Marvel Month - Mini Review - Ant-man

Being the first movie to follow up an Avengers movie is a big deal, Iron Man 3 rode the Avengers Wave and grossed over $1bn, despite not being as big a critical hit as a lot of previous movies. Ant-man wasn’t as big a hit, but it was another Marvel gamble. With $142m in its budget, it managed to gross $512m, whilst on the lower end of Marvel movies, it was enough to be considered a success and green-light a sequel. Critically, it’s well liked with an 81% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

So why am I not exactly excited on this one… well, let’s take a look.

Ant-man stars ex-con Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) finding that after being released from prison, re-integrating into society can be problematic, which keeps him away from his daughter. But a second chance for him arrives in the form of ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Hank Pym, along with his daughter, Hope, who want him to stop his former colleague Daren Cross from selling his creation to HYDRA by dawning the suit of Ant-man.

OK, let’s start with an important point. Hank Pym is not Ant-man in this story. Here’s the thing about Hank Pym, in the comics his psyche is a can of worms, he’s been abusive, he’s been mentally destroyed and turned into a villain. Having a character like that as the star would’ve been a mistake in my opinion, the Pym portrayed by Michael Douglas is fine, and his backstory makes a good deal of sense.

I think the movie does a good job visually, they handle the shrinking and enlargement well and have some creative ideas from a tank bursting through a building, to a model Thomas the Tank engine and a giant ant. This lead to some very visually impressive action scenes. It’s not the action that bothers me.

But there are things that bother me a lot, let’s start with the supporting cast, all of Scott’s associates annoy me and I don’t find them funny at all. They’re incompetence isn’t charming, their near misses aren’t funny, the chatterbox lingo annoys me. Moving on.

Also, the whole trust issue dynamic between Hope and Scott, even though it was resolved reasonably quickly, it still felt like it went on too long.

Then we have Darren Cross and oh dear, what did we say about motivations last time? He’s annoyed at Pym because he was once a mentee and SHOW, DON’T TELL! If you’re going to make an audience care about this angle, you can’t just tell us the two used to have this dynamic, you need to prove it, and make us care about it.

It's especially annoying because this motivation isn’t entirely compatible with ‘I want to create the weapon and sell it to HYDRA’ – that suggests the motivation is money, not to prove something. That’s not to say both can’t be true at once but never did Cross really suggest money was a part of his motive.

OK, so the heist itself, it’s setup nicely has good bits of tension going on, has a bit of a Mission Impossible feel to it, which is certainly different for a super-hero movie and for once the climax has a personal touch, although that’s hampered by the fact the motivation of Cross to attack Lang is very petty. (Also there's an ant called Ant-thony who dies HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA)

I like kid they got to play Cassie, and actually I think having her step-father be less of a jackass than he is in the comics is a good play. Also the scene with Falcon felt very much forced just to have another Avenger in the movie.

Ant-man is lower on the scale of Marvel movies for me than it is from some others, its humour isn’t as good and the history with Edgar Wright’s involvement only goes to sour me against the project even more. Still, now the origin is out of the way, maybe they improve with the sequel.

Rating 65/100

2 more movies to go in Marvel Month and... neither of them will be in Marvel Month, see you in December for Doctor Strange