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I don’t think there’s been a movie to garner the same kind
of snarky dismissal that Ant-Man has
in the lead up to its release. To
some extent the press relationship to Ant-Man
is understandable. The Marvel
Cinematic Universe is a cultural juggernaut unlike any we’ve ever seen before
and it seems plenty of folks in film journalism are just sharpening their
knives waiting for the big boys at Marvel to collapse and Ant-Man really seems like the best possible option for them. An adaptation of a C-list hero so out
there and bizarre even Marvel abandoned the character pretty quickly in the
comics. Follow that up with Ant-Man’s troubled production and the
very public parting of ways between Marvel Execs and geek auteur Edgar Wright
and it’s easy to see why this film might be considered at ‘high risk.’ However it turns out everyone was wrong
because Ant-Man is really good, in
fact it’s downright excellent, a true stand out of the overall very sloppy
Marvel Phase 2.
Ant-Man swirls
around the parallel characters of Hank Pym and Scott Lang. Pym was a big shot scientist who
discovered size changing technology during the Cold War that lets you shrink
and gives you increased strength while tiny. He used his powers to fight the Russians while also
developing a way to manipulate ants, earning him the code name Ant-Man. After a major falling out with
S.H.I.E.L.D. Pym became a recluse till a rising scientist at his company Darren
Cross discovered Pym’s tech and plans to use it to make micro-weapons codenamed
the Yellow Jacket to sell to bad guys.
In order to stop Cross Pym needs to pull the Ant-Man suit out of mothballs
but he can’t wear it anymore and he doesn’t want to risk his estranged daughter
Hope Van Dyne wearing it. Enter
Scott Lang, a thief/corporate whistle blower looking for a second chance. Together Scott must learn to use the
shrinking tech to pull off one last major heist in order to finally put his
life together so he can see his daughter again.
If that plot sounds a little flimsy or all over the place
it’s only because it is. That’s
actually part of Ant-Man’s sly
genius, creating a thoroughly unobtrusive and simplistic plot rather than the
byzantine twists and turns found in a lot of superhero flicks. The emptier narrative space gives the
film a solid focus on humor and characters in a way that’s been missing from a
lot of phase 2 films. Even the
ones that had a greater character comedy bend like Guardians of the Galaxy often fell a little too hard on the big CGI
action to drive the excitement. Ant-Man sheds most of that artifice in
favor of goofy and tightly directed training sequences with an emphasis on
creative uses for the shrinking powers rather than fighting and
destruction. Structurally the film
is probably closest to Iron Man with
the big emphasis being on Scott learning to use his technology rather than
actually fighting. However it
cleans up a lot of Iron Man’s problem
areas; Scott’s quest to reunite with his daughter is infinitely more present
and well-defined than Tony’s existentialism, the action increases the
creativity and intensifies the emotions of the film, and Darren Cross’s Yellow
Jacket is a much more intimidating and active villain than Iron Monger.
The biggest success of Ant-Man
though is in fulfilling something I’ve come to call the Marvel Promise. Even during phase 1 Marvel has been
promising audiences a different kind of superhero experience, one that wasn’t
even really about superheroes.
Looking over Marvel’s vast catalog of entries there’s a deliberate
emphasis in their landscape to produce films that don’t fit into the tropes and
clichés of the superhero. There
are no secret headquarters, no archenemies, no moral codes, and not even any
secret identities in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Their films are more meant as genre flicks that happen to
star comic book characters; Captain
America: The First Avenger as a fantasy adventure war flick ala Indiana Jones, Thor: The Dark World as a mythic science fantasy flick, Incredible Hulk is basically a Godzilla
film.
The problem is that despite this noble intention a lot of
the Marvel films have started to fall into a similar and unfortunate rut. Especially within the confines of phase
2 Marvel’s films have all started following the same formula. There’s always an army of henchmen for
the heroes to fight, always a doomsday device that needs to be stopped, always
a villain base to explode in the final battle, and always a 2nd act
that feels far more engaging and satisfying because it’s driven by character
rather than CGI fireworks. The
thing is that none of these are actually superhero clichés, they’re blockbuster
clichés. That’s the major problem
so far with Marvel’s post-Avengers
films, they’re all brought down by being slaved to a synthesized formula for
blockbuster success. This is why Captain America: Winter Soldier has been
the most resonant and beloved film of phase 2, because it’s one of the only
movies where the big climactic ending is driven by emotion more than
spectacle. Ant-Man manages to go completely against all these elements and
ends up so much the better for it.
Ant-Man is, above
all else, a comedy and that fact seeps into every frame of the flick. Even the big, escalating heist/fight
scene at the end is driven forward by the comedic potential of the size
changing technology more than the spectacle of destruction. More than that though, comedy as a
genre forces the film to be more reliant on character than effects. For a scene to be comedic we need to
engage with the people at hand, they need to be defined and from the quirks of
their definition we get forward comedic momentum. That’s why so many comedies can cycle into genuine emotion
so easily, like Black Adder Goes Forth
or Cabin Pressure or The Office, because the innate nature of
comedy arises from relating to characters based on their desires and
failures. That comes out in full
force in Ant-Man, especially
emphasized in the parallels between Hank & Scott. Hank’s relationship with his daughter Hope is fractured from
the start and even though his goal is to defeat Cross his bigger motivation is
to keep his daughter safe and reunite some kind of connection with her. Meanwhile, Scott is facing a possible
future for himself with those two as his own daughter remains hopelessly beyond
his reach despite the two still being very close. The true emotion of the film really blindsides you after the
relaxing pace and disarming comedy but the movie never lets you forget the
reason Scott is going through all this training and danger is to try and get to
see his daughter again.
As a result of this Ant-Man
ends up a phenomenal outlier for Marvel and sort of an honest to God throwback
to the phase 1 days when Marvel played more fast and loose with structure and
focus. The whole driving ethos of
the film isn’t that you’re here for plot or spectacle or even for Marvel Easter
eggs, you’re here to have fun hanging out with these characters, and it’s an
absolute blast.
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