightiest Heroes[/I] cartoon which was also probably the best depiction of Jan in media (and her relationship with Hank was a major focus of the show). She was the show's breakout character.
Of course, I also liked Hank's period as The Wasp, so...
[QUOTE]Edgar Wright was "hired help" he wasn't some creator or Kirby or Ditko-figure people had loyalty to. Peyton Reed and Kevin Feige reworked and recast the story significantly after he left and they own the movie they made. And the question is why is it that Hank Pym gets to be the cool grizzled mentor with Janet lost in the other dimension, when it could just as easily be the other way...Hank lost in the Quantum Realm, and Janet alive and in that role. The story would still revolve on Scott Lang and Hope and would play just as well.[/QUOTE]
I assume it was easier to work with what Wright had started from than to wholesale re-work the film, and Peyton Reed did more credit to Hank and Janet than what was originally in Wright's script.
I already explained why it made more sense to use Hank in the mentor role.
[QUOTE=Oberon;5530219]I often thought or sorta thought that the Skrull Invasion should have went all the way and revealed that Pym was a very long term Skrull imposter.
But I guess that would have been not satisfying to explain, retcon, the infamous abuse.[/quote]
The problem is that the original story from Avengers #211-230 (and yeah it was a 20 issue story arc that ran through multiple titles that explored the issue and fallout from every angle) ended with Hank Pym trying on a device by Tony Stark to check if he was mind-controlled at any point during that time and the device confirmed he wasn't mind controlled and Hank himself took full responsibility. So the original story closed that as an excuse.
I think an issue in Avengers, probably the Time Travel one with Kang, implied or suggested that Kang shenanigans was responsible for Hank but that was never accepted or incorporated and finally done away with.
[quote]I'm mostly with the idea that like Bendis to Wanda, this was bad Shooter to Pym.[/QUOTE]
Well it's not quite the same.
Hank Pym/Ant-Man was [B][I][U]NEVER[/U][/I][/B] a major superhero. Right before the slap he had stopped being an active superhero for a long long time. He was always seen as the joke Avengers and known if at all for "Creating Ultron" or having a breakdown and creating new superhero IDs (Giant Man, Yellowjacket, Goliath). So Jim Shooter wasn't subtracting or taking away from Hank anything he had before. He never had a major legacy, or real popularity, or any slew of iconic moments as an Avengers.
Scott Lang's Ant-Man was created by David Michelinie before the slap, and Michelinie did that because it seemed to him that Hank had strayed too far from his original conception of being the guy who shrunk and talked to Ants and that too much drama had been added to take him away from his roots, so Scott Lang was invented to take over that dormant mantle of Ant-Man.
The idea of Hank being a "founding Avengers" and so that confers special status to him is this made-up idea that Hankistas invented (and hypocritically at that, since they don't extend the same courtesy to Janet who was even more crucial and instrumental than Hank was) and it's not observed consistently or properly across team books by any change. If people were hung up about "founding Members" all the time that would mean 3-4 films before Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler show up for instance.
With Wanda, she was a popular Avengers and had just had a big part in Busiek/Perez's run, and was also part of X-Men lore, and they then used her in a story that handicaps her from becoming a solo heroine and likewise had this damaging effect on the continuity of Marvel's best selling super-team, the X-Men. So House of M was bigger in scale, whereas Hank's actions affected mainly him, and then eventually Janet.
[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;5530234]The idea of Hank being a "founding Avengers" and so that confers special status to him is this made-up idea that Hankistas invented (and hypocritically at that, since they don't extend the same courtesy to Janet who was even more crucial and instrumental than Hank was) and it's not observed consistently or properly across team books by any change. If people were hung up about "founding Members" all the time that would mean 3-4 films before Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler show up for instance.[/QUOTE]
I mean, I know a lot of Hank Pym fans who respect Janet's founding status and feel like Marvel should be doing more with her, but most comics writers just don't seem to value the classic Avenger ladies that much unless they're Carol or heavily prominent in the MCU.
[QUOTE=chicago_bastard;5530227]Well according to most people the Avengers movies work pretty fine.[/QUOTE]
They're good but not perfect. That's not even what's really being discussed.
[QUOTE=Frontier;5530240]I mean, I know a lot of Hank Pym fans who respect Janet's founding status and feel like Marvel should be doing more with her, but most comics writers just don't seem to value the classic Avenger ladies that much unless they're Carol or heavily prominent in the MCU.[/QUOTE]
Up until WandaVision, only Black Widow was really featured prominently
My understanding is that when the Avengers movie was still in development, some version of Antman and Jan were supposed to appear but because of all the ups and downs with the Edgar Wright movie, the producers weren't sure if the characters would be available. Thus, we got Hawkeye and Black Widow.
[QUOTE=Oberon;5530219]I often thought or sorta thought that the Skrull Invasion should have went all the way and [B]revealed that Pym was a very long term Skrull imposter. [/B]
But I guess that would have been not satisfying to explain, retcon, the infamous abuse.
I'm mostly with the idea that like Bendis to Wanda, this was bad Shooter to Pym.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I know Obe, me too....I thought that was going to be Marvel's chance for someone to fix that terrible thing....
[QUOTE=ed2962;5530479]My understanding is that when the Avengers movie was still in development, some version of Antman and Jan were supposed to appear but because of all the ups and downs with the Edgar Wright movie, the producers weren't sure if the characters would be available. Thus, we got Hawkeye and Black Widow.[/QUOTE]
That's what I heard too, although I also heard Jan was almost in the movie without Pym. I also heard reports of Natasha being in the movie anyway, but I can't be sure
According to Joss Whedon Wasp was considered if Scarlett wouldn't have been available for the movie. This is his quote: "At the very beginning, I wrote entire drafts that had no bearing on what I would eventually film. There was a moment where we thought we weren't gonna have Scarlett [Johansson], and so I wrote a huge bunch of pages starring The Wasp. That was not useful."
So she wasn't considered per se? That's too bad.