Ant-Man: A New Hero for a New Generation

Hi! This is yet another page of Kips’s thoughts on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’ve been challenged by a good friend to watch them all before Avengers: Infinity War leaves the theaters. So far, from what I can tell, that’s gonna be this Thursday. We shall see. I have cousins visiting and four more movies to watch and comment on.

By the way, in case you haven’t guessed it, SPOILER ALERT!!

Dear V,

I’m writing this on my phone at the moment as I wait for the shop to put tires on my car. Yippie!

My initial thoughts going into this movie was that it was going to be too silly for my taste. I really don’t expect this to be that great of a movie — I mean, c’mon Marvel, Ant-Man??

This is what I expected.

The below is what I got.

So we’ve got Michael Douglas as Hank Pym, the scientist who creates the Pym particle that allows organic material to be shrunk within a suit (with helmet) by the push of a button. Agent Carter is in the beginning where Pym retires so we have that tie-in.

I’m beginning to believe that Marvel has pulled out all the stops for this movie — there are a large number of celebrities in them whose names I recognize. Michael Douglas is only one of them.

So Paul Rudd (for me, the world’s most unlikely superhero) is a small-time cat burglar and thief who we see leaving prison. He’s decided to change his ways because he’s got a daughter and he wants to see her. His ex-wife (who, incidentally, married a cop) tells him he needs to catch up on his childcare payments and to get a job. This — after he’s been fired a number of times from different jobs.

His friend tries to hook him up with another job with a hacker and a something — not sure what he did, but his name was Dave. I almost choked laughing — there’s always a Dave in that type of crowd. Not that I would know or anything. And the former cat burglar says no because it would jeopardize his chances of seeing his daughter.

“You’re her hero, Scott. Be the person she already thinks you are.”

When Pym retired, his assistant, Cross, carried on his work minus the Pym particle, managing to develop a prototype suit, the Yellow Jacket, that would shrink and enlarge, but would kill the person within it.

There’s a nice sciency reason that it works, but it’s better to try not to think too hard on that.

When it seems like his only chance to be with his daughter is to go back to burglaring, he agrees to participate in one job. One job that will give him enough money to see his daughter and get on his feet. I don’t think the goal was to ever get rich.

The problem is they pick the wrong house to break into. It’s Pym’s house and unbeknownst to them, he’s watching Scott the entire time. When Scott gets inside the safe, he finds the Ant-Man suit and takes off with it.

Ex-cons really do have a difficult time getting back on their feet — whether it’s in getting employment or fitting back into society. Some felons will even say they like it better on the inside because, after a while, that’s what you get used to. But this isn’t a review for The Shawshank Redeption.

But I can definitely tell you — easy money is attractive. That’s what the gambling and advertisement industry is all about — gaining and keeping your own money.

So I’m not going to blame Scott because he feels like he’s in a bind.

We find out that Pym was the original informant who gave the plan to someone to get to Scott. He’s been keeping an eye on him for a long time, in fact, since the initial burglary of VistaCorp that put him in prison.

But the police have been called to Pym’s house because of the burglary and Scott simply puts the suit on. With the push of a button, he’s as small as an ant — and able to escape the house and reach safety. With the push of another button, he’s normal size again.

As Pym talks to Scott, he asks the ants to bring Scott a couple of sugar cubes. Ok, first, I’m not afraid of ants, but they’re not my favorite animals on the planet but as soon as Scott says yes, that he will help Pym with a plan to burgle his own company for the Yellow Jacket suit, Scott starts to learn how to communicate with the ants and use them as well as the suit to do things.

And I have to admit — that’s pretty clever. Yeah, I knew it was Ant-Man, but I didn’t realize he’s work with… well, actual ants. I thought it was just about size. (No jokes please — no jokes about women only paying attention to size or anything. Let’s keep it clean.)

Another sciency definition of how the suit works is given — it shortens atomic relative distances (draws the atoms closer to each other) — but again, let’s not get sidelined and go down a physics memory hole.

We also get a reason for Cross to have dealings with bad people (i.e. Hydra — the ex-head of defense for S.H.I.E.L.D before it broke up is the buyer). That reason is… if your head isn’t covered by a specialised helmet, the rays can change your brain chemistry. I’d much rather him be evil because of money or he agrees with Hydra’s goals or he wants power — this reason sounds like a really bad cover-up and I’m just not a fan. If you’re going to be out and out evil, goddamnit, then be out and out evil! :)

When Pym tells Scott about the suit, first thing Scott does is say their first move should be to call the Avengers. I really couldn’t help but laugh. But Pym says no, he doesn’t want the shrinking technology in their hands. The way he puts it, he doesn’t want the shrinking tech to be in anybody’s hands.

We also learn that Pym was once Ant-Man for the military. His wife went on the missions with him and was called “The Wasp.” She had to shrink so far down to finish a mission that she went “sub-atomic” and entered the quantum world. Foreshadowing, anyone?

And of course, we have Paul Rudd with his shirt off. I’m beginning to think I was told to watch these because they all had half-naked men in them. Rudd looks like he’s been working out (storywise he has inside the prison).

Once Scott (Paul Rudd, if it wasn’t clear) was ready for a solo mission, he was to break into a warehouse that had now become The Avengers Headquarters. He runs into Falcon but is able to escape by disabling his wings. But in the end, he gets the item that Pym had asked him to get.

The rest is mostly Cross discovering that Pym’s daughter, Hope, was betraying him to her father, Scott bringing in the three guys he had done the first job with, and Cross deciding to sell the Yellow Jacket suit to Hydra.

Pym’s big heist is to send Scott in (with the ants) and have him steal the Yellow Jacket suit.

I loved Scott’s final act before the heist — sneaking in to see his child. I think I would have done the same thing.

Hated Antony’s death. Loved the fight between Cross with the Yellow Jacket suit on and Scott. The briefcase scene was fantastic.

I think at the end I managed to get myself involved enough with the movie that I was watching it more than taking notes. :)

This movie did surprise me, but definitely in a good way :)