"Hi, I'm Scott."

"Did he just say, 'Hi, I'm Scott?"

Hope van Dyne, Ant-Man

Karli's away with her sisters for a Father-Daughter weekend, what to do, what to do*... how about a movie? Well, I'm not going to waste my time on the Fantastic Four movie, enough other people have made that mistake to keep me from following suit...

Wait, is Ant-Man still in circulation?

As it turns out, yes, Marvel's second foray into the B-List of superheroes is still in commercial release.  I had heard positive reviews when it first hit the streets, but I've been busy enough that seeing it didn't seem to be a priority.

I may do Ant-Man a bit of an injustice in referring to the character as a B-List hero.  In the comics, he's a founding member of the original 1963 Avengers, and Ultron, the cybernetic nemesis who appeared in the second Avengers film, is originally a product of Ant-Man's genius rather than Tony Stark's.

Regardless, the character has never quite achieved the prominence that Iron Man, the Hulk or Thor have in the Marvel Comics Universe, and as such he's an interesting choice as an addition to the MCU movie lineup.

Oddly enough, Ant-Man doesn't in the least play like a superhero movie, at least not a superhero movie like the Avengers or Captain America films.  Ant-Man is Marvel Comic's take on one of the standard Hollywood plotlines - the underdog who makes good.

Paul Rudd takes the role of Scott Lang, thief with a conscience, who is determined to go straight now that he's paid his debt to society for his moralistic crime against an oppressive corporate villain. His ex-wife has an intimidating new boyfriend who happens to be a cop, and without a steady job Lang can't handle the child support payments he needs to make in order to see his beloved daughter.  Having been turned down for work by even Baskin-Robbins, he succumbs to the temptation of just one more burglary to get the money he needs.

The crime in question involves cracking a mysterious safe at the home of Dr. Henry Pym, but to Lang's intense disappointment, the safe contains only a strange suit and helmet.  When he tries on his unusual loot, he discovers to his shock and dismay that it gives him the ability to shrink to the size of, well, an ant.**

It turns out that Pym has staged the entire crime in order to recruit Lang to wear the suit and help prevent his shrinking technology from falling into the wrong hands.  Lang reluctantly agrees, and the plot instantly becomes every underdog story you've ever seen.

Pym is the curmudgeonly mentor with a heart of gold and a secret heart-breaking backstory, his daughter is the love interest who is initially disdainful of Lang but soon grows to appreciate him, and Lang goes from bumbling student to successful hero as soon as he seizes on his need to see his daughter as the happy thought that will allow him to communicate with his ant allies.

Of course, the bad guy is Pym's scientific protegé gone bad, Lang has three comedy-relief criminal associates that might as well have been drawn by Disney animators, and the final battle between hero and villain is to save Lang's daughter, not the world - in fact, the world may still be in peril at the end of the movie.

Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed Ant-Man quite a bit.  It was an unexpectedly well-scripted and clever take on the whole superhero meme, and all the actors do good work with their characters - Paul Rudd deserves particular recognition for his portrayal of reluctant heroism. The effects are wonderful, the scaled shots of the world from an ant's perspective work beautifully, but ultimately, Scott Lang could have been training to race stock cars and the movie's plot would have been very similar.

All that aside, I do have one strong criticism.  It's made clear from the onset that Pym's suit functions by shrinking the gaps between molecules, which means that Lang maintains his full-sized weight when miniaturized.  This allows him to hit the bad guys like a 180-pound bullet - so how is he able to ride a flying ant?

- Sid

* Other than blogging - I don't normally explain gaps in my blogging schedule here, this is a hobby not a job, but this DOES offer a convenient opportunity to catch up on a lot of backlog - or backblog, perhaps.

** I'm reasonably confident that this isn't a spoiler - I think that the movie's title sort of gives this one away going in.