Marvel's Ant-Man: July 17, 2015 (1 Viewer)

[Jonathan Perregaux]

So if Ant-Man shrunk the Hulk, he'd be in small, small trouble.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Road to Endgame Revisit #13:
If Avengers: Age of Ultron let the spectacle outpace the characterization, let the needs of the multi-film arcs overwhelm the needs of that specific film, then Ant-Man arrived a few months later to close out Phase Two as a real palette cleanser. It's the antithesis of these big, globetrotting epics.

Of all the MCU movies made so far, this one by far had the most troubled production. Kevin Feige was only convinced to bring the character to the silver screen in his own movie because of Edgar Wright's very specific, very personal vision. But over time, as the MCU grew and its ambitions and world building expanded, that vision fit less and less comfortably with everything else that Marvel Studios was doing. Wright left the project in May 2015, only weeks before shooting was scheduled to begin. Most of the cast -- Michael Douglas as Hank Pym, Paul Rudd as Scott Lang, Evangeline Lilly as Hope Van Dyne, Michael Peña as Luis, and Corey Stoll as Darren Cross -- were already signed onto the project. Peyton Reed signed on as director the following month, two months before the start of principal photography.

Listening to the commentary, one thing that becomes clear is that the writing on this thing was a total shit show. The bones of the movie were already there, as indicated by Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish getting a full screenplay credit in addition to the story credit, but the script was being pieced and cobbled together even as they were shooting. Star Paul Rudd worked with Adam McKay on drafts, but then Gabriel Ferrari & Andrew Barrer and Eric Pearson all did rewrites as well. Usually these circumstances are not a recipe for success, but the final product for Ant-Man works. You can feel the seams in some places, but not usually in ways that detract.

The movie is anchored by two emotional through lines: Scott Lang wants to be there for his daughter, something that his recent incarceration has made incredibly difficult. Hank Pym and his daughter Hope need to heal the fractures in their relationship. That's it. It's simple, and it's streamlined, and it's an elegant framework to hang the rest of the movie on.

The threat that spurs our characters into action is pretty meh: Pym's old protege Darren Cross is a bit of a homcidal maniac, and he's about to weaponize Pym's shrinking technology in a manner that promises to be destabilizing to the world order. It tracks, it feels logical and grounded in the world, but we ultimately don't really care that much about it. Cross is a bad dude who needs to be stopped, but the parts of the movie that are more interesting are watching the characters interact with each other.

Paul Rudd is great as Scott Lang. It's a tough line he has to walk: a brilliant engineer who is also hapless, a nice and pleasant guy who also has some genuinely rougher edges. His scenes with Abby Ryder Fortson as Scott's daughter Cassie all work. You believe there is genuine warmth and affection between the two of them. You also believe him as the brains of his small crew of petty criminals, and as the uneasy third wheel in the Pym family drama.

Michael Douglas is a pretty big get as Hank Pym, and it's casting that works because you could picture him in the mid-eighties circa Romancing the Stone starring in an Ant-Man movie when Hank Pym wore the suit. The characterization is fairly complex for a movie like this; he's brilliant but prickly, with anger and pride issues. He was not much of a team player even before his wife disappeared into the quantum realm, and his life has imploded since then. His attempts to protect his daughter Hope have only served to drive her further away, and his recruitment of Scott Lang has certain Machiavellian overtones: He basically turns his basement safe into a honeypot to coerce Scott into putting on the suit. In his efforts to keep Hope safe, he doesn't have many compunctions about risking the life of Cassie's father.

As Hope, Evangeline Lilly has the rather thankless task of being tough, cold, competent, and resentful. She's a mirror held up to reveal the flaws of Scott and her father. But she does a good job with it.

The supporting cast is pretty terrific. Michael Peña is the standout as Luis, Scott's former cellmate who helps him get reestablished on the outside. When Scott asks how things have gone since he got out, Luis tells him that his girlfriend left him, his mother died, and his father got deported. But, he adds with a huge grin on his face, that meant that he got his father's van! Luis's unerring enthusiasm, and his unexpected and varied interests and passions that are slowly revealed over the course of the movie, light up every scene he's in. Peña just runs away with the movie. There's a wonderful device where he tells a story, and the flashbacks are all lip synched to his paraphrasing and edited to the rhythms of his meandering narration. Tip "T.I." Harris and David Dastmalchian also get a lot of fun moments as the other two members of their crew.

On the home front, Judy Greer is probably more casting than you need as Scott's ex-wife Maggie, but she's really great in the role. You can see how they could have gotten together, and you can see why she's done with him. Bobby Cannavale is also predictably great as Maggie's future husband and Cassie's stepfather. He's an obstacle to Scott throughout the movie, but he's not a villain.

The macrophotography when Scott goes small is the major draw for the movie, and all of those sequences work wonderfully, delivering a very different kind of spectacle than we've been accustomed to from Marvel movies. The climactic battle, in Cassie's bedroom, is a wonderful send-up of these kind of final confrontation, with a ludicrous upheaval of scale. The brief foray into the quantum realm is suitably trippy.

I really appreciated the decision to set the movie in San Francisco. The nature of the Marvel Comics lineage is that New York City gets very overexposed through the various movies. The Iron Man movies are kind of generic southern California. I like it when movies like this eke out a new little corner of the universe to make their own. As a similar example, "Cloak & Dagger" gets a lot of traction from being the only property in Marvel's version of New Orleans.

I love the look of this movie. Russell Carpenter's cinematography is among my favorite work of the more grounded Earth-based MCU movies. He shot a lot of James Cameron's movies, and the look here is pretty while still feeling credible as an action picture/heist movie.

I love Christophe Beck's score, too. It's one of the most memorable MCU scores, sneaky and playful and lively, brassy at times and kind of retro. It often sounds more like the score to a rat pack heist movie than the score to a superhero movie, and I love it for that.

By the end, what we're left with is a fun time at the movies, with an engaging new group of characters. Just what the doctor ordered.

Connections to other parts of the MCU: The film opens with a scene set in 1989, with the SHIELD headquarters still under construction. Hank Pym has discovered Howard Stark's attempts to replicate his shrinking technology and he resigns in protest. The scene -- in addition to featuring a deaged Michael Douglas that falls very uncomfortably into the uncanny valley -- features the return of Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, well into middle age at this point in the story. There is an interlude in the middle of the film in which Scott needs to steal something from the new Avengers facility in upstate New York that was introduced at the end of Age of Ultron. Anthony Mackie appears as Falcon, the token Avenger present at the facility. The mid-credits scenes set up Captain America: Civil War and Ant-Man and the Wasp.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Ant-Man is probably not one of the very best in the series, but there’s something about it that makes it one of my very favorites. Everything about it just works for me.

It’s also one of Marvel’s better 3D titles. They use 3D in a way that enhances every scene with the suit in use. It adds a lot to making it feel real to me, and is part of why this is one of the most visually fun films in the series.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Ant-Man is probably not one of the very best in the series, but there’s something about it that makes it one of my very favorites. Everything about it just works for me.

It’s also one of Marvel’s better 3D titles. They use 3D in a way that enhances every scene with the suit in use. It adds a lot to making it feel real to me, and is part of why this is one of the most visually fun films in the series.

I just think it's a very entertaining and fun film. It's similar to "Guardians of the Galaxy" in that regard.

 

[Sam Favate]

Despite the problems this one had in production, the end result was really good. They scored a win with getting Peyton Reed to take over. He's the reason the two films have been so much fun.

 

[dpippel]

One of the things that makes Ant-Man great for me, other than the humor and great performances all around, is the small scale (no pun intended) of the film. It's not about cosmic dangers, or saving the human race, or intergalactic beings. It's a personal, character-driven story with fantastical elements that just plain works, and that makes it unique within the MCU. It's one of my favorite Marvel movies.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I even love the little details in Ant-Man to explain why the other heroes don't join in. Paul Rudd has a line at one point where he asks if this mission shouldn't be Avengers territory, and Michael Douglas pithily dismisses him by saying that they're probably too busy dropping continents on people, or something to that effect. Just that little dialogue exchange to emphasize that this exists in a world with other heroes, but that they're making a choice not to reach out to them, goes a long way to keep the world believable.

For me, a major failing of the recent "Aquaman" film was that the violence and chaos and threat of destruction reached worldwide proportions. While it's understandable that Superman and Batman aren't going to get involved in an undersea turf war, you'd figure that the moment the entire planet was in jeopardy, Superman would make it his business to intervene. But it's never mentioned once. That's a problem with doing superhero movies in a world where Superman - who can hear anything happening on the planet everywhere at all times - exists. It's not realistic that he wouldn't step in when the fate of the entire planet is at stake.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I even love the little details in Ant-Man to explain why the other heroes don't join in. Paul Rudd has a line at one point where he asks if this mission shouldn't be Avengers territory, and Michael Douglas pithily dismisses him by saying that they're probably too busy dropping continents on people, or something to that effect. Just that little dialogue exchange to emphasize that this exists in a world with other heroes, but that they're making a choice not to reach out to them, goes a long way to keep the world believable.

For me, a major failing of the recent "Aquaman" film was that the violence and chaos and threat of destruction reached worldwide proportions. While it's understandable that Superman and Batman aren't going to get involved in an undersea turf war, you'd figure that the moment the entire planet was in jeopardy, Superman would make it his business to intervene. But it's never mentioned once. That's a problem with doing superhero movies in a world where Superman - who can hear anything happening on the planet everywhere at all times - exists. It's not realistic that he wouldn't step in when the fate of the entire planet is at stake.

Excellent points!

 

[Jake Lipson]

I even love the little details in Ant-Man to explain why the other heroes don't join in. Paul Rudd has a line at one point where he asks if this mission shouldn't be Avengers territory, and Michael Douglas pithily dismisses him by saying that they're probably too busy dropping continents on people, or something to that effect. Just that little dialogue exchange to emphasize that this exists in a world with other heroes, but that they're making a choice not to reach out to them, goes a long way to keep the world believable.

It also makes sense why Hank would be weary of The Avengers because if you involve The Avengers, you're involving Tony Stark, and the movie established at the beginning the thorny relationship between Hank and Howard Stark. That touch carries through nicely to Ant-Man and the Wasp, when Hank is upset that Scott took his technology to Germany. You know he's upset about Scott breaking the law and getting him and Hope into hot water, but he's also got to be pissed that Tony Stark is now aware of the technology as a result of that airport scuffle. It's not only a legal thing but a personal thing for Howard, which I think works quite well.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I’m going to preface this by saying I know it’s ridiculous.

But I’m watching Ant-Man now, and at the scene where Michael Douglas says to Paul Rudd, “I need you to be the Ant-Man.”

And each and every time I’ve heard that line, my brain has always then replayed Jimmy Stewart in “Vertigo” saying to Kim Novak, “I need you to be Madeline for a while.”

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I don't know what to tell you, man. Brains are weird. Mine goes to bizarre places all the time.

 

[Sam Favate]

We watch too many movies. Same kind of thing happens to me.

 

[dpippel]

I’m going to preface this by saying I know it’s ridiculous.

But I’m watching Ant-Man now, and at the scene where Michael Douglas says to Paul Rudd, “I need you to be the Ant-Man.”

And each and every time I’ve heard that line, my brain has always then replayed Jimmy Stewart in “Vertigo” saying to Kim Novak, “I need you to be Madeline for a while.”

Every time I hear Douglas say that line, I'm absolutely amazed that the people involved were able to actually make this film WORK. It's a RIDICULOUS line of dialog, but when watching the movie you just accept it. Way to go Marvel.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Every time I hear Douglas say that line, I'm absolutely amazed that the people involved were able to actually make this film WORK. It's a RIDICULOUS line of dialog, but when watching the movie you just accept it. Way to go Marvel.

Exactly this!!!

 

[Tommy R]

Having grown up with Michael Keaton’s badass line delivery of “I’m Batman”, nothing sounds ridiculous as long as its delivered with proper conviction from the actor within the framework of a well conceived and executed film.