With the most recent release that exists as part of their “Marvel Cinematic Universe”, Marvel Studios hit a snag. Just when it seemed like audiences might be getting tired of the superhero-origin-story-leads-to-a-big-fight-to-stop-a-world-ending-event-from-occurring-above-a-populated-city formula, they subverted things a bit by making movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy, which felt more like a 70s-era political thriller and a comedy-driven space opera than they did traditional superhero movies, and are probably the best movies the studio has put out yet—but then they released Avengers: Age of Ultron, which stuck to their established superhero formula too closely, and which felt tired and played out compared to the two movies that came before it. Age of Ultron wasn’t a bad movie, per se, it just felt like more of something we’d already had enough of.
So, given the less than unanimous praise for Age of Ultron, how does their new superhero movie, Ant-Man, fair when it comes to changing up the superhero formula and giving us a fresh enough spin on the traditional comic book tale to prove that the gigantic slate of superhero films they’ve got planned is not only going to continue to be successful, but is going to continue to be so enthusiastically welcomed by audiences that they continue to break box office records? It does a middling job. In some ways it dabbles enough in the heist genre to feel like a freshening up of the now standard superhero movie, but in others it falls enough into formula to feel like an economic inevitability rather than an adventure the audience is being invited to go on.
The super-powered hero Marvel is introducing us to this time is called Ant-Man, but things are a little bit more complicated than that. You see, in this movie there are two Ant-Men. The first of which is a scientist named Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) who developed the MacGuffin that gives Ant-Man his shrinking powers and who worked as a secret agent for the government during the Cold War, and the second is a thief named Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) who Pym recruits to use the Ant-Man suit in order to steal another bit of shrinking tech from a former protege of his named Darren Cross (Corey Stoll). Pym has long believed that shrinking tech should be kept from the world, and Cross has long resented the secrecy, so he’s dedicated his life to creating his own shrinking suit, the Yellowjacket suit, which he has now completed and intends to sell to the highest bidder. Also involved is Pym’s estranged daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly), who works for Cross and who hates her father, but who shares his reservations about unleashing an army of tiny-but-strong soldiers on the world.
If the plot sounds complicated in summary, it’s less so in execution. This is a pretty straightforward corporate espionage/heist story, with some superhero battles thrown in here and there for good measure. The only real narrative leap one needs to get over is why recruiting Lang to steal the Yellowjacket tech is the best option for getting rid of it Pym can come up with, and how the vetting process of finding him and deciding he was the right guy for the job worked in the first place. The real reason is that Lang is the second Ant-Man in the comic books, so of course he has to be Ant-Man here, but the explanation the movie offers up is that, even though Pym’s daughter is the real right person to make sure the tech never sees the light of day, past traumas have made him unwilling to involve her too deeply in anything dangerous, so he needs an expendable.
The most entertaining aspects of Ant-Man are the little bits of filmmaking flair director Peyton Reed adds in to link it with the best of the heist genre. In particular, there are a couple of robbery-planning montage sequences where the camera starts moving around very slickly and assuredly and the score gets all jazzy that are a lot of fun, and there are a couple of sequences where Lang’s partner in burglary, Luis (Michael Peña), has to drop a ton of expositional dialogue that are also amazing. His stories get acted out in flashback, Drunk History style, where actors lip synch along to his narration. Peña’s live-wire performance and the extra layer of humor that comes from hearing his voice come out of other people’s mouths makes what should have been the most boring parts of the movie the strongest, which is kind of a magic trick.
The other big thing that film has going for it is that it’s cast well. Every member of the main cast makes the most of what they’re given, and the supporting cast is filled with character actors who always add depth and authenticity to anything they appear in. Rudd is perennially charming and likable, so he’s a great choice for the protagonist of a big summer movie, Douglas uses his elder statesman status to add quite a bit of weight and authority to the film, Lilly is great at projecting the under the surface anger and steely determination necessary to make her character work, and Stoll has the commitment needed to add weight to the machinations of even a fairly pedestrian villain. The guy sells desperate yearning. Peña steals the movie from everyone though. He’s so good as Lang’s giddy, motor-mouthed partner that it actually becomes a bit of a detriment to the film because you can’t help but wish that you were watching a movie about him becoming a superhero instead.
Another reason that’s the case is that the film has a problem when it comes to developing its characters. Lang is just an ill-defined character in general. Is he a man with a troubled past who’s committed to his family and determined to get his life back on track so he can be with his daughter? Or is he a wisecracking ne’er-do-well who’s always looking to undercut moments of seriousness and disrupt the status quo? Does he have a strong moral code, or is he willing to break whatever rules he needs to as long as the risk is worth the reward? The answer seems to be that he’s all of these things at once, depending on the moment, which is confusing. If he would have started out overly serious and brooding or overly jokey and frivolous and then developed more toward the other end of the spectrum over the course of the film thanks to his experiences, that would have been one thing, but as the film is structured he behaves differently, scene to scene, depending on what each scene requires, with seemingly no thought given to the big picture.
To be fair, Lang’s struggles over not being in his daughter’s life aren’t the real emotional heart of the film though—Pym’s relationship with his daughter is. Their relationship just isn’t executed well enough to be the foundation that everything else is built on though. The rift between them is well-established, and the circumstances of their being forced back together make sense, but the reconciliation comes off as being forced anyway. Hank and Hope feel like very archetypical movie characters who are facing very archetypical movie problems and dealing with them in very archetypical ways. A little personality, a little humanity on their parts would have gone a long way, but whenever they’re at odds with one another and getting passionate about personal issues is when the script’s dialogue is at its clunkiest, to the point where it feels like you’re cycling through storytelling requirements rather than watching a relationship anyone involved in the production was legitimately passionate about developing, or at least interested in. Pym and his daughter are here because the script needed characters who face conflict and are then changed by it, but you never get a sense that the film has any understanding of who they are as people. Their relationship is enough to give the action elements of the plot some much needed meaning, but it’s never anything to get excited about.
Which is what can be said about Ant-Man in general. It’s competent enough on a fundamental level that it’s worth watching, but it never does anything unique enough to get excited over. There’s something to be said for formula. Formulas develop because they generally work. But when you’re a company that exclusively makes superhero movies that all exist in the same superhero universe, you have to be careful that you don’t start repeating yourself too often. The guy who keeps telling the same story over and over again at every party eventually gets outed as a bore.
