Ant-Man is a refreshing new spin on a totally lame superhero. When I heard they were making an Ant-Man movie I hopped on the phone with my buddy and we jabbed at it all night. Really? Another superhero movie? And it's Ant-Man? I assumed they would have dragged any other superhero off the Marvel line up before they chose him for a film. But when I sat down with my overpriced 3D glasses and bucket of Sprite, I came to realize that my money was well spent.
As opposed to its competitor, DC, Marvel has always taken a more scientific approach with its heroes, making them more realistic. In this case, we have Dr. Pym (Michael Douglass), who created the Pym Particle, a chemical substance that powers the Ant-Man suit and allows the wearer the ability to shrink and grow on a whim. Worried that this power could fall into the wrong hands when Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), Dr. Pym’s former protégé, threatens to re-create the Ant-Man suit and sell it to the highest bidder, Pym enlists Scott Lang (Michael Rudd) to take on the heroic role as the new Ant-Man. So we have a rich man with a robotic suit that empowers him superhero abilities. Sound familiar?
Fortunately, Peyton Reed was able to direct the quirky film with a slightly different direction than the average Marvel film, thanks to the clever writing of Edgar Wright. Plenty of fun-sized puns are planted throughout the film, with Wright playing on Ant-Man’s abilities with hidden puns like Cassie’s nickname ‘Peanut,’ as well as sending in Michael Peña as comic relief singing “It’s A Small World” during the heist.
Speaking of Michael Peña, he gave a fantastic performance as the happy-go-lucky Louis, Scott Lang’s old cellmate and partner in crime. I appreciated the fact that Louis was not the stereotypical Latino ex-con; though Louis’ lingo and slang could be considered stereotypical, his behavior and actions weren’t (when he proposes the first heist of the film to Lang, for example, he mentions a tip he got from a friend while at a wine tasting). These genius Wright-written add-ons give Louis a depth of character that exceeds the typical image of Hispanic men painted by mainstream cinema, creating somewhat of a sophisticated associate for Lang, rather than just a goofy sidekick.
Ant-Man's real breadwinner, however, is the unique set of fight scenes that can only be created with an insect-sized man. No other superhero movie can rightfully boast about their inventive battles inside a child's bedroom, let alone the crazy awesome macro photography used to capture bite-sized combat sequences on a toy train track. The hard work of hundreds of visual effects artists did not go unnoticed during the hilarious fight scene with the Avenger, Falcon (Anthony Mackie). Using his abilities to shrink and grow it appeared as if Ant-Man was disappearing and reappearing to the human eye.
Without a threat of the world ending looming over them, the stakes were seemingly low, though this is refreshing compared to the city-crushing blockbusters we’re used to when it comes to Marvel. It’s almost as if even the stakes themselves were a joke about being small.