Movie Monday: Ant-Man (Spoilers)

Hank: Ayen, I've been watching you for a while, now. You're different. And I believe everyone deserves a shot at redemption. Do you?

Ayen: Absolutely! My days of sneaking into movies and reviewing shit are over. What do you need me to do?

Hank: …I want you sneak into a movie and review some shit.

Ayen: ...make sense. This is Ant-Man! And just to be clear I don't sneak into movies my mother pays for the ticket and–

Hank: Your MOTHER pays for your ticket?

Ayen: Yes – No – I mean–!

Hank: Laughs and walks away.

Ayen: Can we do this scene over?

After a change of directors, rewrites, and filming delays, we finally have something tangible to feast our eyes on in theaters. Ant-Man stars Paul Reed, a notorious thief named Scott Lang who gets a second chance at life by becoming the hero known as Ant-Man. By this point you're probably asking yourself:

Scott: Is it too late to change the name?

Yes, yes it is. You will be called Ant-Man and you will like it! Without further ado, let's dive in to the end of Phase II!

  I'm here for the costume party. I think I have a real good shot of winning first place.

First we see of Scott he's having a fight with a big guy in prison that actually turns out to be a weird prison ritual between friends, and he leaves the prison looking to make a new start on the straight and narrow. But as you can imagine many people aren't fond of having ex-cons work for them so he gets fired by every place he applies for and ends up right back where he started.

His motivation comes from wanting to see more of his daughter who lives with his ex-wife and her new boyfriend who also happens to be a police officer. Ouch.

Despite the crazy premise of the entire movie, Scott actually comes across as the most normal Marvel protagonist yet. He really does feel like someone you could bump into on the street. All he wants is to be a part of his daughter's life and piece together what has fallen apart. You have to be heartless not to root for him after that.

  I was making armor suits before Tony Stark made it cool.

Introducing Hank Pym, played by Michael Douglas. He's the creator of the Ant-Man suit, the shrinking formula, and founder of Cross Technologies. When he discovers that SHIELD tries to duplicate his shrinking formula he walks out on them like RDJ walked out on Channel 4.

Hank: That doesn't date this review at all.

Ayen: Shut up!

Hank develops a teacher/student relationship with Scott that's really nice to see, and you feel for him with the loss of his wife and strained relationship it caused between himself and his daughter. Not to mention the guy has some of the best lines in the movie.

  When do I get to be Wasp, again?

Next up we have Hope Van Dyne, the daughter of Hank Pym. Hope works with her father in his plans to infiltrate Cross Technologies and steal the Yellowjacket suit and blow the building before they can mass produce the Yellowjacket and spread chaos upon the world. If you were going to blow the place up why bother stealing the Yellowjacket at all?

Hope's role in the movie can be summed up by:

Hope: Let me use the suit.

Hank: No.

Hope: C'mon, Dad!

Hank: I said no and I mean no!

Hope: You never let me do what I wanna do! Storms out.

I'm exaggerating for comedic effect, but it's a fair summary. Hope already has all the training and knows how the suit works, knows Cross Technologies inside and out, and she even goes as far to say, “We don't need him,” when talking about Scott. She's right. They don't need him. You could take Scott completely out of the picture and just call the movie Wasp.

From what I understand before the rewrites the character of Hope was just a cameo, and then they gave her more of a prominent role. That's great, but they gave her so much that it got to a point where you're sitting there thinking to yourself, “Why is Scott even in this movie? Why not just have Hope do the mission?” The answer to that is because Hank doesn't want to risk his daughter’s life. Okay, I get that. Except he's perfectly okay with getting someone else who has a daughter that would mourn for him if her father died. You're kind of a dick, Hank.

Hank: You're full of shit, Ayen!

Ayen: The only one you're hurting with that anger is yourself.

I mean, if you have to stop and justify why your main protagonist is in the movie, you're doing something wrong. 

  The guy looks more like Lex Luthor than Jesse Eisenber.

Darren Cross is our main antagonist of the movie and the man to wear the Yellowjacket suit. His motivations? To stick it to the old man who kept secrets from him. This time I'm not just exaggerating for comedic effect, that is the beginning and end of his character’s motivations.

He was the prodigy of Hank, thought that he was keeping secrets from him about Ant-Man, and decided to take over his company and mass produce the Ant-Man formula without Pym. There's a line spoken by Hope that suggests Darren is being affected by something that's making him crazy, but it's never really explored much. They bring it up and drop it just as quickly. I think we got enough of a picture that he was going insane from his earlier actions.

As Yellowjacket? Eeh. He does his job as a foil to Ant-Man well enough, and the ending fight is cool. I'll talk more on the special effects a little later. I hate to say it, but Darren Cross is a forgettable villain. His suit looks cool and everything, but he's too much like Ant-Man to really stand out on his own. That's a problem that a lot of Marvel villains have. They're too similar to the heroes. Also, how the hell did he get that suit on in the helicopter so quickly? He has to be the fastest man alive!

Quicksilver: I take offense to that. Zips around Ayen and hogties him up with a ball gag in his mouth and leaves.

Ayen: Mmm!

Quicksilver: Zips back in the room. Ooh, Supergirl. Takes the Supergirl toy and bails.

Ayen: Mmmmmmmm!

  You are a puny ant man!

The special effects in this movie are phenomenal. They're like Honey I Shrunk the Kids, but a million times more awesome. Whenever Ant-Man shrinks you have the two different perspectives. Showing you how the inconsequential of things (like a lifesaver pack) can be a dangerous obstacle to you, and then you see it in our normal everyday perspective and it's just funny.

Best example of this is in the trailer with the Thomas the Tank Engine. You see this giant train coming towards them, and then it cuts to regular size where all you see is a toy falling off the track. They don't just make things small in this movie, they make them big. An ant gets increased to the size of a dog, and the Thomas train is enlarged and comes out of the house and is just laying there on the road with his eyes going back and forth.

There's a scene at Cross Technologies where Hank reveals that his tank keychain, isn't a keychain. It's a mother fucking tank! This huge tank bursts out of the building, and it's still carrying the chain! The chain is on the back of it and is being dragged along with the tank! It's awesome! Everything they do in this movie is so clever and a treat to watch.

Another thing they buildup to is a pocket dimension called the Quantum Realm where time ceases to be as a result of going subatomic. The effects for that are kind of trippy. Like somebody injected you with some drugs. Despite being a creepy moment, Scott is surprisingly calm. The most he ever gives is an, “Oh no.” If that was happening to me I'd be freaking out! I think most people would.

The absence of fear or panic in that moment takes me out of it a little bit. I guess they didn't have time for him to get his bearings about him if he did panic, but I think that would get to anybody. Doesn't help that his face is covered with the helmet so he can't even give us facial expressions. You can barely see his eyes with all the red. Maybe he was in shock, I don't know, but he gets out of it pretty damn fast.

  What the hell, you said there was a thirty days warranty!

One of the other things that falls flat in this movie is how predictable it all is. When he's stealing the Ant-Man suit I'm thinking, “It's a setup.” And that's what it is. Hank goes on a speech about going subatomic and without even trying I guessed that it was going to be how the mother died. Then with Hope becoming Wasp. I guessed that halfway through the movie and I'm usually good at not trying to call these things in the moment, but it was so predictable and distracting that it was hard not to make that jump. All of the big reveals just fall flat because you see them coming a mile away

Another thing that's a hot topic that hasn't been confirmed yet is the original Wasp returning. She wasn't cast, and I have to think that if Scott Lang, who had less time with Hank and the Ant-Man suit, can come up with a way to get out of the Quantum Realm, then why couldn't his wife do it? It doesn't make sense to me. So I think there's a chance she got out of the Quantum Realm, but if she did on her own then it pegs the question why she wouldn't come back right away? Could she be a villain in the next movie? Or another support character? I don't know. There's a lot of potential there.

  You're supposed to take your clothes off before entering the bathtub.

I'm split down the middle with this movie. It does a lot of things well, and there are some drawbacks that can be distracting. Is it the best Marvel movie yet? No. Is it better than Guardians of the Galaxy? I think it's unfair to even have that be a question. For a solo origin story of a Marvel property, it's really good despite the number of flaws the movie is plagued with. I think it's worth seeing for the special effects alone.

Try it