Ant-Man (2015)

Directed by Peyton Reed (Bring It On, Down with Love)

Written by Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam McKay, & Paul Rudd (much more on this below)

Ant-Man was, in many ways, a return to form for the MCU. Their first single-hero origin story in four years, it’s a deliberately small, lower-stakes story. I think it’s important to remember where this film is placed within the grand scheme of things. Coming after Age of Ultron, a movie so bloated and overfull, it really feels like a breath of fresh air, and that’s something that can easily be missed watching it outside of that context. As the movie opens, we’re introduced to Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), a con with a conscience and a little daughter that he wants to see again. He’s a security expert, and although he tries to go straight he is eventually lured back into doing one last job. He is unaware, though, that the target is Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), an ex-SHIELD super scientist, and that the burglary is really an audition. Lang becomes Ant-Man with the use of Pym’s super suit, and must train in order to retrieve a dangerous prototype shrinking suit being developed by Pym’s protege, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll). He is aided in his mission by Pym’s daughter, Hope (Evangeline Lilly), and eventually a ragtag group of his ex-con friends led by Luis (Michael Peña). Lang must learn to use his new powers to stop Cross and keep his daughter safe.

So far, so Marvel movie, but the delightful thing here is the small scale (pun intended) on which the movie works. Scott’s just a guy who wants to see his daughter, and the stakes in the final battle are simply keeping her safe. That’s a wonderfully human turn for this series, where every movie seems to feel the need to save the entire world. The villain has no grandiose schemes to conquer the world; quite the contrary, in fact. He’s incredibly banal, almost to the point of being pathetic. In between talking about his morning meditation rituals and begging his father figure to be impressed by him, he performs dangerous animal testing and passively-aggressively murders his business competition. All he wants to do is make a bunch of money and humiliate Hank Pym while doing it. And everything else about the movie matches this small scale. The final fight doesn’t take place on a floating city or through the streets of New York. It takes place in a little girl’s bedroom, in one of the most delightful setpieces that Marvel ever put together for any of its movies. Toys and trinkets become weapons of destruction in one of the best fusions of humor and action in any of these movies. Ant-Man is a heist movie at heart, and it works well on that front. It’s got your requisite group of sympathetic criminals, each with a particular skill, and the chemistry between this group is easy and natural from their first scene together. Really, most of the film just works, and that’s honestly kind of surprising for a number of reasons.

Ant-Man is known for being basically the first Marvel movie to have an incredibly troubled production cycle. This movie was originally supposed to be an Edgar Wright movie, of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame. He actually pitched the idea all the way back in 2003, when this whole MCU thing wasn’t even a glimmer in anyone’s eye, and he never gave up on the project for the next decade. In 2013, he was finally allowed to begin filming his long-gestating ideas. At that point, he had submitted three drafts of the script. After two more drafts, he left the project, angry that Marvel wouldn’t meet him halfway on a number of issues. They had asked to rewrite the script without him, and he was not having it. Then they got in two more writers, including the star of the film, and did another two drafts. They also finally found a director, Peyton Reed, willing to step in after so much work had already been done. In short, it’s a miracle that this movie didn’t end up terrible. According to accounts at the time, a lot of Wright’s core concepts and ideas still made their way into the final film, but a lot of the incidental detail and flavor was removed. Wright is known for his stylistic and exaggerated comic style, so it’s hard to see this as anything but a studio wanting to sand down some of the potential rough edges of a difficult director. Like many other Edgar Wright fans, I do sometimes wonder what kind of crazy movie we might have gotten, but I don’t worry too much about it. I attribute much of its success despite these issues to the charisma of the actors and the solid structure of the film, which is probably mostly down to its original screenwriter.

The weaknesses of the film are few, but noticeable. They tried to lampshade the ridiculousness of putting Scott in the suit as opposed to the much more qualified, experienced, and intelligent woman. It didn’t work. You can’t write a female character that capable and then sideline her for the movie, and drawing attention to it by having it be a plot point doesn’t help or fix the issue. The romance, as well, feels like it comes out of nowhere. There is, at best, a grudging respect developing between the two characters, and then suddenly they’re making out. It should definitely have been saved for the next movie, even if they were insistent on doing it at all. It also has the Marvel problem of being a little too liberal with the policy of undercutting serious moments with jokes. When done right, those moments add to the film, but here the timings are frequently off, and sometimes they even choose moments that shouldn’t be undercut at all. When done incorrectly, it makes the characters look either callous or stupid, and that’s not a good look for your heroes.

Those problems are largely overshadowed by the sense of fun the movie has, though. The ants themselves are a huge part of this, and shouldn’t be forgotten. This movie really uses them throughout the entire plan, and that’s cool. Ant-Man is more interesting than just Gets-Small-Man, and this movie remembers that. Luis’s stories are simply wonderful, and make me smile no matter how many times I see them. Shrinking and growing everyday object (a lawn gnome, a Thomas the Train toy, etc.) is delightful visual humor. The list goes on and on. Even though the script is a little generic, and there are definitely a few problems with the narrative, the overall feeling of enjoyment this movie gives you comes out on top. It may be a slight, inconsequential entry in the Marvel canon, but it’s still one that’s worth your time, especially after the drag of Ultron. Recommended.

Overall:

Stray Thoughts:

• I love David Dastmalchian in this movie. His Russian hacker is so fun and funny in pretty much every scene. The guy should get more work.
• I love how game Hayley Atwell is to come in for these things, even if she only gets about two minutes of screentime each (as is the case here). Peggy Carter is the best.
• Using the fisheye lens for the first big shrinking scene is a nice touch.
• For that matter, the whole mad chaos of Scott’s first shrinking adventure is wonderful. I especially love him trying not to get stomped to death at the rave.
• Mad props for the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids reference. What many may not know is that Stan Lee actually pitched an Ant-Man movie in the 80s, but was turned down because it was thought it wouldn’t be able to compete with Honey. For real.
• The Anthony Mackie guest appearance (which I remember no one saw coming on original release) still kills. That guy is a treasure, and he should be the next Captain America. He won’t be, but he should.
• The bad guy, in traditional Western movie fashion, hurts an innocent animal to prove his evilness. I love stuff like that.
• Post Credits scene 1: Again, teasing that Hope will eventually get to be a superhero in her own right does not retroactively fix the mistake you made in this movie. Nice try.
• Post Credits scene 2: Very nice tease for Civil War, including the reveal that Ant-Man would feature in that movie. Simple, exciting.
• Stan Lee cameo: This is like the third in the series of Stan Lee being kind of a pervy old dude, and it’s getting a little old at this point, but Michael Peña’s narration makes up for it a little.