Why did they do my guy MODOK like that.
Almost everything about MODOK in the entire film feels like it was played for nothing more than a joke, and it gets me because when you stop to think about it, MODOK is unique in that - yes he's a floating head in a funny chair - but he's also a Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing. This dude is serious. Like, he's a high-up member of AIM, one of the more important groups in the world of Marvel overall, and yet he's constantly played for laughs because "haha funny head".
(Yes, MODOK works well as a joke in some cases, but having him be a joke and nothing more feels a bit... underwhelming. Iron Man making jokes about him in the comics works because MODOK is actually still a threat. Ant-Man doing the same in Quantumania doesn't really work because he's literally never even considered a threat.)
I feel like Quantumania's interpretation of MODOK could have worked in some ways - the backstory as to how and why he looks like that is a solid idea - but there's so much that's wrong with it, and it's not just the CGI. (Though, two things: one, it'd be nice if his face were less horizontally stretched and there was more skin to either side which'd make him look less like he was stretched in MS Paint, and two, it'd be nice if there was more visual feedback for when his weapons retract.) Just his whole character arc, his basic design, the fact that he's always smiling like the bald guy from Alvin and the Chipmunks when the mask comes off (THE FACT THAT, ONCE AGAIN, THE MASK ALWAYS COMES OFF).
I'm not a professional filmwriter and I'm not making millions on this sort of thing, so my opinion means nothing here, but I think it'd have been really cool to have leaned into the body horror aspect of MODOK's design. Him being absolutely enraged at the fact that Scott essentially disfigured him and going after him as a result as opposed to just being a half-baked secondary antagonist would make him feel a lot more personal, and it'd be really neat if his heel-face turn at the end of the film wasn't allied with the heroes, but instead creating a third insurgent force allied against Kang and the heroes.
I suppose it's fine that he dies, and I'll be the first to admit that MODOK was never going to be easy to transfer into live action. Even so, there's a lot of aspects to both his character and design that just add up to make him... kind of disappointing. Weirdly, Marvel's Avengers does a GREAT job of indicating what MODOK could look like in a realistic artstyle - it leans into the body horror aspect in a solid way, and it also actually makes him feel threatening as opposed to looking like a smiling egg.
But that's just me. I know I'm probably sounding like a whiny ***** about all of this because I genuinely do get that it's difficult to interpret a character like MODOK into live-action, and I'll admit I probably couldn't do much better, but man... it's hard not to feel like he's got so much more potential.
Almost everything about MODOK in the entire film feels like it was played for nothing more than a joke, and it gets me because when you stop to think about it, MODOK is unique in that - yes he's a floating head in a funny chair - but he's also a Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing. This dude is serious. Like, he's a high-up member of AIM, one of the more important groups in the world of Marvel overall, and yet he's constantly played for laughs because "haha funny head".
(Yes, MODOK works well as a joke in some cases, but having him be a joke and nothing more feels a bit... underwhelming. Iron Man making jokes about him in the comics works because MODOK is actually still a threat. Ant-Man doing the same in Quantumania doesn't really work because he's literally never even considered a threat.)
I feel like Quantumania's interpretation of MODOK could have worked in some ways - the backstory as to how and why he looks like that is a solid idea - but there's so much that's wrong with it, and it's not just the CGI. (Though, two things: one, it'd be nice if his face were less horizontally stretched and there was more skin to either side which'd make him look less like he was stretched in MS Paint, and two, it'd be nice if there was more visual feedback for when his weapons retract.) Just his whole character arc, his basic design, the fact that he's always smiling like the bald guy from Alvin and the Chipmunks when the mask comes off (THE FACT THAT, ONCE AGAIN, THE MASK ALWAYS COMES OFF).
I'm not a professional filmwriter and I'm not making millions on this sort of thing, so my opinion means nothing here, but I think it'd have been really cool to have leaned into the body horror aspect of MODOK's design. Him being absolutely enraged at the fact that Scott essentially disfigured him and going after him as a result as opposed to just being a half-baked secondary antagonist would make him feel a lot more personal, and it'd be really neat if his heel-face turn at the end of the film wasn't allied with the heroes, but instead creating a third insurgent force allied against Kang and the heroes.
I suppose it's fine that he dies, and I'll be the first to admit that MODOK was never going to be easy to transfer into live action. Even so, there's a lot of aspects to both his character and design that just add up to make him... kind of disappointing. Weirdly, Marvel's Avengers does a GREAT job of indicating what MODOK could look like in a realistic artstyle - it leans into the body horror aspect in a solid way, and it also actually makes him feel threatening as opposed to looking like a smiling egg.
But that's just me. I know I'm probably sounding like a whiny ***** about all of this because I genuinely do get that it's difficult to interpret a character like MODOK into live-action, and I'll admit I probably couldn't do much better, but man... it's hard not to feel like he's got so much more potential.