While strolling into my local AMC Theatre bright and early on a Saturday morning (10:30 a.m.) to take in an IMAX screening of Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, I turned my eyes to the concession stand for something even remotely appropriate for the relatively early hour. Sadly, they were all sold out of breakfast nachos and bacon, egg and cheese dogs (my favorite), so I went with a large popcorn and a Diet Coke. After all, butter goes on toast just fine and corn is the base for just about every cereal known to man, so I was able to justify the chronologically questionable dietary decision. And Diet Coke is the third cousin of coffee (once removed), so I think we can all give me a pass on that one.
But there was something else that gave me pause at the snack
counter as the theater employee slowly blinked at the 39-year-old man in a Baby
Groot T-shirt: no less than seven Ant-Man helmets staring out at the lobby from a dimly
lit display.
Ant-Man helmets with light-up features.
Ant-Man helmets that open from the top to hold popcorn.
ANT-MAN HELMETS THAT LET YOU EAT SNACKS OUT OF PAUL RUDD’S
HEAD.
The price? $29.99. The value? Infinite.
I’ve bought a lot of popcorn buckets in my time. Yes, that’s
a sentence I typed in earnest. I have a Ghostbusters: Afterlife bucket
shaped like the rusted Ecto-1 from the film. I have a tin Star Wars: The
Force Awakens BB-8 bucket, which has taken up residence in our laundry room
as a dryer lint repository. So, yeah, I’m kind of a bucket head. No big deal.
But THIS? This was perhaps the finest licensed popcorn bucket I had ever seen. The
image above simply doesn’t do it justice.
So it is with great
pain that I inform you that I did not purchase AMC’s Ant-Man helmet popcorn
bucket. Perhaps it was the $30 price tag that ultimately dissuaded me. Maybe it was the
realization that I have to somehow make ROOM in my collection for things like
this. At the time, though, my public response was far more practical as I slid
away from the counter with my absolutely insane first meal of the day. “Aw,
man,” I said with a sigh. “Maybe if you could actually wear it … “
Yep. That’s what clinched it for me, at least in the eyes of AMC Theatres.
Anyway, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is a really
fun movie that I liked but did not love. Jonathan Majors is a phenomenal Kang
who I look forward to seeing much more of in the future, and Rudd and the rest
of the cast brought a charming “let’s just go with it” vibe to what is, at
times, a very silly movie that hints at higher stakes later in Phase 5. If you
liked Peyton Reed’s prior Ant-Man flicks, you’ll probably like this one,
which steers very close to the tried-and-true Marvel formula – especially in
the third act. There’s not a ton of meat on the bone from a narrative perspective,
but it’s a fun time at the movies that gets weird with it. And that’s
fine by me.
To reiterate, I liked Quantumania. Perhaps I would
have loved it if I bought that Ant-Man popcorn bucket, but I guess I’ll
never know in this reality. But somewhere out there in the infinite Multiverse
exists a James Wortman proudly displaying that bucket on his shelf (but not on
his head). If you meet that guy before I do, ask him what he thinks.
