Believability Matters: Why Ant Man 3 Failed and The MCU is in Decline 

"Yeah you risked your life to save the whole entire universe but did you participate in fiery but mostly peaceful protests?" - Ant-Girl.

So many of these female "heroes" feel like villains in how they behave. His daughter's introduction is exactly what you would expect from a villain character, being released from jail, building a super powerful device in secret, berating the hero that saved the world as trash, hating and disrespecting her family, etc. Look at the intro for Aladdin in the original film. He is shown stealing bread which establishes he is intelligent, clever and agile. As well as establishing the poverty in his city. He then comes across two starving children and gives the bread to them even though he is starving as well. Making him instantly likable and endearing. He is a thief but only because he is starving. How many times have we seen these female characters behave like this, she hulk saying forget about helping people I want to be a big shot lawyer. The indian one saying she just wants to be famous and doesnt care about saving anyone. A far cry from Spiderman weeping over his dead uncle ben.

What hurts the most that they turned the lovable daughter from the first films into... This.

“He has no problem violently demanding that women remove their clothes” 😂😂

Arnold mowing doing hordes of orcs with a mini gun is more believable than the tripe we are served. 🤣

“At least we’re doing something that matters” Guess Scott’s daughter forgot the critical role he had in Endgame. You know, helping the Avengers use the Quantum Realm to travel through time, so they could bring back all life that was wiped out of existence by Thanos. But no, “peacefully protesting” trumps that.

"Black Panther is a nine year old girl now" is always a welcome and hilarious observation. Wakanda Forever will never not be a stupid movie that tried and miserably failed to replace Chadwick Boseman's character. Honestly, all of your quips and observations are incredibly funny. I'm glad I found your channel; it really is a magical experience.

Kang spiraling into depression from cohabitating with Antman's insufferable daughter would make for a far more interesting film.

One very funny thing about Cassandra being able to build that device in her home is that she's somehow that smart yet unable to create her own solutions for the issues she's protesting against. It's just as silly as Jon Kent protesting climate change when he's freaking Superman

I laughed a bit too much at the cheap shots taken at Jonathon majors. They might turn out to be unfair.......but by this point, Disney-Marvel has lost the benefit of the doubt. Also, if teenage whelp is so invested in the fate of the poor, why is she wasting her time inventing a techno-mcguffin, or whatever it is she built. She could have used that time/money building an apartment complex for the poor, instead...

The whole "cassie built the quantum telescope" also kinda breaks believably on a couple different levels too... 1. She built it without anyone else IN THE HOUSE knowing she did? With WHAT RESOURCES? 2. If she did build it, why didn't she just GO GET SCOTT earlier? -since she's SO MAD, he "wasn't there"-.. 3. How in the world did she create this thing AND a "suit" PLUS still deal with loss of all the people from the blip (including her dad) AND live a life? If there were enough "pym particles" for her suit, and her trying ex[experiments to make the scope, why were they so few of them min Avengers Endgame? How is Pym himself not having a FIT about Cassie using the particles in her "activism"??? Remember how PROTECTIVE of the suit he was in the first movie? Now it's just being at protests for some reason? (you don't think corpos or governments OR any one of the "bad guy" institutions MIGHT notice? Ten rings, hydra, aim...etc)

Even Ironman explained that a version of the Starks Arc reactor had already been built and Tony had been working on a smaller, more efficient version, on the side for some time( with the financial backing of the Stark Industries mega corporation).

i agree, ant man's daughter had become an extreme unlikeable character, an example of all the wrong things with hollywood nowaday

You make a very good point Scott was trapped for 5 years and to him was only 5 hours. So if hope was gone for 30 years it should have only been 30 hours. How could she have possibly known so much about the quantum realm in like 1 and a half days

Dear Hollywood: It's possible to make female characters that aren't sociopaths.

Let's face it Cassie probably supported the Flagsmashers during the events of Falcon and the Winter soldier because according to Disney and Marvel, protesting is always okay...provided you're protesting the right thing.

Loved the tangent on how awesome the Fly is. Severely underrated film.

You are so right dude. Yes fictional stories aren't real, but they still need to have structure, function, and logic to a certain extent. This "oh its just a stupid fantasy story that isn't real, who cares if it doesn't make sense" is harmful to story telling because it's allowing people to adopt an "anything goes" stance, any rule can be broken, and random things can happen that will destroy the world and story. It would be like Mario going to rescue Peach, so he travels on a short bus that's being driven by Doom Slayer. Homelander and Batman are sitting next to Mario talking about their favorite dogs, at the back of the bus is the Terminator break dancing and on the roof of the bus is a Warhammer 40k Space Marine holding up a Star Wars lightsaber while shouting "Boom shaka laka!" Oh and Spongebob is on his shoulder yelling "Soiled it!" Sounds like nonsense? Yes it is.

Sad that the original got demonetized... but it's awesome that you reuploaded it! I'll give it a second watch-through to see the scene you changed. :)

Dude I LOVE that you play that horrible "I'm a woman" song everytime there is a histrionic moment of female empowerment on screen. That is clutch.

I think the best example of how believable ant man 3 is, is when cassie is first introduced. Not only is the police doing nothing, when she clearly admits shrinking the cop car, but the audience is supposed to believe that this girl, who hasn’t shown prior interest in science, "got really into quantum physics, after reading some of Hank Pym's notes" (in her own words) And just like that, she's able to build the quantum telescope bullshit device.

If Scott's 5 hours in the quantum realm equalled 5 years in real time, then Janet's 30 years in the quantum realm should equal around 200,000 years in real time. This means that by the time she got out, the world should be drastically different since 200 millennia would have passed.

The mashup edit featuring Terminator 2 and LOTR battle scenes is tres magnifique! Also, teenage welp being able to single-handedly build a subatomic Hubble telescope (to traverse into the quantum realm) in her basement without significant funding or advanced experimental physics/engineering equipment is totally believable...if you drink the stupid Kool-Aid.

You know what the real irony is? In the comics, Wasp was actually leader of the Avengers for a while, but they don't seem to be pushing her in the movies NEARLY as much as Cassie Lang! In fact, they've done so little with the Wasp that she's basically a nothing character at this point!

This video was originally published on April 23rd but was demonetized by manual RU-vid review. This is likely due to a scene in which Bird heroically refuses to give up the location of Sauron to Guyladriel. In this Reup version, it has been replaced by one involving Patrick Bateman. The Despot will continue to support Sauron in his heroic resistance against the war criminal Guyladriel, and her allies at Amazon. I humbly ask that you aid me in this struggle by liking and sharing this video. Thank you. New clip is at 23:20 (link to original video in description)

That whole sequence of Cassie torturing Kang had me rolling 😂

So true. Every time they do something extremely inconsistent it’s like a bucket of ice water in the face of a viewer, ‘You know you’re watching a movie and everything isn’t real, right? Alright, I’ll remind you again in a coupla minutes.’ Why would I care what’s happening on the screen if anything can happen regardless of the previous steps and the structure, while the characters are constantly pulling conveniences out of their ass?

I used to use the word “Realism” a lot, but the real word i was meaning to say was “Believability”. I do like Realism but i like “Believability” more, it works for everything and helps you immerse in the world you are consuming and in a world where we would rather escape its this kinds of Stories having unrealistic things but it being Believable is what puts us in they’re world to escape from.

of course, all movies are irreal, but a phrase that I use to distinguish between good vs bad cinema is: “good movies are so good liars that you would like to believe them” good work, look at that 20k now, keep going up👍

Hollywood: It's about logical consistency. Following the rules makes it too hard to establish how awesome certain characters are. We could try but it would just hurt the image we're trying to give them. Fans: You know, we have one simple request. And that is to have sequels which follow the frickin' established logic! Now evidently our narcissistic entertainers keep showing us that won't be done. Does anyone know what we pay these peoples' salaries for? Honestly, throw us a bone here. What do we get? Hollywood: Supplementary material. Fans: Rrrrriiiiiiggghhhht. Hollywood: It is a LOT of supplementary material. Fans: Really? Are they like comic book retcons? Hollywood: Absolutely! Fans: Well, at least you're being honest.

@DespotofAntrim This critique about the difference between Realism vs. Believability is so good it could be the basis of an article/journal essay/paper or even a degree thesis! I think the distinction you make is a very important one that Hollywood & their Mainstream Media establishment enablers have forgotten. Thank you for this insight.

What's also really unfortunate is Ant-Man's daughter looks like Amber Turd. After my friend pointed that out I couldn't unsee it.

And I would like to see a Terminator movie where he guns down hordes of orcs. Shlocky it may be, but it would at least entertain us, unlike the garbage Disney is crapping out these days.

Don't you just love RU-vid policies?

This is why I'm done with the MCU. And Star Wars. And Star Trek. Thanks for another great video, Despot!

A perfect example of believable character building within the MCU is Tony Stark. By Infinity War he had super advanced technology because he has been improving his tech for 10 years by that point. He started out with a suit of scraps in a cave, took notes and made a better version, then took notes and made a better version of that, then continued improving his work until he made nanotech possible.

My favorite part of the video was when he said "This is one of the reasons for the "My favorite part was when..." meme." and then shot the Sword into the exhaust port while shouting "They can take our lives, but they can never take our favorite part!!"

Honestly if Disney wanted to make a good Marvel movie event they should have RU-vid be the next Thanos and the Avengers come together to defeat it

The true sign of great writing is a narrative that sticks to already-established rules. Laziness is breaking it for the sake of conveniences, coincidences, and deus ex machina.

Another sad part is they could EASILY use the explanations to set up other parts of the Marvel canon. Like "oh how did you fund your project?" "I used the money from a scholarship I got from Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM) to do it"

One key reason why MCU and contemporary woke movies are so low-quality is that woke high executives stopped hiring based on personal merits and now they do it based on "inclusivity" criteria.Instead of hiring Nolans or Hitchcoks, they hire activists, "excluded groups" or woke people related to "social sciences".Such people is poorly skilled in good story telling and ends up creating pandering and preaching pieces of video content. Normal movie goers and fans do not care about politics or do not want to go a two-hour session to be accused or insulted; most people who likes cinema goes there to enjoy a quality product or be entertained.Perhaps, politics or social criticism have a place in movies, but it has to be done in subtle and creative ways, far from attacking the audience. Hence, woke IPs are avoided and tend to lose audience expectation and attention, resulting in low box office reception. As woke employees, directors, producers,etc never acknowledge their own failures, they will say discrimination and biggotry are behind their movies' disastrous reception, or maybe, they will alter or disguise figures and data to keep on receiving money to create new woke products. However, such lies have an end like what's going on nowadays.

Well done video. You clearly put a lot of work into this and I was very entertained.

Despot is my new favorite channel. All his points are spot on and every now and then he tosses in a joke in his analysis you're not expecting like Kang's domestic abuse issues.

Bit late to the party but this breakdown honestly makes so much sense. There is a huge difference between a suspension of disbelief to experience a world of fantasy and a fantasy world with no rules. Good writing encourages the former while bad writing does the latter and it's so indicative of lazy 'modern' films and TV. So many people love deep lore on things and they get attached to it. When it's brushed aside arbitrarily because it makes getting to next plot point easier it's depressing, because you are no longer asked to suspend your disbelief, but to disregard all the pre established rules, context and history of a franchise as well as everything you know about how humans interact. Not in service to the story. But because the writers don't know any better and/or can't do any better.

They want us to believe Greta Thunberg is a brilliant physicist or engineer when in reality she barely goes to school and I would be surprised if she knows basic skills for real world.

Another well articulated video describing the problems in "modern entertainment ". Kudos again!

This made me want to watch the Fly again.

Warn a brother, if you’re gonna throw a Misery clip in outta nowhere!!!

Tony Stark: One of the most brilliant scientific minds on the planet, stuck in a cave with nothing but the weapons he designed, with assistance from another scientist, and under extreme duress, was able to create an ugly, bulky, clumsy suit of armor that just barely managed to ward off and then escape a bunch of guys with ak47s, only creating more advanced, impressive suits with functionally unlimited funding, the most advanced machining on the planet, and a very long, ongoing development process. Ant-Man's kid, apparently: creates a subatomic telescope into a realm many of the most brilliant minds barely understand in a basement, alone, from what is assumedly scrap parts. what happened to the mcu

After seeing all of these horrible “girl boss” movies, it was great to see Equalizer 3 today. A great series with an actual man being the hero, saving the weaker woman, like normal life. 👍🏼

"I... am Terminator the White." -Gandolf Schwarzenegger

Janet not telling anyone about Kang is like if banner didn't warn anyone about Thanos when he returned to earth

Glad I found this channel. Always has great takes and hilarious humor mixed in. Hope you're able to grow and enjoy what you do.

@DespotofAntrim where did you get/create your “I’m Woman” meme sound clip from? That’s perfect and should be picked up by other culture critics!

Your videos keep getting better and better, a lot of work went into this and it shows. Fantastic video and I agree with every point you make. You and Chris Gore need to do a podcast together, lol.

I keep coming back to this video for the humor and good points

This is the best channel I've subbed since Critical Drinker. Just great work.

"I got really into the quantum realm" is the same as "somehow Palpatine returned"

Damn…I thought you put out a new video but it’s just a re upload. I love your content man….very quality. Keep it up and you’re going to gain a bigger and bigger following.

But these new marvel movies are written for the people who never leave their room, the same room they grew up in. They still live in as adults with their parents. But somehow fancy themselves super geniuses that can do anything even though they’ve never done anything. They don’t know enough to know they don’t know. So believability for you and me is very different than for those poor delusional people.

Since we're on the topic of believability, I really want to see a black Mulan who was born in Iceland to a Mexican mother and a Jewish father and has an Indian sister, and they all fought the Spartans in order to save China from the French and then we'll enjoy the chaos

I want an Arnold x Lord of the Rings crossover setting up a Lord of the Rings x Back to the Future sequel right NOW 😂😂. I'd pay more to watch that 😂😂😂

The MCU USED to understand believability. When Tony Stark builds an Iron Man suit in a cave with a box of scraps, it's because it's not the first time he's built one, he's spent his entire life and his fortune studying and developing weapons and the suits in particular, and he has his whole company and military funding behind him. It's still an incredible feat but he's put the work in (and so have the scriptwriters) to make it possible. Even Shuri in Black Panther, while a bit less believable because she's so young, is working with the entire nation of Wakanda's scientific research budget and presumably has a lot of scientific civil service people to help her, and being royalty, she's been raised from birth to go into some kind of national service and will have had the best education available. They could've easily fixed it by saying Teenage Whelp had worked on it with Hank Pym or Tony Stark (or Pepper Potts if they wanted a female character who has a believable engineering background). Have the adults say she's a brilliant student or whatever, maybe have them say she's a bit reckless and cocky but has some weird and wonderful ideas, show her idealism as a character flaw that affects her science work. That would make her more believable AND relatable, because nobody, especially not kids, can accomplish great things completely on their own and without a lot of hard work and experience. It gives her a journey too, she can learn the value of not cutting corners and making sure her inventions are reliable and trustworthy instead of coasting on her talent. It's the same reason the animated Mulan is a better character than the live-action one: she starts out being crap at the military, but then works hard and smart and gets good. That's far more interesting to watch than someone who starts out good and stays good.

Dear God,when that girl opened her mouth and started babbling my first thought was,"She sounds just like Kamala Harris." 🤢

To be fair, they explained off-film that in "Spider-Man: No Way home", all of those written stories, pictures, etc. remain, but they don't register in people's minds; the memory of seeing/reading them slips away like water off a duck's back.

A spot-on diagnosis. It was a pleasure to watch.

"You want logic in a movie about (fill in the blank)!"... In the first few minutes, Despot manages to logically and coherently explain an issue that I've grown weary of trying to explain to people who use that quote. Movies need to have rules no matter how absurd the premise might be. Just because a movie has magic or monsters doesn't mean that you get to behave illogically and/or break all the laws of the sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Biology, etc...) and erase all believability. I really hate 'Deus Ex Machina' crap like this... Boy wizard overcomes powerful, evil sorcerer and doesn't understand why... "You see Harry, You have always had the power of good. Your goodness is so powerful, it manifested itself into the corporeal world to strike down evil because good is always more powerful than bad.

Something i did notice on a rewatch is that the ability to shrink comes from the gloves not the suit. When captured they don't have the gloves on. I do agree the suits should have been taken away.

Btw.: Wonder wether the Terminator's human casualty counter could be modified to count orcs?

Comparing the hodgepodge that is the Marvel "multiverse" to the 1980s David Cronenberg body-horror classic "The Fly" wherein a well intentioned but deeply in over his head,naive young scientist succumbs to his own hubris and destroys himself (as an analogy for a terminal illness) is right on the money. But arguably a better, more well known and recent example would be Rick and Morty.

Believability Matters, so you best believe that's why I clicked the like button to show your video matters

The use of that song you used in your body positivity video took me tf out AND THEN YOU DID IT AGAIN

And all those Johnathan Majors comments just got funnier as not only is he most likely going to jail, but he's been fired and his career is over.

the editing on the arnie vs orcs part, i loved it :3

I saw The Fly in the theatre three times. I honestly don't think I've ever seen a Disney or super hero movie in a theatre. Unless my parents dragged me along to The Jungle Book or something back when I was a wee lad that I don't remember.

My wife and I tried to watch this with the grandkids, but it was so boring we fucked off to the pub, little buggers didn`t buy me pint though, twats :))

I scream and weep with rage @ u r rampant mysogeny.... but i cant stop watching because of your legendary mash-up edits

Where has this channel been? How have u never popped up in my suggestions

I Make it my Mission to watch your videos when they come out so I don’t miss Contant in the re-uploads

i love how 90% of the video is not even about antman, the video end and i have to look back at the title to rembember what was the movie that he's reviewing

I’m starting to actually believe AI is writing these things

RU-vid has done a huge disservice for not recommending your channel to me sooner.

It took me several minutes to stop being horrified all over my body again at that hobbling scene from Misery, dammit. I love your work though.

Let’s pray that GOTG 3 makes more money than Ant Man. To be honest, Thanos was handled better than Kang the Conquerer. Being Kang more threatening than Thanos. What a shame 🤦‍♂️

I remember that scene from first Mortal Kombat movie when Sonya were about to break Kanos neck with her legs. They did good casting in that movie, but that Sonya actress had so non athletic soft and gentle thighs that there were no way that you could believe that she could break Kanos neck! Hell, I wouldnt mind taking Kanos place there... When such small detail pokes your eyes, you can imagine when they put some utterly nonsense in new movies

A Terminator/LoTR cross-over would have been WAY more entertaining than anything in the MCU

Honestly Rings Of Power should go full fan-fiction and have Shrek just make out with everyone.

Some people can't be told, they have to be shown.

Wasn't the problem for me. When they decided to make his daughter hate him and disrespect him, I decided to keep my money in my pocket.

Why would men support Disney? Look at the way Antman’s daughter negs him after he’s saved half the world fighting a war and losing friends. “What’ve you done since.” In an accusatory tone tearing down and belittling his service. He’s effectively a veteran and Disney is saying it’s ok to chide them for not doing enough. Screw that.

That Terminator/Helm's Deep edit was too slick, and hilarious!

I believe the biggest problem I have with your videos is that I now have seen them all :)

Imagine being such a brat that you talk shit to the man who played a vital part in saving half of all life in the universe.

The misery reference 👌..great content

Ant-man's daughter was the worst part of this movie!! "Rent is so unaffordable right now" What the f@$k does high rents have to do with this movie? This is what happens when you allow women to invade a male space, that sounds sexist but facts don't lie. Comic books, sci-fi, action figures, cartoons and superheroes were created and targeted for boys/male audiences. For decades, these industries had absolutely no problems selling their products/shows/movies to their core audience but fast foward to current times, these same industies started to include or replace their lead male characters with women or race swap theses characters and their audience clearly didn't like they saw on the movie scene. Here's a few examples.....Ray from Star Wars can do everything right the first times she tries? Wtf is that? Black Panther's sister becomes the next Black Panther overnight and she weights maybe 90 pounds? Wtf is that? In Thor Love and Thunder, Thor's girlfriend becomes The "Mighty" Thor and she's more powerful than the original Thor? Wtf is that? Captain Marvel is who inspired the Avengers? Wtf is that? In the Black Widow movie, the Taskmaster is a woman? Wtf is that? In the She-Hulk tv series, the She-Hulk can do everything better than the original Hulk? Wtf is that? In the live action Peter Pan Movie, Wendy slaps Peter Pan! Wtf is that?

I'll gladly watch again! Was a great vid! 👍 Get hit with a copyright or something?

That "ITS COFFEE" TikTok is so cursed and so accurate to how vapid teenage girls actually are irl. This movie made Cassie insufferable when she was a sweet and likable character in the previous ones.

21:50 Terminator taking down 10000 orcs is still more believable than ant-man 3.

Holy crap Despot, the Arnold Schwarzeneggar Sitcom and American Psycho skits were outrageous! I'll happily praise you and hold you to a high regard in my household! You sir, may openly tax me, Mr. Leader. Being serious, you're hilarious, my guy. I would not mind seeing more of these skits in the future.

The splicing together of T2 and Helm's Deep is epic! 🤣