Big things come in small packages and this guy packs a wallop! Paul Rudd is amazing and plays a great Marvel baddy turned goody with humour, seriousness and heart. I give you Marvel's latest instalment in the MCU and last film of Phase Two and newest Superhero, Ant-Man!
Our weird title but awesome story features Scott Lang/ Ant-Man "Paul Rudd" (Anchorman, Wonderlust) leaving prison after doing time for being a talented master thief. After trying to go straight for his adorable daughter, he does another job to get money, not knowing it's about stealing an important suit owned by Hank Pym/ Original Ant-Man "Michael Douglas" (Last Vegas, Wall Street). Hank decides to give Scott a chance of redemption to help them both save their daughters whilst also stopping baddy and Hank's old assistant/ protégé Darren Cross "Correy Stoll" (The Bourne Legacy, Salt) from replicating that power.
Me and several people from my best group of friends since College along with Lewis from the Mudder (I last saw them at the Jurassic World premier, by the way, that film is a MUST SEE too!) all wanted to see this film because we all knew and figured it was important thanks to it being the film before Captain America: Civil War (plus Lewis spilled the beans on facts that I had no problem hearing anyway on the fact that in the comics, Ant-Man is a HUGE character in the whole Avengers origin and stuff but also explained the difference that the film has portrayed compared to the original character). Lewis was the most psyched and buzzed up man for this film thanks to Ant-Man being one of his all time favourite heroes and I too agreed with him on the fact that the Marvel film gave him super strength when he's tiny to make him more cool and powerful instead of just looking like a pointless Ant-Man that people would just laugh at (well, compared to the laughing we all did during the film anyway).
Picture were from http://marvel-movies.wikia.com/wiki/Ant-Man_(film)
Paul Rudd played an exceptional Marvel character who had a criminal history and now had a shot at turning his life around, I gotta say that his character was more different to the c*cky, happy and charming funny dude from the comedies he's famous for. This time he played the serious, good hearted and skilled thief who gets a shot at redemption and makes a character that sounds stupid, actually turn out incredible... whilst again still sounding ridiculous. The fact that he was the successor to an original hero makes it more interesting and different to many Marvel heroes we all know or have seen on screen because they were the originals whilst Scott was a replacement.
His training wasn't easy let me tell you that as he had to train hard as well as go deep underground to meet his new friends as well as learn/ suffer their qualities which was funny for all of us to watch. The Ants were all so intriguing and were able to perform amazing and funny tasks like passing the sugar haha.
The humour is silly and sometimes just turns this film into a comedy which is good since their can't be action everywhere. Mills and Craig even pointed out in the credits that the awkward, silly and talking too much idiot that helps Scott in his thief life was actually John Leguizamo who's famously the voice actor for Sid The Sloth from the ICE AGE films. He was a big part in everyone laughing because when he tells Scott how he heard about things, his voice dubs over everyone including ladies which was just silly and brilliant at the same time since a lot of people usually try to make impersonations of others to make it sound more convincing whilst this guy made no effort and just made it all stupidly hilarious.
Every Marvel hero has a unique quality about themselves, Iron Man built his Armour and has a unique degree in Engineering and Narcissism, Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive spider and gained spider abilities, while this guy can control any type of Ant and uses a suit to shrink down to the size of... yeah, you guessed right, an ant!
The Ant collection was a nice touch instead of being plain common ants and helped show their features and nature in a co-ordinated manner that helped benefit Scott's plan but also showed how these wild animals could be reasoned with thanks to a secret that you'll have to see for yourselves.
The camera work was just wow. We get to see the world from a tiny/ huge perspective and also see how things look so different when we really think about it but actually see it for real. I wonder if Paul was always near a green screen since it sounds illogical to actually shrink himself down to acquire that level of detail on camera?! But I really liked it, the fact that people would be shooting the camera's on him and from his and our final perspective, he's watching bullet projectiles fly past him whilst he hops and runs around at a close angle, even running along the gun itself to slug the baddies up close.The attention to detail was heart pounding especially during the intense moment way later on and reminded me of Interstellar as I was breathing deeply whilst trying to keep my cool because of how scary, mind blowing and deep the moment got when it comes to disappearing into a Subatomic Quantum Realm. Imagine just diving deeper and deeper and deeper into a realm that looks too intense to fathom like when I watched Lucy or Interstellar because it sorta showed me on how I think too deeply on things like the future and what's out there above us and I think it shows us just how "small" we really are compared to the details that's all around us and what makes up everything around us and the planet. Yeah it was that intense...!
I did like the fact that what everyone said is true that this film is tied to Avengers: Age Of Ultron and by the very very end it will link to Civil War... war is coming up next in the Marvel Cinematic Universe!
We even saw a brief and funny fight between one Avenger and Ant-Man *spoiler alert* along with a brief re-appearance of Steve's "old lady" and like I said, the ending will practically lead up to Civil War, so make sure you TRUE Marvel fans stay to the end of the credits if you wanna see it all!
Honestly, whilst I was writing this up on Saturday afternoon/ evening, I actually had Spider-Man in my head thanks to Lewis and me talking for an hour after the film after dropping him off home. We both got talking about the X-Men movies and how that's turning out better, Thanos appearing in Infinity War and Civil War knowledge that we both know from the comics and why Spidey is a key character (I still need to read those chunky volumes before the film comes out). And how we both watched the Spider-Man: The Animated Series and X-Men: The Animated Series growing up (I'm currently up-to-date on the Ultimate Spider-Man: The Animated Series). It was very pleasant and felt good to go all nerdy with someone which I hardly do somedays now and it felt relieving for me to talk about so much knowledge that I bottle up and share with the right people.
But most of all, I re-discovered The Other "Ero/ Arrow" whom I've been searching for many years (this sums up a lot of her), I actually discovered her through a quick read through a Spidey comic that I found in English in Greece around5-6 years ago. the cover had Symbiote Spider-Man fighting a woman who has spider powers and by the end, was about to shove her egg sack of spider babies into Peter's mouth... lovely! I think it was during the dark issues of Back In Black.According to wikipedia: "Ero is a genus of pirate spiders in the family Mimetidae . . . Spiders in this genus are specialised spider killers. An individual will attack a potential victim by biting one of its legs and injecting toxins. It then retreats and the prey spider quickly becomes paralyzed. The attacker then advances and starts to feed, sucking out the body fluids of its victim".
Sorry for the spoilers and for going off topic, I just wanted to talk Marvel, ya know?! Anyway, right now I have the final issue of The Amazing Spider-Man as well as the first 5 issues of The Superior Spider-Man. Think I'll talk Spider-Man someday since I know so much on him along with Pokemon, Star Wars, Kingdom Hearts etc. Sorry about that. Just shout "NERD" at your computer monitor ha ha.
ANYWAY as you can see, this film does have an exceptional story, history and stuff compared to what anyone who takes a quick glance at the title or thought of a character like Ant-Man, it did change my thoughts on Ant-Man originally after seeing the LEGO version of him in the Lego Marvel Super Heroes video game. Plus I liked it was quite humorous as much as Guardians Of The Galaxy and not to mention the obvious fact that it's a Marvel film, duh!
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