This past weekend I went to see Marvel's latest spin-off
movie, Ant-Man. While there are a number of things to really like about the
film, it'll definitely (and rightfully) be known as one of Marvel's weaker ones.
Armed with the ability to shrink in scale, burglar Scott
Lang (Paul Rudd) is recruited by Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), and with the
help of Pym's estranged daughter Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), plan a heist
that will foil the misguidedly evil plans of Dr. Pym's former protégé Darren
Cross (Corey Stoll).
The first thing to point out is that at its core, Ant-Man is
very much a heist movie. Lang is a down on his luck ex-con, who has an all too
perfect score fall into his lap that turns into something much smaller than
himself (see what I did there?), and he is given the chance to use his
abilities for good. It features all the staples of heist movies: The planning
montage, the scene where they have to plan and execute a heist to steal something pivotal to
the larger, end-movie heist, breath-holding moments, and close calls. That being said, it's
not a very good heist movie; Ant-Man never really has the time to build the
right amount of tension or gravity to make anything really matter that much,
and once it does, it has crumby payoff, and it's only in the last twenty minutes
of the film where the ending is more than predictable anyways.
The acting in Ant-Man is the real standout of the film. The
entire cast, main and supporting, really nail their roles, and give us as much
emotion from the script as possible. The supporting cast brings the right
amount of comic relief, and Michael Peña steals every scene he's in. Also, big
shoutout to my boy Ernesto, he crushed it. The big four of Rudd, Douglas,
Lilly, and Cross are very good together, and they certainly charm the hell out
of you, but you can't help but see there's something missing. The film moves
too fast to get through all of its story, and because of that, it's a bit
emotionally disconnected. All the moments are there and executed well enough,
but the movie doesn't give us the kind of time we need to not only get really
attached to the characters, but also to connect with where they go emotionally.
While that kind of thing should be expected when a script is
turned in by a pair or filmmakers, Joe Cornish and Edgar Wright, who then leave
the production due to creative differences, and the script is then re-written
by Adam McKay and Paul Rudd, it doesn't mean it shouldn't be held against it.
There is a lot left of Cornish and Wright's script in some of the story
elements of the film, but McKay and Rudd molded it to fit Rudd's sense of
humor, and distributed that through the rest of the cast as well, but it unfortunately dumbed down many of the funnier moments of the film. The combination
of McKay and Rudd's dialogue with the adventurous remnants of Cornish and
Wright's script make for an overall fun and funny movie, but Director Peyton Reed
and company missed really making some of Ant-Man's scripted dialogue and
visual gags pop.
The sentiment is the same for much of the look of Ant-Man.
There a few scenes that have suspect cinematography, being under-lit or have
poorly composed framing, and the editing moves the film along too fast for you
to connect; you can't help but feel the whole thing was rushed. That said, the
special effects looked fantastic, and the filmmakers had a whole unit dedicated
to macro photography to be used, and those moments are especially good. Seeing
a tiny Lang bouncing across a real record player ludicrously close distance is
really awesome looking. Additionally, the final sequence gets a bit psychedelic
and is surprisingly cool.
My real criticism is a larger one: Why can't Marvel just try
to make these movies great? We can "But but but Guardians" all day
long, but you have to realize that movie scared the shit out of Marvel
the entire time it was in production, and it should have, really; it was their
riskiest picture to date. But the second Thor movie, The Dark World? Everyone is already going to see it for
hunky Chris Hemsworth, but Marvel could have also make it a better than decent movie.
This makes Ant-Man's mediocrity especially frustrating because we have seen what happens when they
find the right filmmakers (like James Gunn with Guardians of the Galaxy) or when the
filmmakers are out to make a great movie first and foremost, even if they are
inexperienced (like Anthony and Joe Russo with Captain America: The Winter
Soldier).
Despite being fun and charming, Ant-Man is still too much
like some of the other non-Avengers pictures (See: Incredible Hulk, the Thor series): Good but not
great, without enough bright spots to propel it through mediocrity; good ideas executed in too
little time by the wrong filmmakers. Marvel Studios/Disney definitely seems
more concerned with brand control than making great films, so they settle for
just good ones. See it eventually.
