Ant-Man, 2015
Directed by Peyton Reed
Starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Pena, Corey Stoll, Bobby Cannavale, Judy Greer, Abby Ryder Fortson, John Slattery, Hayley Atwell, Martin Donovan, David Dastmalchian, T.I., Wood Harris and Michael Douglas.
SYNOPSIS:
Armed with a super-suit with the astonishing ability to shrink in scale but increase in strength, con-man Scott Lang must embrace his inner hero and help his mentor, Dr. Hank Pym, plan and pull off a heist that will save the world.
I’d been sat with my fingers hovering over the keyboard without a word typed for far too long before I realised why; not even 12 hours after watching yet another tepid Marvel movie, I can barely remember a thing about Ant-Man. That’s not my fault, but the fault of a film which is so by-the-numbers it becomes offensive to anyone who doesn’t purport to be ‘a huge fan of Ant-Man, ever since I was a kid’, or just accepts a film solely because it’s based on a comic book property. For a twelfth film from a studio specialising in nothing but comic book films, I’d expect something a shallow and bland as Ant-Man as a first or second picture, but not at this stage.
Allow me to use a metaphor to describe the frustration. Imagine drinking a glass of Coca-Cola on hot summer day; that’s Iron Man in 2008. Now imagine someone gives you a much larger glass but fills it half full with ice; that’s The Avengers in 2012, overblown with far too many needless parts getting in the way of what may have been something quite refreshing. Ant-Man, is just a big glass of ice with some Cola trapped at the bottom; the thing you originally liked is buried underneath. Even when it trickles through it’s diluted when it reaches you.
Metaphor over. The ice cubes are the world building and the need to link every film which each other, whether they need it or not, so every year we’re fed yet another inconsequential instalment of the ‘Marvel universe’. I was hoping Ant-Man was going to be different; different in its tone, story and action set-pieces but instead any creativity on show is fatally weighed down by the Marvel-ness of it all. Each mention of Stark and The Avengers feels condescending to all involved, like a studio exec was standing off camera with key names of characters they are obliged to mention to ensure continuity. Forget continuity. Whatever happened to originality?
But who cares about originality when there’s a bevy of super heroes to pick from to have a cameo in your next film. There’s an extended cameo in Ant-Man which I’m sure will have fans cheering, but the desperation to make the film fit into a ten year plan is always crudely apparent up there on the screen at the same time.
Sure, Ant-Man as a character is different to all the others in so far as what he can do, but the screenplay doesn’t allow any scope for the film to become any different, thus any fun the film may have with miniatures and scale is ultimately for nothing. The laziness of the film is encapsulated in the writing, or distinct lack thereof, of its characters; Scott Lang (Ant-Man when he’s not in costume, played by Paul Rudd) can barely be referred to as a ‘character’ for he has nothing to define himself and is quite possibly the blandest person to ever put on a hero’s costume in the history of comic book cinema. Tony Stark has his heart issues and general suave, Bruce Wayne is haunted by the death of his parents, Steve Rogers is a true American patriot despite his size, Bruce Banner has anger issues, but what of Lang? He doesn’t create anything, he doesn’t go through an arc, nor does he change by the end of the film other than be crammed into ‘Phase Three’ as if anyone was actually needed. Paul Rudd plays the character as Paul Rudd plays most of his characters; a variation of himself, which is to say, not a character worth spending time with in an action adventure movie.
Every hero needs a villain, but this is where the Marvel films fail to hit the mark each and every time. There is nothing interesting about watching a hero fight a replica of himself because the stakes are inevitably reduced if the status quo is levelled. The Hulk vs Abomination, Iron Man fighting other flying robots, Thor vs his brother, Captain America battling The Winter Soldier, Superman fighting other super beings… where’s the excitement? What makes Batman taking on The Joker or Superman’s struggle with Lex Luthor so interesting is that they are not their physical equivalents. In Ant-Man we get the weakest bad guy of them all to date; a businessman who finds his way into (surprise, surprise) another Ant-Man suit but with additional detail to make it look menacing. How he knows how to use the powers is never explained or questioned, the film just needs someone to fight against so this is what we get. Tension, it is fair to say, is never on the film maker’s minds.
I can’t pretend to be a great admirer of Edgar Wright’s work but I can appreciate he has a vision and style and stick to it which pleases his fans. What I can appreciate is his decision to walk away from this project and maintain his dignity as a film maker, because if this is the final result of what the execs want from their films then no film maker with a modicum of integrity should go anywhere near the Marvel Studios meeting rooms. Director Peyton Reed hasn’t a visual flair to speak of, so was a perfect choice to produce a blockbuster by committee; no coincidence that he directed Yes Man, because that’s what studios increasingly look for now.
With a script which delves into exposition from the very first scene and is littered with clumsy dialogue and woefully strained relationships between its one-dimensional characters, the few moments of authenticity never pay off, despite trying hard. The sequences where Lang is ant-sized are well conceived and the effects are mostly excellent (I really liked the giant ant, the film’s best visual gag) but are sadly lacking in any real tension. As Ant-Man the biggest risk to Lang’s life is sadly at the hands of another Avenger, and what I was hoping for was far more battles against the elements akin to something like 1987’s Innerspace. An exploding model city is the closest the film comes to delivering an exciting set piece, but mostly the action is flaccid and unwarranted. Certainly a superhero film which doesn’t end with a 30 minutes destruction of a city is welcome but that’s not a free pass for praise and I feel the potential for a unique climax felt terribly rushed and a mere afterthought once the world building had been carefully orchestrated. The same feelings apply to the heist aspect of the film; much potential but a heist film only ever works when the stakes are high. Ant-Man’s stakes aren’t even low, they’re non-existent.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Rohan Morbey
Listen to the Flickering Myth Podcast review of Ant-Man using the player below:
