August is coming, and Disney Plus is set to bolster its line-up with three new additions to its ever-expanding streaming library of superhero adventures.
Most interesting is Ant-Man and the Wasp. Sure, the Ant-Man movies feature smaller-scale adventures than other superhero films, but doesn’t mean they’re any less important to the overall MCU plot. In Avengers: Endgame, Pym Particles and the Quantum Realm became the key to reversing Thanos’ snap, and they’re established and explained in this movie.
Even so, the adventures of Scott Lang have been some of the lowest-grossing efforts in the MCU’s history. Listing the 23 MCU movies in order of box office performance, Ant-Man comes in at number 20 and Ant-Man and the Wasp at 18. That doesn’t mean they were flops, just that they’re more likely to be the MCU films that audiences haven’t seen yet. That might change on August 14th when Ant-Man and the Wasp joins Ant-Man on the streaming service, though.
Another cool addition is 2000’s X-Men. This just celebrated its 20th anniversary and can make a decent claim to be the first modern superhero movie. Sure, there were superhero films before it, but X-Men displayed a relative faithfulness to the original comics whereas previous adaptations were notorious for changing things. The effects are a bit dated and the script has some real clunkers in it, but I still think it’s a really fun adventure. It lands on August 7th.
Finally, and definitely the least worthy of praise, is 2005’s Fantastic Four. Despite some neat casting, this is a straight-up bad movie that fails to capture the mood of the comics. From a 2020 perspective, the only real thing of note here is seeing Chris Evans in a Marvel film where he’s not playing Captain America. But honestly, if you want a superhero movie you could do far, far better than this. If you’re still game though, Fantastic Four hits Disney Plus on August 28th.