Review: Ant-Man

I just want to start out by saying, yes, this is a very different Marvel movie. It is very much a heist film with superhero elements thrown in. And, in my humble opinion, the different parts mix together to make a very enjoyable movie. It’s very much a “big things in small packages” kind of story that is just fun to watch. But I’ll get into that more in a second. Without further ado, Ant-Man.

The only thing I'd change is moving Luis
into greater prominence on this poster.

The film opens in 1989, to an angry Hank Pym berating S.H.I.E.L.D. top brass, including Howard Stark and Peggy Carter, for their attempts at replicating his size altering Pym Particle formula. One of the S.H.I.E.L.D. guys makes a crack about Hank’s wife, Jan, and Hank nearly shatters his face. He leaves in a huff. Flash forward to the present day, Hank is shown by his former protégée Darren Cross that he’s begun to replicate the Pym Particles and already has a Yellowjacket Battle Suit ready for testing. We also learn that, while she was very cold to him in Cross’s presence, his daughter Hope is helping Hank plan something.

We then cut to our protagonist, Scott Lang, getting out of prison. After getting a solid punch to the face by his friends in the joint, he meets his former cellmate Luis in the parking lot. Luis tries to get Scott to join his gang for another heist, but Scott refuses, claiming that he’s going to go straight and his Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering will help him get a job fast. We then see him work and get fired from Baskin Robbins. We then see Scott try to visit his daughter, Cassie, on her birthday, but his ex-wife and her cop fiancée are adamant that he 1. Get a job, 2. Get an apartment and 3. Pay child support, not necessarily in that order, before he can see her. After crunching the numbers, Scott concludes that it’s be about a year, minimum, before he could see Cassie. Feeling desperate, he agrees to Luis’ plan. We then see one of Luis’s show stealing stories about how he got the tip about their target. He heard from a friend who heard from a friend who heard from his girlfriend that there’s an eccentric millionaire living alone with a safe. Two guesses who that millionaire turns out to be. Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne? Smack yourself, this is Ant-Man we’re talking about, so the millionaire is obviously Hank Pym.

Scott and his team quickly set up and infiltrate Pym’s house. Using a few clever tactics, Scott breaks into Hank’s vault and finds the Ant-Man suit. Frustrated that he couldn’t get anything of cash value, Scott pockets the suit anyway and gets away. Never seeing a tiny ant with a camera strapped to its back. Back at the apartment he shares with Luis and the crew, Scott tries the suit on and accidently shrinks to insect size. After nearly drowning from the tsunami wave that was the shower faucet turning on and being crushed by his roommate’s pants, Pym making observations over the helmet’s radio the whole way, Scott ends up outside his apartment at regular size. He’s terrified by the experience, tries to return the suit, and is promptly arrested when he attempts to leave the property.

In lockup, after being heckled a little by his ex-wife’s fiancée, Scott is visited by Pym. Pym had lied, claiming to be Scott’s lawyer, to get in and give him a pep talk. Slash berate him for trying to call it quits so soon after the first test run. Pym’s not a “gentle touch” mentor. He also reveals that he had manipulated events, namely starting the chain of tips that reached Luis, to get Scott to take the suit to test Scott’s skills. Pym then smuggles the Ant-Man suit into Scott’s cell, then helps him escape using a literal army of ants. Scott passes out during the break out, and awakens in Pym’s home. Upon walking up and having a bit of a confrontation with Hope, we learn that Hank and Hope have teamed up, despite lingering friction between them, to stop Cross from creating his Yellowjacket suits and selling them to the highest bidder. We also learn that Hope is upset that she’s not being allowed to use the suit, but I’ll get to that more in a second. Scott agrees to help.

Shrinking and superstrength while small is pretty far down on
my list of most awesome superpowers, but they made it look
pretty awesome, not going to lie.

We see a quick montage of Scott’s training, learning the different types of ant’s he’ll use, learning fighting techniques, and how to use the suit most effectively. We also see him tinkering and upgrading the suit a bit, but he’s warned to not mess with the belt as disabling the doodad on it could cause him to shrink into non-existence. So, yeah, don’t touch the big red button. He’s also given these nifty disks in place of weapons, yellow topped disks shrink while blue cause things to grow. As a field test Scott’s sent into an old Stark Labs facility to nab a device they’ll need for the heist. Unfortunately, Pym’s info isn’t up to date and the “old lab” is now the Avengers HQ. After an excellently choreographed fight scene with Sam Wilson aka The Falcon, Scott gets away with the device. After another blow out between Hope and Hank, and a bit of a pep talk from Scott, we learn the story behind Jan Pym’s death. Years back she’d joined Hank as the Wasp. During a mission an ICBM was launched by the Soviets at America. The Pyms were on the case, but unfortunately the titanium that the missile was made out of made destroying it impossible. Hank was ready to disable the suits safeguards and shrink into a quantum realm to disable the missile, but his own belt was damaged. Without missing a beat, Jan bites the bullet, shrinking down into non-existence to stop the bullet.

A short time later, Cross perfects the shrinking tech and then visits Hank to invite him to the unveiling. After calling Hope and letting her know that he’s upgrading security to ludicrous levels to protect the suit, Scott calls in his crew to help with the heist. The heist takes up the whole third act, and I won’t be spoiling anything, other than saying it’s exceptionally well done.

Which leads us to, the good. There’s a lot for this one. I was very apprehensive about Paul Rudd as Scott Lang, but he met and surpassed my expectations. He was very believable as the guy that’s trying to pick up the pieces of his life and move on. He’s got a kind of Robin Hood vibe to him. This version of Scott was arrested for breaking into his former employers and stealing millions in funds. Funds that he only stole because the company was intentionally overcharging customers to line their pockets. So yeah, steal from the rich to give to the poor, check and check. He’s also charming and a little cocky at times, but it’s clear that his hearts in the right place. I liked both Michael Douglas and Evangeline Lilly as Hank Pym and Hope van Dyne, respectively. The origin of their estrangement is very well done, and you can believe these two as two people that love each other despite also being furious at the other person. Michael Peña as Luis is hilarious. He stole more than one scene with his rather awkward but still funny mannerisms. Too many moments to list, their just great. The CGI is very well done in the movie, particularly with the backgrounds and the ants themselves. There’s more than one moment where I could believe for a second that they’d actually shrunk me down to an inch high. The costume designs are great. I loved the Ant-Man, Yellowjacket, and briefly shown in flashback Wasp costumes. All are well designed and have a sort of alien vibe to them, which works since their designed to tackle the alien world of insects.

Time for a mini-punch! Unless he's growing, in which case,
normal sized punch. Which still hurts, but is much less cool.

There are really only a few cons to this film. I enjoyed Corey Stoll as Darren Cross/Yellowjacket, but he wasn’t as flushed out as he could have been. I get what they were trying to do with him, make him a Hank Pym that made all the wrong choices, but they never really hit the mark. They imply that Cross has become unstable from exposure to Pym Particles, but we never saw him “stable” so it’s hard to see the contrast. And also the fact that Hope was unaffected when it’s implied she was with him for most of the tests made that story a little hard to believe. Also, Bobby Cannavale as the jerky fiancée was just a little too generic for my taste. The moment he came on screen I thought “He’s going to be an ***hole,” and low and behold he was. I can understand where he’s coming from, I’d be uncomfortable with my soon-to-be wife’s ex-con ex-husband stopping by, but they could have tried a little harder with some of his bits is all I’m saying. The final negative that I can think of is that Scott is a little too quick to opening up his mask and showing off his face. There are a number of people who learned Scott's ID simply because he was all too eager to show off Paul Rudd's handsome face. Just saying, it makes it hard to keep a secret ID.

Overall, I give it an –A. It’s a very enjoyable movie, with an excellent cast, script, and effects. The only things really holding it back is that Cross is just not developed enough to be the villain that they wanted him to be. I remember hearing from several sources that Stan Lee felt that the main reason Ant-Man didn’t reach the level of fame as his other characters was the problem with size. Despite’s Stan’s insistence, Artists never drew Ant-Man next to anything of regular size to give things a sense of scale. The idea that a little, little guy is doing such big things is kin of ruined when, because of the close up and lack of big things around him, he doesn’t look tiny at all. That isn’t a problem here. We see the mini-sized Ant-Man doing big things, and leaving his tiny footprint on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I recommend this for everybody, in case that wasn’t clear. Next time, I’ll close out the theme week with the third Ant-Man, Eric O’Grady.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant-Man_%28film%29#/media/File:Ant-Man_poster.jpg

 http://marvel.com/news/tv/24723/buy_your_tickets_to_marvels_ant-man_enter_2_sweepstakes

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