On the whole, 2023’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is regarded as one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s weakest endeavors. Given how it takes place in the Quantum Realm it’s even more special effects driven than the average MCU movie already is, yet the special effects are of the same lackluster quality of most Phase Five movies. That would be okay if the story were anything to write home about, but it’s quite forgettable, all feeling more like a placeholder narrative than a suitably bombastic conclusion to an Ant-Man trilogy. To that point, it spends a substantial amount of time setting up the MCU’s next big bad in Kang, but due to issues outside Disney and Marvel’s control, Jonathan Majors’ character did not, in fact, continue from this point.
So what we’re left with is a movie that feels irrelevant in relation to the universe that surrounds it. Worse yet, it’s one that is neither particularly entertaining nor impressive to look at. And, as far as that latter point goes, there is no greater offender than the look of Corey Stoll’s M.O.D.O.K. And, as it turns out, the stretchy-faced, ridiculous M.O.D.O.K. we got wasn’t the only one on the table of possibilities.
Would This Design Have Worked in the Final Product?
The armored design seen above would have made M.O.D.O.K. a formidable adversary for Scott Lang to face, and while it is infinitely better than the version we got, it’s somewhat easy to see why this direction wasn’t taken. For one, the pre-M.O.D.O.K. reveal suit makes the Darren Cross twist blatantly obvious. That’s just an upgraded Yellowjacket suit. With the comics-accurate rendition in the movie now, we first see M.O.D.O.K. with a helmet on, but we have no idea it’s Cross until that helmet lifts.
But, at the end of the day, the M.O.D.O.K. is Darren twist didn’t even play all that well, so this is a design that would have worked. It’s just that the twist would have been altered somewhat. We would have thought that Lang was going to take on Cross in this new realm, only to learn that he was going to take on M.O.D.O.K., who also just so happens to be Cross. And, if the worry was that audiences would want to see M.O.D.O.K. as the “giant baby” flying around on a little chair, they still would have gotten that once he lifts out of the suit. It’s a neat design, but at the end of the day it probably comes down to intentionally going for a sillier look, because as a whole Quantumania is a sillier-than-normal MCU movie. If they were trying to get laughs, well, mission accomplished, but the laughs more came at the expense of seeing Stoll’s face poorly digitally elongated.
Do you think this version would have worked better than what we got? Let us know in the comments.