Film Review - Ant Man (2015)

Ant Man is the latest Marvel Studios production and stars Paul Rudd (who also co-wrote the film) as Scott Lang a small time thief who is busted after breaking into a house and is soon released by Dr Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) who then offers him a very unique job opportunity.

To be very honest with you all part of me was not looking forward to this film primarily because for a long time Edgar Wright (who I'm a huge fan of and who retains both a story and script credit along with his co-writer Joe Cornish who also co-wrote the 2011 Tintin film with Edgar) was going to make this movie and he was starting to put his team together in late 2013/early 2014 (Rudd, Douglas and Evangeline Lily were all cast during this period) and Steven Price who did the music for Gravity was going to do the music for this film plus it looked like Wright was going to re assemble his Scott Pilgrim team to make this film but then in May 2014 Wright left the project and my interest in this film plummeted afterwards.

But all is not lost and after some promising word of mouth prior to release my interest was piqued once again, could this film deliver for me or would the bitter disappointment over Wright's departure still linger on in my mouth.

Well surprisingly it didn't but although the film for me is fine it is also pretty forgettable not long after leaving the cinema but before I delve into that in more detail I want to talk about what I did like which is the cast and the visual effects, the FX scenes here are very clever and as a result it made the action sequences they serve more exciting than they were in Avengers Age of Ultron and the main cast are all good here especially Rudd and Michael Pena who in my view is where Edgar's influence still remains on the script.

But apart from those there are some big flaws here:

- The first is once again Marvel Studios and Kevin Feige the producer supreme serve up a very very bland villain in Yellowjacket, not once did he feel threatening or in any way interesting, he just felt like a boring straightjacket who goes way too OTT when he becomes Yellowjacket and this is but one half of my now complete and utter frustration with this franchise and that is for all of the decades of history of these characters in the comics they continually drop the ball where it should count the most and as a result I don't feel any sense of tension or jeopardy for Ant Man or his allies.

(It also doesn't help when you think to yourself during the climax "Eh he'll be fine as he'll be back in Captain America Civil War next year.)

- The second is the near complete waste of Lily in this film and once again Marvel and Mr Feige have decades of history to draw from in terms of the comics and they continually make their films a boys own affair now I know there were some female characters in Age of Ultron but outside of Black Widow they didn't make much of an impression and again it just isn't good enough anymore.

And here is also where I want to talk about Phase 2 of Marvel as a whole as the law of Diminishing Returns when it comes to sequels applies here and yes I know that all of the comic book fanboys and girls have loved what they've done but for me personally this feels like a real step down and it's also where Disney's acquisition of Marvel in 2009 has now fully born fruit as these films have not gone down the darker edged route that they've promised only to go "never mind" because heaven forfend we scare any of the little kids in our audience.

And finally to wrap this up seeing this film has now made me more keen for Bryan Singer's X-Men Apocalypse next year which looks to have that dark and scary tone, a genuine villain in Oscar Isaac's En Sabah Nur (Apocalypse's birth name) as well as key roles for the female heroes in Jean Grey and Mystique and the villains in Storm before she becomes one of the X-Men and Psylocke as well as an imaginative story promising to date back to the days of Ancient Egypt and how Mutants are seen as some sort of sign of Gods among Men, I sincerely sincerely hope this film delivers on that promise.

And so that was Ant Man which is fine but also very forgettable for me, 2 out of 5.