Movie Review: Ant-Man

Ant-Man

It's an awesome movie! I don't really have much to say about it, but it's absolutely fun. And despite liking parts of Age of Ultron and having problems with other parts of it, Ant-Man was an absolutely solid movie, having a really great and catchy script, great leads, impressive visual effects, pretty awesome pacing and generally being awesome. And it's absolutely impressive that Ant-Man is as solid and fun a movie as Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy or Captain America: Winter Soldier considering it's absolutely fucked-up and troubled production.

I'm frankly impressed that they managed to make Ant-Man not only work on the big screen, but also make him absolutely awesome. I've only been familiar with the Hank Pym version of Ant-Man from the little cartoons and video games and comic books I've seen him in, and he's usually a slightly-jerkass scientist dude with powers that can be one of the following: shrinking, expanding into a giant, or control over ants. Despite being a founding member of the Avengers alongside his wife Wasp (Janet Van Dyne), and being notable for creating Ultron, Ant-Man is really most often remembered for his never-live-it-down moment where he's shown as a short-tempered wife-beater. And the fact that he goes through a lot of code-names. As the Wikipedia tells me, he's gone through 'Ant-Man', 'Giant-Man', 'Yellowjacket', 'Wasp', 'Gigantus', 'Ultron' and 'Goliath', as well as some odd ones like 'Scientific Adventurer'.

But they made both versions of Ant-Man, both Hank Pym and Scott Lang, pretty awesome! There are definitely some similarities between Scott Lang and Star-Lord, and that's not because they both have full-head robotic helmets while wearing predominantly red and black. They're both quip-happy people who's made several wrong choices in their life, but is really good at heart. Though Scott is definitely more on the side of angels than Star-Lord is initially is at the beginning of the movie, because apparently he got into jail because he did some kind of Robin Hood style robbery to get back at an evil insurance company or whatever, and we see that he's just trying to be a good father to his (adorable!) daughter, who's living with his divorced wife, who's dating a cop.

And that motivation -- to get money to pay for child support -- and the all-too-real problem that faces ex-convicts that not even Baskin-Robbins will hire you,is what drove Scott's initial heist attempts with the hilarious trio of ethnic buddies Luis, Dave and Kurt. It's clear that Scott was trying to quit, but his desperation and motivation is well shown.

Luis, by the way, is awesome and is definitely an unexpected character I really liked. I'm not sure if he's based on an actual comic character, but he definitely is hilarious and the way you handle comic relief properly.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have the original Ant-Man, Hank Pym, who has been manipulating Scott Lang and scouted him out to help him put a stop to his insane protege, Darren Cross. Hank Pym and his wife, Janet (Wasp from the comics) has discovered these Pym Particles that allows atoms to shrink down whilst still keeping their density. And apparently Ant-Man and Wasp have been superheroes before the events of the MCU, fighting during the Cold Wars with actual superpowers and shit, which is awesome. We get a couple of short little sequences showing Hank Pym dealing with SHIELD -- which features nice cameos from Howard Stark and Peggy Carter -- as well as some Cold War footage showing how Ant-Man has been operating even before.

We also have Hank Pym having a estranged relationship with his daughter, Hope, and while we are denied seeing her adopt the mantle of Wasp up until the mid-credits scene, both the warming relationship between Hank and Hope, and the reason between the rift -- was well done. Hope herself is a solid character, not only proving herself a badass in fighting and hacking, but also developing throughout the movie on her own.

The movie does make Ant-Man's two powers pretty cool... and most of all, I didn't expect them to adapt the ant-controlling powers! The shrinking powers is already cool by itself, and the show makes it really evident that it's nowhere as stupid as the comics sometimes makes it look like, showing just how lethal a tiny ant-sized human with the strength of a real human would be. But the ants are the clincher. Not only do the CGI ants look wonderful (and the biology geek in me is happy that they included some obscure yet insane ants like the Paraponera/Bullet Ants and whatnot) we also get to see them actually doing practical stuff like covering the camera, or counting down, or simply acting as a raft and whatnot. Those grenades that allow Scott to shrink and enlarge stuff is also pretty cool, too, and kind of serves as a nice little foreshadowing for the eventual inclusion of Giant Man. 

Yellowjacket is... an original villain, taking his real name (Darren Cross) from a throwaway non-powered Ant-Man villain and his codename (Yellowjacket) from one of Hank Pym's aliases, but at the same time one who finds his roots in the comics. On the surface he seems to be just an expy of Iron Man's Obadiah Stane, albeit as Hank's protege compared to Tony's mentor. But he is a pretty complex villain and it's not hard to see comparisons between Movie!Yellowjacket and Comics!Ultron, with Yellowjacket constantly asking Hank Pym, who he considers a father figure, just why did Hank abandon him. Which is cool, since the Ultron from Age of Ultron, while having some scenes where he's ranting about Daddy Stark, is more concerned about his insane ideas of evolution and wiping out humanity, which, in addition with his association with the Maximoff twins, makes Movie!Ultron feel more like a loose adaptation of Magneto. But let's not go on a tangent here... Yellowjacket is somewhat one-dimensional, but he is an awesome villain nonetheless, having more personality than some other sub-par Marvel villains like Ronan or Malekith, and looking absolutely boss with that armour of his. 

And you know what else I liked most about this movie? Unlike Age of Ultron, which tries its damnadest to foreshadow every single Marvel film coming up after it and do a shit-ton of callbacks while not adequately developing the characters introduced in the movie, Ant-Man is as tied-in to the MCU and features not only cameos from MCU regulars like Peggy Carter, Howard Stark and an unexpected fight scene between Ant-Man and the motherfucking Falcon of all people, as well as a fair amount of references to events in Age of Ultron and Winter Soldier, we don't really get oversaturated with references and Falcon aside, you can just go into the movie blind and it doesn't really take away much if you haven't seen any of the previous movies.

I am also rather surprised at the unexpected inclusion of the aforementioned Wasp and Falcon. Most solicitations for the movie just state that Janet Van Dyne, the Wasp, has died prior to the events of the movie. Not really having that much of an attachment to Wasp, I just shrug and go 'the fans will probably be mad about it' but not really bothered by it myself. But she does make an appearance in the flashback, in full costume and showing powers no less, and the movie leaves enough room to make her return a feasible option for any future installments -- the fact that Scott managed to get out of that subspace universe where apparently 'time and space meant nothing' seems to be an obvious getaway card should any future writer decide to bring Janet back... though with Hope adapting the Wasp moniker by the end of the movie I dunno.

The Avenger facility from Age of Ultron being used as the site of battle between Ant-Man and Falcon is awesome, and Falcon is just a treat to see, considering how he missed all the action during Age of Ultron. It was a brilliant and hilarious actions scene, and while Ant-Man does manage to not only survive but fucking win against the Falcon, dude manages to make it a good fight. Not only does he very easily adapt to Ant-Man's shrinking abilities, he also put up a fairly good fight before being taken out by a technicality. And having Ant-Man meet Falcon is a nice way to segue in the ending of the movie, with Falcon contacting people to recruit Scott into the Avengers.

The final post-credits scene is one of Falcon and Captain America talking with a rather crazy-looking Bucky, and how Iron Man can't help them because of some 'Accords', so this scene seems to take place during the events of Civil War. Falcon seems intent on bringing in 'a guy' who I'm assuming is Ant-Man. Civil War yay!

I could go on and on and talk about all the scenes that are just awesome in the movie -- the tank scene and the battle in Scott's daughter's room comes to mind -- but we would be here all day. So let's close this by talking about the little Spider-Man reference that's easily missed when Luis is doing that little he-tells-him-who-tells-her story near the end, where the pretty intelligence agent tells Falcon that there's someone who 'swings' and 'climbs walls' while rattling off in Luis' particular accent. That was a nice, sneaky way to foreshadow Spider-Man, who, for anyone who isn't already aware, is going to show up in MCU's Civil War.

So yeah, Ant-Man? it's an awesome movie.