12 – Ant-Man
I’ll start this off by saying that this was such a fun movie! It had a great cast, great visual effects, great action, and most of all, great comedy. You see, a superhero movie can have all the special effects in the world, but if it isn’t a good movie first, nobody’s going to want to see it. Ant-Man had a cool story, fun, relatable characters, and absolute significance to the great tapestry of the MCU. Not only that, but it was fresh. They style of comedy was fresh. We were introduced to new characters for the first time. And for those of us who are fans of the original comic books, we got to see them come to life on the big screen, with great costumes that were based on the source material, and yet updated to a more realistic and practical standard.
First, let me talk about the fantastic cast. Paul Rudd played the lead, master thief, Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man. He is handsome with a kind-of goofy, loveable puppy-dog personality. We get Michael Douglas, who is just an incredible actor, playing Hank Pym. And we got Evangeline Lilly playing Hank’s no-nonsense daughter Hope van Dyne. Also on the good guy’s side was Michael Pena, playing Scott’s best friend Luis, who turned out to not only be one of the funniest parts of the movie, but also a slightly pivotal character to the plot. And of course, we have to have a great villain. In And-Man, we get Corey Stoll as Darren Cross / Yellowjacket. Also, we have Bobby Cannavale, Tip “T.I.” Harris, Judy Greer, Abby Ryder Fortson, and David Dastmalchian rounding out the supporting cast.
So in Ant-Man, they were actually able to, once again, pull off the impossible. Not only did they introduce a completely new cast of characters, but they did so believably and at a good pace, and still had enough time to give us action that actually meant something because we were able to learn who they were. And they did it all in the space of a single film. And as you might suspect, that action’s schtick was about a hero who could shrink to the size of an ant. Other movies have been based on the concept in one form or another, but it has never been done in quite the same way. But this movie took the name even further and developed a way for our hero to communicate and control huge armies of ants, which is really cool because as we know those little annoying insects actually vastly out number human beings. I looked it up, and there are estimated to be 2.4 million times more ants than humans.
And it wasn’t just Ant-Man who could shrink. They had a tank shrunk to the size of a keychain until it was needed. The blew up Cassie’s toys to gigantic size. They use the growing and shrinking effects so creatively. And now, they have the technology to make it all look so real. There was a little fight sequence that took place inside a brief case that was really cool. Yellowjacket ended up destroying a green Lifesaver candy with a laser! And speaking of fights, there was a really fun fight between Ant-Man and Falcon, played by Anthony Mackie that was pretty awesome, too.
But overall, when I think of Ant-Man, I think of the humor. Paul Rudd and Michael Pena were great. But it was Pena’s Luis that really stood out to me. He is such a great character. He is like a hyper-active, ADD, super-street, Latino, goofball. He was so cool! But the laughs were so much more than that. It was the miniaturized fight where Yellowjacket is getting run over by a toy train that just anti-climactically topples over like the toy that it is. Or during the brief case fight, the villain shouts, “I’m going to disintegrate you!” and a cell phone in the case says, “Playing Disintegration by the Cure.” It was when a giant ant runs past a policeman who calls it a messed up dog. This was a great addition to the MCU Franchise. But even if it wasn’t part of that larger picture, it was a movie that could have stood on its own as just a good, fun movie. I don’t know how they kept hitting so many home runs, but they did!
Top 10 Favorite Parts
- Scott gets fired from Baskin Robins
- The opening sequence for Darren Cross – Actually quite charming for a psychopathic villain.
- Luis’s first story – hilarious! (Second story at the end, too!)
- Scott Shrinks for the first time.
- Training montage / Scott explains to Hope that he is expendable.
- Ant-Man fights Falcon
- The Heist at Pym Research Facility / And-Man inside the computer hardware.
- The brief case fight & the bug zapper.
- The fight on Cassie’s train set.
- Ant-Man goes sub-atomic and Yellowjacket’s death.