Every week, a group of friends and I are rewatching a Marvel movie in preparation for the Avengers: Endgame. Might as well talk about them on the way, right?
After blowing up the world for a second time, a smaller and more intimate movie is exactly what the doctor ordered- and Marvel’s first heist movie delivers. By this point, Marvel has gone so far off the deep end on the sci-fi, they make the most inconsistent rules for the Ant-Man suit, it makes no sense, it’s really stupid, and I don’t care about any of that because it’s great.
On so many of the other Marvel movies- and movies in general- I get nitpicky with inconsistent world building, bad sci-fi, and all the other architecture of the art-making process, but Ant-Man is so goddamn charming that nothing matters except Paul Rudd getting to spend time with his adorable daughter. Also, the original score is really fun, if not memorable.
But I do want to reiterate: The Ant-Man suit makes no goddamn sense. At all. At times, he’s a 200-pound Rudd who makes tiles crack when he falls, and at other times, he’s ant-weight and can stand on someone’s shoulder no problem. And then again at other times, he can land on a vinyl record and barely interrupt it. Cuz he’s an ant, I guess.
The real flaws in the movie really show themselves right at the end- I’ve already forgotten the bad guy’s name and, like, I just watched this movie a couple hours ago. And he looks exactly like Cory Booker but sliiiiightly whiter.
Oh! I can see the difference. Cory is wearing the blue tie and has Obama ears. No. Wait.
So Senator Booker dons the ant-man-but-evil suit and they have a shrinky dinky fight at the end. There’s some visual coolness, but it’s a repeat of that time Tony fought an iron man-but-evil suit, or that time Hulk fought hulk-but-evil, or that other time Tony fought iron man-but-evil, or that time…
There’s a reason that Marvel, and studios in general, keep going back to the Superman-vs-bad-Superman formula: It’s actually pretty compelling to see a hero face off against a perfect match, if you do it right. On paper, Superman fighting General Zod in the streets of Metropolis sounds pretty sick. But if it’s not done well…
All of this to say, I get why they made the choice to do the crappy Yellowjacket fight sequence at the end. But it’s still pretty bland. Paul Rudd really saves the day when he gets reunited with his daughter and we care again.
Also, there’s this part right here:
And that’s cool as shit.
Ant-Man doesn’t present any new, deep philosophy, nor does it approximate the scale of the other Marvel movies. And that’s great, because after listening to James Spader ramble on about… whatever the hell Ultron was talking about for two hours, a simple and lighthearted action-heist-superhero-whatever film with was exactly what we wanted.