You can go back and see my original review here.
My original review of Ant-Man covered most of the points I would make here, so let me do a slight re-cap and see what else I can dig into.
Corey Stoll. Still not a fan. When it comes down to it, I think it's because he comes off as nothing more than a petulant child, and it's really difficult to take that seriously. He's like the angry five-year-old who has found a gun but doesn't really know what he's doing with it when he starts shooting rather than stomping his feet. Of course, now I'm thinking of Republicans and their constant foot stomping and waving around of guns. Well, from that perspective, maybe Stoll wasn't too far off in his presentation. It's difficult to take those people seriously, but they're causing real harm.
Still love Michael Pena. He's so great.
Still love the scene with the Falcon. If I'm choosing specific scenes from Marvel movies, this is probably one of my top three (along with the elevator scene from Winter Soldier and the Mjolnir scene from Ultron).
I remember being very annoyed with the character of Paxton when the movie came out, but I've softened on that and think the character works. Bobby Cannavale is really great.
From my current standpoint, that Hank Pym arranged for Scott Lang to break into his house has got to be one of the best plot ideas in any of the Marvel movies. Pym and his sitting in front of his bank of monitors is very spider-like, and the whole thing demonstrates how brilliant Pym is supposed to be. Not even daddy-Stark could replicate his formula, after all.
At the moment, the Ant-Man movies are a little on the outer rim of the MCU, kind of like Spider-Man. He's a character moving in and out of what's going on but, mostly, doing his own thing. So far. I think we're going to see some changes to that with the next movie, but that's just speculation on my part.
Oh, the usage of the ants is quite extraordinary.
Also, for those who don't know, Ant-Man (and Wasp) were part of the original Avengers in the comics (Captain America was NOT). My understanding is that Ant-Man was being worked on as part of phase one of the MCU originally, but they decided to shelve him because they didn't think audiences were quite ready for it. They decided to focus on Cap, Thor, and Iron Man. I think this was a good call. I suppose it's also how we end up with Lang as Ant-Man rather than Pym. It's a good change. I like what they've done. Ant-Man is a strong movie. So let's look at the rankings.
The rankings!
2. Captain America: The First Avenger
3. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
4. Iron Man
6. Thor: The Dark World
7. Thor
10. Iron Man 3
11. Iron Man 2
12. Incredible Hulk (Norton caused Hulk to be beat by an ant.)
Ant-Man was so much fun! I feel like Paul Rudd was absolutely perfect casting, though as you've said, they generally did a great job on casting anyway. It was a plus that they kept it more self-contained. It was focused more on making Ant-Man good on it's own than making it part of the bigger whole.
ReplyDeleteI love Ant-Man. Rudd brought fantastic energy to the franchise.
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