Today Empire Cinemas threw the world’s first ever film premiere for ants with a screening of Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man for the leafcutter ants at London Zoo. Bringing the action to the ants with a miniature screen, two speakers, eight seats, branding board, red carpet and popcorn; London Zoo’s leaf-cutter exhibition was transformed into a small-scale cinema for this special unique event.
The leafcutter ants, which can grow up to 1cm in size in their lifetime, attended the film in true premiere style and posed with their leaves for photos in front of the brilli-ant Empire Cinemas miniature branding board and red carpet. The hard-working insects then proceeded to crawl over the seats, popcorn holders and even the screen before the film began. No ants were harmed at the premiere.
Ant-Man, with its stellar cast including Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas and Judy Greer, tells the story of a con man with the ability to shrink in size but grow in strength, who must help his mentor protect the secret of his Ant-Man suit and pull off a heist that will save the world. The film, which screens in Empire Cinemas from July 17th (available in IMAX 3D format in Birmingham and Basildon), was produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Disney.
Jon Nutton, Marketing Director of Empire Cinemas said, “It’s been fantastic working with London Zoo to create the world’s first ever film premiere for ants. With the nature of the film, we wanted to do something special for its launch and we hope the ants enjoyed the premiere as much as our customers enjoy the film in the cinema and in IMAX.”
ZSL London Zoo’s Head of BUGS, Dave Clarke said: “The leafcutter ants here at ZSL London Zoo, of which the soldiers can grow up to 1cm in length, use their amazing strength to transport cut pieces of leaf and flowers to turn it into mulch for their nests. Their behaviour is exactly the same as in the wild where their custom-built exhibit features a rope course to take them from station to station, but the ants also got to explore a new habitat in the form of the miniature cinema. They told us they are hoping the film is brilli-ant, and not an ant-i climax….”
PR stunt it may have been, but I bet it was 1,000 times better to watch than Zoo.
It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.
The usual “TMINE recommends” page features links to reviews of all the shows I’ve ever recommended, and there’s also the Reviews A-Z, for when you want to check more or less anything I’ve reviewed ever. And if you want to know when any of these shows are on in your area, there’s Locate TV – they’ll even email you a weekly schedule.
Summer’s approaching fast now – although judging by the weather, not in the UK – but it’s not here yet, which means the only new show I’ve had the option of reviewing has been Your Family Or Mine. I might have to start watching some UK TV again. Oh dear.
It also means that after the jump, I’ll be looking at another season finale, as well as the last few remaining episodes of a whole bunch of shows. So brace yourself for my thoughts on the latest instalments of American Crime, American Odyssey, Arrow, The Blacklist, Community, The Flash, Forever, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD and Silicon Valley. One of those is for the chop from my viewing list, one of those has had the chop from its network’s viewing list, one of them’s still on the bubble and the rest look set to return for another season at least. I’ll leave you to work out which is which.
But I’ll also have a look over another episode of Wayward Pines. I know you’re looking forward to that, too.
…renews: American Crime, Castle, Agents of SHIELD, Agent Carter, Galavant, Secrets & Lies, How To Get Away With Murder, Black-ish, American Crime and Fresh Off The Boat
Well, the gang’s back together and as if it wasn’t hard enough to give Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Black Widow, Nick Fury, and Maria Hill enough screen time in a movie anyway, Avengers: Age of Ultron writer/director Joss Whedon only went and decided that not only would he try to give Hawkeye a personality (why would anyone want to do that?), he’d crowbar in Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and The Vision, as well as cameos by Falcon and War Machine and a few other old favourites, while dropping in copious references to the other movies of the Marvel Universe.
Still, Whedon is one of the few people who could give it a serious go and Age of Ultron is about the best you could expect of such a Herculean – some may say Argonautian – task. It sees the newly cooperative Avengers coming back together from their respective franchises to fight first Hydra and then Ultron, an artificial intelligence created by the Avengers themselves (or some of them at least) who decides the best way to ensure peace in our time is wipe out the human race to make it really peaceful.
Along the way, we learn a little more about each of the Avengers, get a lot of clever one-liners, hear a lot of bad accents and witness more Easter eggs than at a Hotel Chocolat in April (blink and you’ll have missed references to the future Black Panther and you’ll almost certainly have failed to have noticed the Winter Soldier at one point).
On first viewing in 2D, I found Age of Ultron mostly satisfying, with some standout moments, such as the Hulkbuster, Black Widow’s flashbacks and pretty much any line delivered by James Spader as Ultron or Paul Bettany as The Vision. However, it’s oddly shaped, with some surprisingly dull bits, despite the fact it echoes the structure and plot of the original movie, with an odd character section in the middle of the movie, epic amounts of talking when there should be smacking and various characters – well, mostly Thor – heading off by themselves for no well explored reasons.
A second viewing in 3D proved better, since as well as having the time to process everything that was going on, without constant hopes of something awesome turning up in the next scene and knowing the beats of the movie, it was possible simply to enjoy the characters and those standout moments, even if most characterisation revolved around chances to deliver some trademark WhedonJokes. Tony Stark felt more like Tony Stark than he did in (The) Avengers (Assemble), Hulk was well served (although does no one care about poor old Betty Ross now his solo movies have been cancelled?) and Black Widow got a lot more to do, although I’m not sure making it primarily romantic was necessarily the best choice. Poor old Captain America and Thor suffered the most, either being the butt of jokes or acting a little out of character at times, but I guess not every i could be dotted and t crossed. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver also proved good additions to the series.
And despite being a dyed-in-the-wool 3D hater, I have to admit that the technology has now got to the point where Age of Ultron was better in 3D than 2D, not looking like a Viewmaster slideshow in the middle of the Stygian depths.
And yet… everything felt like it was lacking a little energy. There was no real threat, Ultron being reduced down to little more than a fighty robot in command of an army of metal Chitauri who look like him. The care that Whedon took in the first movie over details, such as having people speaking their own languages, disappeared in between movies – everyone in Eastern Europe apparently speaks English as a lingua franca, not Russian, despite everything being written in Cyrillic. Golden Black Widow opportunity – missed.
Good fun, worth watching, with some real highs, just not (The) Avengers (Assemble) great. Roll on Captain America: Civil War.
