Review: ‘Ant-Man’

After years and years of movies about costumed superheroes fighting random bad guys in attempts to save the entire world (if not the whole universe) from destruction and death, often resulting in films that end with twenty-plus minutes of CG-enhanced mayhem, whole buildings being destroyed, entire cities reduced to rubble and ash, often at the hands of some giant energy beam, Marvel has finally made a movie with smaller stakes, a more emotional story, and more relatable characters and situations, and quite frankly, it is one of their best movies. No one was expecting “Ant-Man” to be the answer to the question we all wanted to ask, and yet here it is, intimate, fun, energetic and delightful, a wonderful movie that is a pleasure to watch.

“Ant-Man” centers on Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), who starts the movie fresh out of prison. He just finished a stretch for stealing millions of dollars from some corporation and Robin Hood style returning that money to The People, and now that he’s out, he wants to be a proper father to his little daughter Cassie, which is hard to do when people won’t give him a job or rent him a place to live due to his status as an ex-con. The only way he has any shot of making any money is by meeting up with some friends from prison who have a tip on a job that would require Scott’s cat-burglar skills. Unbeknownst to all of them, this job leads directly to Scott meeting a scientist with a secret piece of technology that would change the way the world sees matter itself.

That scientist is Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and that technology is the Ant-Man suit, which is powered by something called a Pym Particle, and basically all this suit does is shrink itself (and its wearer) down to the size of an ant, while also increasing that user’s strength, resulting in a very, very tiny person that can knock out normal sized people with a single punch that hits with the velocity of a bullet. Unfortunately this tech, which he invented and then tried to bury for decades, has been developed by Pym’s former protege Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) and Pym knows this will just lead to worldwide chaos, so he recruits Scott to put on the original Ant-Man suit and stop Darren from selling this technology to nefarious people.

And yes, this mission does boil down to “save the world,” like every other comic book movie of the last 5 to 10 years, but this aspect of the plot to “Ant-Man” is actually secondary to a couple of other main themes. Much of this story is driven by Scott’s need to be a good father to his daughter, as he is a very smart person who screwed up and crossed the line and now just wants to be a provider, but both society and his ex-wife’s new husband don’t even want to give him that second chance. And since Lang’s crime was a “rob from the rich and give to the poor” type of thing and also because of Paul Rudd’s innate likability and charisma, Lang is a character that is easy to root for, one who seems very noble and just wants to do the right thing, despite society doing its best to prevent that because of his past mistakes. His story is one of second chances, which most people can relate to, super suit or not.

Also his story ties into the story of Hank Pym, who has a strained relationship with his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly), and who has been struggling for years with the idea of a successor for his work. He groomed Darren to be that successor, but they had a falling out, and thanks to Hank’s unwillingness to tell Hope what really happened to her mother, she finds it very hard to trust him and open herself up to him, which leaves Hank without someone to pass his particular torch to, at least until Scott comes around. So with both Scott and Hank, this is a story about fathers and daughters, mentors and proteges, the passing along of knowledge, ideas, hopes and responsibilities, and that is far more interesting than watching a group of super powered beings trying to stop an alien invasion or homicidal robots or a random megalomaniac from wanting to enslave the whole Earth, because it is far more real and relatable. Like with the central hero, they went smaller with this story as opposed to everything else and it worked great because the story could be much more focused and developed, as opposed to trying to cover a dozen characters and give them all their own moments and scenes.

Despite having a visual look that fits in with the rest of the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” films, “Ant-Man” does have a few things going for it that manage to continue to separate it from the rest. With Scott Lang being a burglar and with multiple sections of this movie involving breaking into places, this movie has more in common with heist movies than it does comic book movies, which is a genius move on Marvel’s part. Like how they made “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” a 70’s era political paranoia thriller and “Guardians of the Galaxy” a space opera, they are playing with other genres with their movies, which helps keep things interesting and fresh. And there is also the idea of the Quantum Realm, a sub-atomic place where time and space and reality have no meaning, and this concept features quite heavily in this movie, and it is just as weird and bizarre as it sounds. Yet when used in this movie, it makes wonderful sense, and also manages to raise the stakes very high for our lead characters. Comic books for decades have featured crazy ideas about other realms and dimensions and weirdness, and it only feels like this aspect of comic books has been embraced very recently. Between the Quantum Realm and the floating head of a dead space god in “Guardians of the Galaxy,” these movies are finally going to these strange places with the comfort of knowing that the audiences will (likely) be willing to come along for the weird ride (this is something hopefully that will be pushed to the limit in Marvel’s upcoming “Dr. Strange“).

Did I mention that Michael Peña is in this movie as one of Scott’s friends? Not only does he steal each scene he is in, he practically absconded with the whole film.

This movie is pretty great, definitely one of the more enjoyable and “real” movies Marvel has made, despite the absurd incredible shrinking man conceit, and I am very much looking forward to more Ant-Man in future Marvel movies.

Plus Giant-Man, yo, That’s gonna be sweet.