Movie Review: Ant-Man

Ant-Man (2015)

And our final Phase 2 MCU movie is Ant-Man, which... what else is there to say about this movie other than 'it's really good'? Ant-Man is also a standalone and relatively low-stakes movie, which is definitely a fun breath of air after how sequel-heavy Phase 2 is. I think MCU caught on quickly how to balance sequels versus solo movies? And... and yeah, the plot of Ant-Man is very simple but also extremely charming. It's a heist movie, which really does help to differentiate it to literally every other Marvel Cinematic Universe movie before it, and while it is standalone, it also has a bunch of ties to other aspects of the larger universe -- the Starks, HYDRA, and one of the Avengers makes a fun cameo in this one. It's also just very... it's just very fun and earnest, while also feeling different, which I think is also one of the main sentiments lobbed towards Guardians of the Galaxy, the other big solo movie in this 'phase' of the MCU. 

It's also interesting that this movie revolves around the lesser-known Ant-Man, instead of the far more iconic pair of Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne, two of the original founders of the Avengers in the comics. Hell, I have never even heard of this "Scott Lang" person before this movie at all! But I think MCU realizes that just having pretty bland superhero origin stories without at least a bit of a twist is going to get old really fast, which is why Scott Lang, or Ant-Man II, is actually a legacy hero. It was weird when I saw the trailers for this movie the first time, but it adds a fun layer to this movie that I don't think we'd get if we had just a... well, 'superhero gains power, experiments with it, fights the villain'. Now Scott Lang does go through mostly the same story arc, but he's also pulled into the story of Hank Pym, the first Ant-Man, who manufactures events to get him to become the second Ant-Man. That really adds a whole layer of fun world-building and backstory to Scott that he otherwise wouldn't really have. 

Getting into the plot of the movie, we get some fun cameos because in 1989, old-school SHIELD gets into a fight with Hank Pym over ownership of the shrinking technology revolving around the 'Ant-Man' and Pym particles. We get to see the welcome return of Peggy Carter and Howard Stark, and the actually clever foreshadowing of a great usage of the twist in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where the dude here that Hank assaults, Carson, is actually a HYDRA agent that we see in the present day scenes. 

It's interesting that we don't see Hank Pym actually operate as the Ant-Man beyond brief flashbacks, but Hank Pym grows into a bitter old man, and we get to see that his protégé Darren Cross and his estranged daughter Hope van Dyne have forced him out of his company. Cross is also on the verge of essentially replicating Hank's shrinking technology with a suit of armour he calls the Yellowjacket, with which he wants to revolutionize warfare itself. 

Flash-forward to present-day (or, well, 2015) and we get introduced to good ol' Scott Lang, our main protagonist. He gets out of prison and while it's clear that he has a lot of friends -- mostly Luis -- we also get to see that Scott Lang, while wanting to make an honest life out of himself, doesn't get a good job. The movie is still fun in doing this, injecting a lot of great moments with the Baskin Robbins boss and Scott's adorably precocious little daughter Cassie, but it's also equally effective in showing just how much Scott is resisting going back into a life of crime, and how much his time in prison is hurting him. Showing the daughter is a cheap but extremely effective way of giving Scott something to fight for (tm), and introducing all the civilian cast around Scott -- his motormouthed best friend Luis, Luis's wacky heist crewmates, Scott's adorable daughter Cassie, Scott's amicable ex-wife Maggie, and Maggie's boyfriend Jim Paxton. They all manage to leave an impression, even if they're admittedly easily demarcated into little groups of characters. 

We also get neat little info-dumps that Scott's crime wasn't really driven for personal gain and more of a way to take down a financially corrupt mega-corporation. Desperate to make some money in order to pay the outstanding child support bills but unable to hold down a job, the movie does explore Scott's desperation pretty well as he goes off to commit the heist. And the movie easily demonstrates at this point why Luis and his friends are so desperate to have Scott on the job -- even pre-powers, he is a natural at this, using funky cryo-guns to break into some old man's house. 

Of course, that old man is Hank Pym, and we later learn that everything here happens as Hank Pym has orchestrated it, and this is basically Scott's 'audition'. Scott finds a weird Kamen Rider motorcycle suit, and after taking it home, Scott tries it on (thankfully he puts the full suit on) and after dicking around with the helmet and the gauntlets, we get the fun CGI sequence as silly Scott Lang shrinks himself to the size of, well, an ant. It's pretty much what you'd expect from a show with shrinking powers! After making a fool out of himself, Scott accidentally enlarges out in public, gets arrested... but then some ants that can move surprisingly well block the camera in the jail cell, do a countdown and proceed to give Scott the suit into his cell. 

Which is where Scott finally meets Hank. And... again, it's pretty typical heist movie stuff. Someone super-smart is being the chessmaster to the main protagonist. Except instead of well-bribed officers or whatever, sci-fi-pheromone controlled ants are utilized here. Again, just like what Guardians of the Galaxy did, almost everything from the comics is adapted and taken seriously while jokes are made alongside it instead of about it. This, I feel, is really the epitome of the reasons why Marvel studios manages to make movie adaptations that feel so earnest about its source material while also not insulting the audience's intelligence. 

Again, I do like how Hank Pym's role is still pretty major here. He's ultimately well-meaning, but there's definitely a huge, huge manipulative streak in everything he does. And yet behind all of that he's also driven by a protective sense towards his family and legacy. It's such a nice summation of the sometimes-not-so-nice (to put it mildly) comic book character that he's based off. The main heist team is rounded off by Hank's daughter Hope, who's aiding Hank in taking Darren down but is still pretty pissed off at her dad. For one, Hank pointedly refuses to let Hope become the new Ant-Man (or Ant-Woman) because he's a protective father... which is a bit of an eye-roll in terms of the audience getting another superhero (and a female one, at that) but also makes absolute sense in terms of these characters in the movie.

Hope's hostility towards Hank also stems from her blaming Hank for letting her mother Janet die... although we later learn in this whole training montage that Janet actually died because she went 'subatomic', shrinking even further than atoms, while disabling a nuclear missile. And yes, there's a training montage that's a lot more fun than it has any right to be, because it features not only Scott Lang learning how to shrink, but also to control ants. Yes, I love that. I also love that we get to see multiple various species of ants, and while they are rendered a bit more cuter than what their real-life counterparts are, I cannot believe that a major movie features the fire ants' ability to create rafts with their bodies to transverse the amazon river, or a bullet ant's super-painful sting (it's the most powerful sting on a pain scale!) are major plot points in a Hollywood movie. 

Also, during the montage, Janet ends up changing her mind about Scott after seeing just how hard he's working, and we also get to see some obvious parallels that Scott and Hank are essentially bonding because they're both fathers. We also get the actually sensible and cheeky excuse that Hank Pym refuses to ask the Avengers for help because he distrusts Tony Stark.

Also, because this is a superhero movie, we need to break things up with an action scene. Fortunately, this is actually a very interesting one -- Scott is supposed to steal some piece of technology from the Avengers Compound... which could have been just a simple little cameo of the Avengers base we saw in Age of Ultron. But no! Ant-Man actually gets stopped by the Falcon, and the two of them even get into a fight! It's a wholly unexpected but extremely welcome cameo by good ol' Sam Wilson, and in addition to the funny sequences (Falcon telling whoever's on line with him to 'not tell Cap', Scott introducing himself as 'Ant-Man') we get a pretty interesting example of just how Ant-Man can fight with another superhero. The fight essentially ends up in a draw, but seeing Ant-Man fight with someone larger, or sabotage the machinery of a regular-sized combatant... none of them are shooting to kill, of course, and Ant-Man gets to be the victor because he escapes, but it's such a cool way to incorporate other parts of the larger universe without making them a huge (and distracting) part of the standalone movie. 

The heist itself goes on with the help of Luis's crew and the many, many ants, and... I'm not going to describe everything, but it's basically a superhero-themed heist movie. Basically every random minor aspect that we saw Luis's friends (who are hilarious) and the various ant species and Pym gimmicks gets brought into play as Scott and the Pyms manage to plant explosives all around the building and sabotage the building's servers. It's pretty fun and fast-paced, but things go wrong when they reach the Yellowjacket armour. Ant-Man gets trapped by a laser grid, while Hank and Hope get caught by Darren Cross. 

At which point... yeah, let's talk about Darren a bit. I always had the feeling that he was a bit more interesting than I remember him, and the actor definitely does a great job playing him. There's definitely a sense of parallels being drawn between him and his mentor Hank, and some slight showcases of instability when he uses the Pym particles to shrink someone who disagrees with him earlier in the movie and flush him down a toilet (which, holy crap, market that instead of the armour!) but ultimately he kind of gets reduced to just a pretty generic villain. The Yellowjacket armour is probably one of the hands-down coolest-looking designs I've ever seen in a MCU movie full stop, though. 

Things get into full action-movie territory at this point -- the rest of the supporting cast manage to take out all the prospective buyers (including the HYDRA guy from the prologue); Hank Pym uses the tank keychain he's been holding for literally the entire movie and turns it into a full-sized tank to escape, and then after the evacuation, they detonate a shrinking bomb that wipes out the Cross Industries building. Luis and his crew get into some hilarious hijinks around this point, too -- I don't really talk about them because most of what they do is just background fluff, but man, I cannot understate how much they add into this movie with their comedy. 

Speaking of comedy, the final battle between Ant-Man and Yellowjacket is nothing short of brilliant. It is a climactic final battle (unlike the Guardians' fight against Ronan two movies ago) that spans the entire third act, and it is deadly. Yellowjacket shoots lasers that blow walls up and shit! But then we get epic CGI superhero fights... and then we zoom out and we get hilarious visual gags like little bug-sized Yellowjacket being tossed into a fly zapper, or the giant Thomas the Train toy bearing down on Yellowjacket with epic music, only for the movie to zoom out and just showing... well, a toy train toppling over. It's glorious.

Anyway, the fight leads to a standoff between Yellowjacket holding Scott's daughter Cassie (and Scott's wife's fiancé Paxton) hostage, leading to, well, the aforementioned 'forbidden ability' of Scott going subatomic to shrink and break Yellowjacket's suit. Yellowjacket dies as he shrinks uncontrollably, while Scott is transported into the sci-fi realm called the Quantum Realm, a trippy subatomic realm where he should, in theory, shrink for all eternity... until he hears Cassie's voice and he manages to come into consciousness and reverse the shrinking and returns to his regular size.

Yeah, it's cheesy, but... I don't know. The movie does telegraph this plot twist pretty well, and after all Scott Lang has been through, I feel like it's pretty great for the movie to cut him a break at this point. He gets his happy ending, being accepted as a responsible part of the family with Maggie, Cassie and Paxton... and I, for one, am actually happy to see the subversion of the 'evil new boyfriend' trope, because Scott and Maggie doesn't actually make up romantically, but they still both function as Cassie's parents. Likewise, Paxton isn't an evil step-parent at all -- hell, he was perfectly willing to toss himself into combat against Yellowjacket to protect Cassie! And I do like that at the end of it all, Scott manages to become friends with Cassie and Paxton.

He also gets into a romance with Hope, and... okay, Hope kind of really has to wait until the next movie before really becoming a character in her own right, and most of her character interactions in this movie is between her and Hank, so I don't really care all that much. We do get some hints that Hank's going to hunt down Janet in the Quantum Realm; plus we get to see the Wasp suit in the mid-credits scene. The actual movie itself ends with Luis, in his signature "I talk very quickly as I talk about this guy who knows about that guy who knows about that other guy, while the actors visualizing my story match my fast voice"... which includes Stan Lee and the Falcon, and they basically recruit Ant-Man into the Avengers. Sort of. 

...and that's it for Ant-Man. A bit of on the shorter side, but Ant-Man really is a lot lighter compared to the other movies, and I feel that it's exactly the sort of break between heavier entries. The next freaking movie is Civil War! The movie itself is simple enough, but also offers enough twists and turns in terms of the setting and characters involved that it still feels like a breath of fresh air. Definitely a huge winner in my books. 

And that's it for Phase 2 of the MCU! I already have reviews for all the Phase 3 movies when they came out in the theaters, but they are a bit... well, basically before Infinity War, I feel like the reviews are not up to snuff and just ramble on and on? So I do plan to do Phase 3 in two batches, with maybe Thor: Ragnarok as the dividing line between the two eras of Phase 3. And then we'll do the Phase 4 movies! We'll see how things go. (Shang-Chi, by the way, is an awesome movie. Go watch it!) 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Post-Credits Scene: The mid-credits scene is Hank Pym showing Hope a modernized version of her mother's Wasp suit. The post-credits scene is a clip from Captain America: Civil War, where Falcon discusses that he 'knows a guy' that can help him and Captain America.
• Stan the Man: Stan is one of the people in the Luis lip-synch scene at the end of the film. 
• Future Movies Foreshadowing: A lot of mention is made about the 'quantum realm' and Janet being lost there, which are all plot points for Ant-Man and the Wasp. Whether it's intentional or not, one of the people in Luis's story at the ends mentions someone who 'jumps, swings, climbs up walls', which is definitely a reference to Spider-Man. Whether it's intentional or not to foreshadow Civil War, though, is debatable. And, of course, the final post-credits scene is just straight-up a scene from the upcoming Civil War movie. 
• Past Movie Continuity: Peggy Carter and Howard Stark are established to carry on Steve Rogers' legacy and found SHIELD in The Avengers and Captain America: the Winter Soldier. The Triskelion from Winter Soldier is seen half-completed in 1989. Hydra is established to have infiltrated SHIELD and other organizations in Winter Soldier. Hank name-drops the Iron Man suit and Stark industries multiple times, and his bitterness over Stark Industries leads him to not wanting anything to do with SHIELD or Stark. The events that took place in Sokovia in Age of Ultron can be seen in a newspaper headline. The new Avengers compound, and Falcon's status as one of the current Avengers, is established in Avengers: Age of Ultron -- Thor's Bifrost bridge at the end of that movie is even briefly glimpsed, although some grass has grown over it. Ads for Pingo Doce, the Brazilian soda company in Incredible Hulk, can be seen in the background. One of the prisoners in the prologue has a tattoo of the Ten Rings from Iron Man.
• Movie Superhero Codenames: In an interesting manner, Hank Pym is most assuredly referred to as 'Ant-Man' in the past, and he tells Scott to be the 'new Ant-Man'. But throughout the movie Scott is mostly called by his civilian name, although he does refer to himself as Ant-Man several times as a joke -- a homage to how many people IRL thought the name 'Ant-Man' was too hard to take seriously. 'Yellowjacket' is only ever used to refer to the armour, and Darren Cross never calls himself that.
• Favourite Action Scene: Thomas the Train. You know you love it. 
• Funniest Line: Ant-Man upon meeting Falcon, about to do a superhero fight: "Hi, I'm Scott."
• Scott stays in the Milgrom hotel, named after Marvel comics artist Al Milgrom. 
• Darren calls Hank Pym's career as Ant-Man as "Tales to Astonish", a reference to the anthology comic book series where Ant-Man debuted in the comics. 
• Ant-thony is "Ant #247". 247 is a combination of Marvel Premier #47 (Scott Lang's debut) and Tales to Astonish #27 (Hank Pym's debut).