I have spent the last week being inundated with news from ComicCon, and writing about trailers for movies that won’t come out for another year. I’ve taken it all with a smile on my face because this sort of anticipation and withholding of satisfaction is what I get off on. But today, today is a day of no more waiting. No more shall we gaze into the abyss that is the Marvel release schedule and wonder what is to come next. Today is the marvelous day that Ant-Man is released into the world! And there was much rejoicing!
I’m sure you’ve all heard the stories about Ant-Man‘s production history, but if not, here’s a quick recap. Edgar Wright, the guy who made Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, and The World’s End, had pegged this as his pet project. He wrote the script, shot some test footage that was shown a few ComicCons ago, and overall was looking to turn this into a real gangbuster of a movie. But all good things must come to an end, and he and Marvel Studios parted ways, citing “creative differences” as the reason why. That script got rewritten by Adam McKay (Anchorman) and Paul Rudd with the original being lost to the ages. Keep in mind that the original was called “the best script that Marvel had ever had,” by no less than Joss Fucking Whedon himself. So I guess what I’m saying is that, no matter what, there is a good chance that this movie would be disappointing. When you lose THE best comedy director working today and a screenplay lauded by The Almighty Joss, nothing else will be able to compare.
With that being said, Ant-Man didn’t disappoint. It’s actually really good. Yeah, we can spend the rest of our lives obsessing over what Wright’s film would have looked like, or we can appreciate what new director Peyton Reed (Yes Man) has done with this material. Paul Rudd plays Scott Lang, a Robin Hood-style burglar, who just got out of the joint after three years. He tries to go straight, but a lack of opportunities, coupled with a desire to provide for his daughter, convince him to help his former cellmate (Michael Pena) with a new job. They break into the home of reclusive billionaire Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), thinking they’ll get untold riches, but end up with nothing more than an old suit.
It turns out the Pym orchestrated the robbery in order to get Lang this suit, which allows him to shrink down to an incredibly small size. Pym needs help taking down his former protege, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), who is on the verge of duplicating the shrinking technology, and plans on weaponizing it. What follows is a super-powered heist movie that really works on those terms. We get to see the planning, the team coming together, the execution, the issues during the execution, and the result. There’s a good parallel to Terminator Genisys here in that both movies involve an assault and “heist” of a large, corporate laboratory, except in Terminator, the planning and everything takes place off screen, and everything else seems to be rushed through. Reed knows that we all like capers like this and allows it to all play out for us.
But this is a far from perfect movie, and its biggest issue is one that Marvel Studios has struggled with for years: the Villain. Stoll’s Cross might be the worst one we’ve seen yet in these movies. He is so comically over the top that it’s almost impossible that anyone would ever take him seriously or give him any degree of power. Even the moments meant to heighten his evilness (There’s a scene with a lamb. You’ll know it when you see it.) come off more as more ridiculous than malicious. Stoll has a great presence and menace to him, but the writing is just so off the point that it’s hard to see how his character wasn’t given another rewrite or two.
Anyways, all that amounts to a hill of beans in the presence of what is a genuinely enjoyable movie. Its not Guardians of the Galaxy, but it’s a solid entry in Marvel’s filmography. This could have gone completely off the rails when Wright left and Ant-Man could have become the black eye on an otherwise flawless face. Instead, Reed, McKay, and Rudd righted the ship (sorry for the mixed metaphor) and created something new and unique. Ant-Man feels like a Marvel movie without feeling exactly like all of the other films. For that reason alone its a minor triumph.
