Director Report Card: Peyton Reed (2015)

7. Ant-Man

Ant-Man is a character that has been kicking around the Marvel Comics universe for decades, even being one of the founding members of the Avengers. Despite that, he's never been especially popular, owing perhaps to a perpetually shifting persona and frequently disgruntled personality. Aside from some scattered animated appearances, the character never penetrated much into other areas of pop culture. Yet, for some reason, “Ant-Man” was among the earliest Marvel superheroes to be licensed for a film adaptation. Stan Lee wanted to make an “Ant-Man” movie back in the eighties. In 2000, the character was part of a crop of Marvel heroes optioned to Artisan. Shortly afterwards, Edgar Wright became attached as director. He stay attached after the formation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, toiling on various versions of the project for nearly a decade as his reputation grew.

We all know how this turned out. After all that build-up, seemingly weeks before production was finally going to start, Wright and Marvel parted ways on “Ant-Man.” The reasoning behind this divorce was clear: Wright's auteur vision didn't fit in with the Marvel Cinematic Universe assembly line. After a number of other filmmakers were considered, Peyton Reed would end up taking the gig, still utilizing most of Wright's script. Initially, fans were hostile to Reed replacing a beloved figure like Wright. While the director of “The Break-Up” and “Yes Man” probably seems like a weird choice to direct a superhero movie, Reed is actually a comic fan and even pitched a pretty great sounding “Fantastic Four” movie in the early 2000s. Most of the hostility and skepticism towards the director and the film faded after “Ant-Man” was released in 2015 and ended up being delightful.

Scott Lang just got out of prison and swears his career as a high-profile burglar is over, mostly so he can continue to see his beloved daughter, Cassie. Yet his friends promise a major score is forthcoming and, after he can't find legit work, he agrees to do it. Inside an old man's home, through a complex vault, he finds a strange suit. Upon wearing it, he discovers he can shrink to minuscule size. The suit belongs to Hank Pym, once known as the superhero Ant-Man. His super-science company has been taken over by an unstable man named Darren Cross, who is dangerously close to uncovering the secret behind the size-changing Pym Particles. In order to keep this tech from falling into dangerous hands, Hank and his daughter Hope will train Scott to become the next Ant-Man.

By 2015, the Marvel Cinematic Universe had already featured gods, magic, intergalactic battles, alien invasions, armies of killer robots, and a few Infinity Stones. “Ant-Man,” appropriately, is a much smaller scale movie. The fate of the world never hangs in the balance. No cities are destroyed. Collateral damage is kept to a minimal. Instead, “Ant-Man” has a much more humble goal of being a heist movie. It happily fits many of the outlines of the genre. Experts with special skills are brought in, though they are ants here. A detailed plan is set out for the audience, showing the steps the heroes will use to infiltrate their target. This, naturally, goes wrong before too long. Yet formula is not a bad thing and “Ant-Man” manages to be highly entertaining within the boundaries of the heist flick.

Considering its more personalized scale, “Ant-Man” doesn't feature too many connections with the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe. For the most part, it stands alone as a movie. However – and these are the elements that Wright perhaps objected to – it does feature a few cute connections to the other films in the franchise. The first of which is a shout-out to the Avengers, the question being asked about where the hell they are. The second is an extended, fantastically amusing sequence where Ant-Man infiltrates the Avengers base and ends up scuffling with the Falcon. That playful relationship with continuity is one of the most delightful surprises about “Ant-Man.”

Another element distinguishing “Ant-Man” from its superhero brethren is its central gimmick. Heroes with super strength or sci-fi weapons is something we've seen plenty of times before. A shrinking superhero brings with it a certain novelty. “Ant-Man” definitely has fun portraying this element. Scott Lang's first experiment has him falling through the cracks of a floor and racing across a spinning record. A dance floor becomes a minefield, a belt bucket enormous, a mouse a massive monster. Later, as Scott is learning to control his ant friends, we are greeted to a series of fascinating sequences blowing the ants up to massive side. “Ant-Man” even displays a totally unexpected experimental size, as its climatic journey into the Micro-Verse gets wonderful psychedelic. Bright colors, massive atoms, and splintering fractals spin across the screen in a hypnotic blaze of images.

“Ant-Man” is also an action movie, the first time Peyton Reed has stepped into that particular genre. Yet, from one perspective, this was not a totally mismatched choice for him. After all, are the highly choreographed fight scenes of modern action movies that different from the cheer routines of “Bring It On?” While definitely not breaking the mold as far as Marvel movie fight scenes go, the action in “Ant-Man” is fairly satisfying. The hero's shrinking powers make for some fairly novel fight scenes. The way Scott shrinks, grows, and shrinks again while taking down opponents is pretty cool. So is a moment where he races through a miniature building as bullets tear it apart. Probably the action highlight is saved for the climax, where Scott and Darren Cross – having become the super villain Yellowjacket – turn the tiny details of a suitcase or a child's bedroom into a massive battlefield.

But what really makes that last sequence, and “Ant-Man” as a whole, special is its wacky sense of humor. The seriousness of the battles are purposely undercut by pulling way back, so we see the epic combat in scale with normal people, normal Bug Zappers, and normal Thomas the Tank Engine toys. That puckish sense of humor manifests itself all through the film. Scott's first job after leaving prison is at a Baskin-Robbin's, a funny sequence that wouldn't have been out-of-place in Reed's earlier comedies. Among Scot's friends is the talkative Luis, whose rambling anecdotes come to life on-screen in hilariously literal ways. One of my favorite running jokes has Scott giving his flying ant steed the punny nickname of Ant-hony. The dialogue is witty, sharp, and quotable all throughout.

Something else that makes “Ant-Man” different from the other movies is its hero. Scott Lang isn't a trained super solider or a Norse god. He's also not a selfish billionaire or a philandering space rogue. Instead, he's a fundamentally decent man that loves his daughter. Paul Rudd, hardly anyone's idea of a typical superhero up to this point, proves an inspired choice to bring this character to life. He's adapt, naturally, with the fast-paced comedic dialogue and moments of awkward character interaction. Yet he also projects a wholesomeness, a need to do better by the people he loves, that cements a shockingly sincere heart at the center of this size-changing superhero heist flick.

In fact, men who love their daughters turns out to be the central theme of “Ant-Man.” Scott is motivated by Cassie, their interaction being portrayed as never anything less than adorable. His daughter adores him and he needs to prove to her that he deserves that admiration. Hank Pym, meanwhile, has a more tense relationship with Hope. Never forgiving him for keeping the truth about her mother's disappearance, or his general frosty treatment towards her, she is desperate to show her strength to him. Yet his actions are motivated by love too, by a need to protect his daughter and a lingering guilt over Janet Van Dyne's disappearance. The romantic side-plots in Marvel flicks are frequently routine – it is here too, as Scott and Hope hook up at the end mostly for no reason – but the film's emotional heart is otherwise healthy and vibrant.

Hank Pym is rather notoriously an asshole in the comics but the movie softens him considerably... But not too much. Michael Douglas leans into natural ability to play a prickly jerk who is, nevertheless, highly principled and ultimately admirable. Douglas brings an acidic wit to his comedic scenes, most notable in the scenes where he's trying to teach Scott the ropes of Ant-Manning. Evangeline Lily has a similar confrontational quality as Hope but, beneath her gruff exterior, has a sweet vulnerability that she occasionally gives us a peek at. Both performances are pretty good.

Marvel movies were once criticized for their lack of memorable villains. “Ant-Man” didn't exactly break this trend at the time. Corey Stoll is totally fine as Darren Cross. He wrings his hands villainous and has a good evil smirk. Yet the character is pretty underwritten, his personality never expanding much beyond what you'd expect of a protegee turned into an unhinged mad scientist. (And it doesn't help that, like in too many of the “Iron Man” movies, the bad guy basically has the same power set as the hero.) The real highlight of the supporting cast is Scott's band of friends. Michael Pena is especially hilarious as Luis, who immediately became a fan favorite, while David Dastmalchian and T.I. Also get their share of laughs as the other corners of the trio.

”Ant-Man” isn't mindblowingly good. It's more minor than most of Marvel's superhero epics and that's totally by design. Its commitment to formula and an uninspired villain makes it difficult to rank it too highly. Yet the delightful cast, an infectiously fun sense of humor, and some visual inventiveness makes it a swiftly entertaining motion picture. While one can't help but mourn what Edgar Wright's “Ant-Man” might have been, I also find myself loving Peyton Reed's “Ant-Man” more and more every time I see it. [Grade: B+]