Like Aquaman, Ant-Man is known to the general audience as a laughable comic book hero. What good is a guy who can shrink down to the size of an ant? Director Peyton Reed, Paul Rudd, and the rest of Marvel Studios set to prove that they can make another unknown property popular just like Guardians of the Galaxy.
In this film Rudd plays Scott Lang, a smart ex-con who got thrown in jail because he was defying "the man." Scott wants to get is life back on track, back into his daughter's life, and scientist/millionaire Hank Pym wants to help. Pym, played by Michael Douglas, wants Scott to break into his company and steal a prototype suit that will allow a solider to shrink down to micro size and be stronger than average size. Pym's former protege Darren Cross, played by Corey Stoll, disagrees. He wants to sell these suits and make billions, or finally gain approval from his father figure. That's the confusing part to me.
Coming off of the epic Avengers: Age of Ultron it was nice to get a much more quiet film from Marvel to end Phase 2 of their cinematic universe. Ant-Man was a heist movie with superheroes. Scott had to break into a highly guarded building to steal a suit. It was pretty straight forward and simple. The side stories however were not. This is a film about fathers and their children. Scott and Hank's relationship to their daughters were at the forefront with Pym also being a father figure to both Darren and Scott. Hank and his daughter Hope, played by Evangline Lilly, was done pretty well, but his disappointed mentor role for Darren fell flat.
Throughout the entire film I didn't get if Cross was trying to make the shrinking suit because he finally wanted Pym's approval, or if his first goal was to make money. He was like a mixture of Obadiah Stane and Loki; only not fleshed out enough. Instead, Yellowjacket will just be another throw away Marvel villain.
I liked the smallness(no pun intended) of this film. Hank warned that the world would be in danger if Cross succeeded, but given that Falcon gave Ant-Man a run for his money do you really think Iron Man or Thor would even break a sweat against Yellowjacket? In any event, Michael Pena gets the "Steals The Movie" award as Scott's friend who is clearly there for comic relief. His role could have gone the way of other bad comic relief like Jar Jar Binks and those racists robots in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. But Pena made it work. Granted the film had just a little too much humor for my taste, but it was also partly what made it feel so different from the last few Marvel films we've gotten.
I think the entire cast did a really good job with their parts. But if anything, what Ant-Man suffered from was editing. It felt like there was quite a few quick cuts that, as a person who has not only watched movies his entire life but also studied film making, were very noticeable. Some people say the film seemed too long. I think slowing things down to explore more of the relationships would have been better.
For me, the two things that shined in this movie were how well the shrinking effects were done, and also the dialogue. The script was very solid, and I was glad to see Edgar Wright, the man originally tapped to direct this film, got his due in the credits for his contributions.
Overall, I think Ant-Man is a decent film. It's no where near the quality of Captain America: The Winter Solider, but far from the garbage Iron Man 3 was. It's got just a little bit too many silly moments to make it great, but it created some great characters. I like Scott and Hope and I can't wait to see them incorporated into the bigger MCU scope.
RATING: C
P.S. Too many MCU references. "Why not call the Avengers" was fine. "They're probably too busy dropping cities on people" was too much.
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