Director: Peyton Reed
Writers: Adam McKay, Paul Rudd, Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish
Cast: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Michael Pena, David Dastmalchian, T.I.
Runtime: 117 mins.
2015
[Ant-Man is notorious for its behind the scenes history and drama. I'm not going to tackle any of that right now because it's overdone, and because I want to treat the movie well enough to criticize it based on its own merits and pitfalls--what is on the screen above all else.]
Ant-Man is not an especially well-written movie. I want to set this notion on the table and dine upon it first, because I'll have nicer things to say later on.
The story mostly follows charming everyman Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) who also happens to be a cat burglar and father to a small girl. His daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson) is in the custody of Lang's ex-wife Maggie (Judy Greer) and her policeman boyfriend Paxton (Bobby Cannavale). Scott isn't a lost cause; everybody loves him, even the bosses who fire him, but Maggie forbids him from seeing his daughter until he pulls his act together and starts ponying up on child support.
Meanwhile, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) is trying really hard to keep the technology he secretly invented many years ago--a suit that allows you to shrink to the size of an ant--out of the wrong hands. Those oh so wrong hands belong to Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) who is about to have his own breakthrough with a weaponized shrinking mass producible suit he calls the Yellowjacket. So it is that Pym sets the pieces in motion for a heist, and he knows the perfect guy for the job.
I don't have a problem with any of that. The structure of the film is solid. Unlike nothing in the MCU since 2008's Iron Man, the front half of Ant-Man is a slow burn. I believe we are past the halfway point by the time we get to our first real combat setpiece. We spend a solid half hour with all the characters going about their respective lives before anyone even dons the suit. The restrained pacing of this film does wonders for establishing Lang's everyman charm, and it feels like a much needed breather after the blistering pace of Age of Ultron. The placement of this film as an epilogue to Phase II in the ever-evolving MCU timeline couldn't have been better.
The film walks the fine line of connecting Lang to the rest of the Marvel Universe while still letting him carve out his own unique space in the world. The only major crossover outside of the obligatory "the Avengers exist!" lines of dialogue is an extended cameo that feels a bit awkward clunking into place, but once established makes for an entertaining sequence.
One of the finest accomplishments of recent MCU films is their selection of diverse and specific genres for the movies to inhabit. The Winter Soldier is a political thriller, Iron Man Three is a noir dramedy, Guardians of the Galaxy is a twisted space opera. Ant-Man wisely continues that trend by styling itself as a heist film. Fitting Ant-Man into the structure of a heist film streamlines the messy "saving the world" stakes of many summer blockbusters into a more palatable set of means and goals.
Big picture, I don't have a problem with any of Ant-Man's creative choices. It's when you hold up a magnifying glass that you begin to notice where it unravels.
The dialogue is stilted. As a friend pointed out, Hank Pym and Scott Lang are speaking at totally different registers. Douglas is having fun with the sweeping, melodramatic comic book dialogue he is given, and Rudd is having fun with his self-effacing casual goofball dialogue that seems to be mined in no small part from his comedy persona. When these two verbal styles are juxtaposed to comedic effect, or to directly spar with each other, it works. The problem is, most of the time the discrepancy goes unacknowledged, and it feels like they're talking past each other.
Any time the movie is not trying to be funny, the dialogue is very mediocre.
There are also a wealth of unexplored plot and character threads that niggle at you during the film, then start to gnaw as you turn the story over in your head afterwards. Lang's character arc is all but nonexistent; he goes from being a nice guy who steals things to a nice guy who steals things in a shrinky suit. For another example, Hank Pym has a daughter as well: Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly). Hope still works at Pym Technologies, which has been carrying on without Pym for decades, and she is the closest assistant and confidant to the big bad guy, Cross. But, lo! Hope is actually in cahoots with Pym and is using her relationship with Cross as leverage to facilitate the heist.
That's all well and good, but the fact of Hope's relationship with Cross is all but ignored. When it's useful to the plot, Hope can provide information. But what exactly is her standing with Cross? We see her on what appears to be a dinner date with him, and it isn't strange for him to call her cell just to chat. Are they dating? Are they screwing? If they are, why are Hope's circumstances completely ignored? It must be hell to sleep with someone you despise and are actively trying to thwart, but she never really mentions that part of the situation. And if Pym's character is all about protecting her, why isn't he concerned about this? It bothers me that the film tiptoes around such a central aspect of the lead female character so that we won't be distracted from the boys having a good time.
That's not the last of my problems with Hope's character. Marvel has gotten awfully good at hanging lampshades over the institutionalized sexism in comic and blockbuster movie culture. Lip service is paid here, with Hope being a strong female character who can kick Lang's ass in a boxing match and who feels she is the one who deserves to wear the Ant-Man suit. She is obviously better than Lang at everything outside of being likable. But she is banned from the suit not because she is a woman, the movie assures us, but because Pym faced a trauma long ago that makes him feel obligated to protect his daughter no matter what.
So you'll let her literally sleep with the enemy, but you won't let her wear the superpowered suit that is designed to make you really hard to kill??
Then the movie has the nerve, or perhaps the cowardice, to give us that first post-credits scene. Not enough, Marvel. I liked Lilly's character; the strong-but-sidelined female character who plays an important role in the plot and never needs to be rescued is one step in one right direction. But if Hope were a man, she would be a decidedly minor character. Equal gender representation does not mean token lack of sexism (I'm looking at you too, Guardians of the Galaxy... sad that these two films are better about representation of women than half the others in the MCU).
Alright, I'm finished with that diatribe. I had mentioned that I would say some nice things about Ant-Man, hadn't I?
Now would be a good time to point out that Ant-Man is actually a comedy. I just mentioned Guardians of the Galaxy, which is a pretty good comparison point: a pair of sci-fi comedies starring a cast of characters who had largely not broken into the public consciousness before their respective films. Ant-Man can't live up to Guardians' wall-to-wall hilarity, but I laughed at Ant-Man way more than expected. It's a great deal of fun, especially Luis (Michael Pena). Luis has been Lang's friend for years, and he's been hanging with a black man (T.I.) and a Russian dude (David Dastmalchian), which makes this one of the more diverse entries in the MCU (although let's not think too hard about the fact that this diverse friends group is also a clique of overt criminals). Pena is an absolute highlight. Every line he delivers is dripping with a manic sincerity that makes it automatically endearing. His perpetual mugging never loses its charm, and some of the best moments of the film are his baffling montage information dumps.
The other hero of the movie is Paul Rudd. He's a hero not because he wears a suit, but because his performance constantly elevates average to slightly-above-average dialogue. He does a great deal of his work with reaction shots and amusig faces. I was never bored during the runtime, even when the pacing bottomed out, and a great deal of that was thanks to Rudd's savvy sense of humor. I'm not even saying this as a fan of his; as far as I can remember, I've never seen him act before.
Not to make Ant-Man feel like Guardians of the Galaxy's inadequate little brother, but Ant-Man also can't hold a candle to GotG's incredible production design. That world felt like a revelation of purples and greens, a whole intergalactic menagerie of things we've never seen before. Ant-Man feels like a bunch of boring labs and houses. To that claim, I offer two exceptions that make up for the visual dullness:
1. The suits. They're some of my favorite designs I've seen in a superhero movie. The Ant-Man suit feels worn and tangible, an object with a lot of history. When Rudd puts the suit on, he looks out of place, but he does not look dumb, and that is key. I also enjoyed the way his mask pops open to reveal his twinkly eyed face.
2. The Yellowjacket suit also feels distinctive, unlike the get-ups of most Marvel baddies. Stoll's villain character is as by the books as it gets, but he plays it with such verve, and the Yellowjacket is so engaging, that I don't mind. The suits are also perfectly complementary, from the color schemes to the differences in weaponization to the fact that Rudd's entire suit was a practical costume whereas the Yellowjacket was almost entirely computer generated.
2. The graphics. If you want to do a shrinking movie, there are three ways to accomplish that, as far as I am aware of. One way is to build an enormous physical set. It worked weird wonders for fellow Marvel director Joe Johnston's Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Another way is to film a performer, then computer generate her surroundings. The final way, the way of Ant-Man, is to physically film a setting in such a way that small objects appear to be huge, then digitally add in the performer. This technique is called macrophotography, and it results in one of the neatest graphic tricks I've seen recently. When Ant-Man shrinks, it's always a treat. We can feel the grime on the bathtub, the rush of a storm drain, the padded chaos of the inside of a suitcase. It's visually spectacular, and all in service to the story its telling--the best kind of summer blockbuster special effects. As a happy bonus, the graphics allow for some excellent gags and slapstick humor.
One late game sequence in particular struck me as the summer blockbuster version of a famous scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey, both visually and conceptually, which pleases me to no end.
What else is there to say? The soundtrack is brash and fitting. The sound design is impactful. Lang's little ant buddies are used inventively and are well-integrated with his shrinking ability. Ant-Man is almost disappointing, and it's almost dull, but thankfully the end result is neither of these. It's a lovingly made tiny blockbuster, which may be an oxymoron, but the statement stands nonetheless.
3 / 5 BLOBS
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