If you have read my review of ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ you will know that, expecting practically nothing from it, I ended up finding a couple of hours of unrestricted fun that Marvel Studios hadn’t given me since the start of their, up to now, messy Saga of the Multiverse. But among the many reasons that have made me extol his proposal in the key of a classic adventure a la Weird Science, a specific aspect slipped through that horrified me —and not only aesthetically.
Horror does have a name
This is none other than the MODOK that the director Peyton Reed, the screenwriter Jef Loveness and a Paul Rudd especially involved in the creative process of the Ant-Man films were pulled out of their sleeves; a vision that does not do justice to the grotesque and generally terrifying creation of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
In addition to its hideous appearance in terms of production design and execution – taking it to the real image without betting 100% on the CGI is an almost suicidal maneuver – if anything has generated particular rejection by the marvelite killing machine it has been his conception as a character, who has chosen to recycle Darren from the original ‘Ant-Man’ and turn him into a kind of comic relief —but only halfway.
Of course, criticism of MODOK’s arc and mockery of his appearance have not been long in coming, but Corey Stoll, head the man behind the villain, has defended in Variety both the character and the team responsible of his jump to live action.
“Everyone is trying to make the leap from the static, two-dimensional image on the pages to live action, and some things need to be changed. Jeff Loveness, who wrote the script, and Peyton [Reed] and paul [Rudd] they made a very strong decision to retcon [reinterpretar material original] —Is that the word?— this new raison d’être for MODOK I think it really works. It certainly works in the context of Darren’s arc.”
Is Stoll defending the indefensible? Probably. For now, we just have to cross our fingers so that the multiversal plot of the new MCU saga allows us to see a MODOK in good condition at some point. But, We will always have the hilarious Hulu animated series to enjoy the comic vis of the mechanized organism designed only to kill.