Paul Rudd as Scott Lang - Ant-Man
Evangeline Lilly as Hope van Dyne
Corey Stoll as Darren Cross - Yellowjacket
Bobby Cannavale as Paxton
Michael Peña as Luis
Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson - Falcon
run time 117 minutes
Budget $130 million
Box office $518.6 million
After research covering years of investigation, scientist uncover how to close gap between atoms. Enclosed in an armored suit, it gives the wearer the very selfsame abilities. One to shrink to invisibility and second to return to normal size.
Along the way, our hero has also garnered the proportional strength of the ant as well as the ability to speak to them fluently.
These plot devices are hung as you would xmas bulbs on a tree and in this case, a workman plot line.
Our scientist starts a company to study and utilizes this new discovery. The business partner proves to be ruthless and evil, with a healthy dose of greed mixed in. Others in the cast are shuffled back and forth between both extremes.
If you havn't guessed yet, science, mostly physics are tossed almost immediately. But mass and energy are added and subtracted on a whim. I don't even want to allude to the instances in question. Rent Ant Man and lets see if you see what I saw. I can remember thinking "Oh No! the can not be going to go there! But they do.
The plot is fair, The fight sceans as well as the action moments are at best workman. But it is the science that really left me cold.
The backgrounds are nice, the CGI is grandly overdone and the acting from those like Michael Douglas was workman or better.
So if you are looking for a comic book adaption then this film is just the ticket but as a stand alone movie it isn't working. I would have gone a 6 if it was clear they were not tied to their junk science, but when it became clear that they were vested in it that I could not in good conscience go above 4or 5.
It would make a neat rental and as a kids movie but I would not want friends to know I had this in my stash.
4 comments:
Wow, that was a harsh review. Criticizing a comic book movie due to "junk science" is just completely missing the boat here. Of course it's junk science. Ditto for, well, every comic book movie ever made. I liked the movie quite a bit and thought they did an outstanding job of adapting the character from the early days of The Avengers comics. My only real beef were those idiot friends of his that he recruited to help break into the facility.
No Obee Juan, you miss the point. The science is not even consistent in their own universe. Oh my yes, if we look at the driving "science" behind ANY comic book adaption one will find that the science has no validity what so ever. But at least keep it consistent. Superman is a grand example, the science makes no sense at all, but for the last 50 years or so, I knew that a piece of Krypton next to the man of steel spelled disaster. It wasn't the glaring inaccuracies in Superman but a set of rules that one hove to time after time. With Ant Man we are asked to ignore the very pillars that support the character. Call it what you will, but making something smaller does not make it lighter. Still I opined that this was still a fine movie for a slightly younger audience, and if the box office is any indication, this film was a success for just such a reason.
If I came across as harsh, I may have been letting my non-fan leanings show a bit much. Ant Man has never been a fav of mine, always came across as a one trick pony, but that is neither here nor there - Thanks for reading the review and commenting, bot are truly valuable.
Paul
Actually, the inconsistency with mass/weight is exactly the same problem with Superman. Kryptonians, by virtue of evolving on a planet with a higher gravity than Earth, are supposed to be denser than humans are and should weigh more, yet Superman and others are (usually) portrayed as weighing the same. I very specifically remember reading an issue of Superboy from the 60's where someone on the school paper was trying to prove that Clark and Superboy were the same person and she had posters drawn up illustrating they had the same hair color, eye color, height, and weight (a normal human weight, mind you), and my immediate thought was that he should weigh a lot more than that.
Ant Man was never one of my favorite characters either and I saw him as nothing more than a 1-trick pony as well, at least at first. Hank Pym evolved quite a bit over the run of the Avengers comics and underwent various incarnations that utilized his "re-sizing" science in different ways as: Ant Man, Giant Man, Goliath, Yellow Jacket, and eventually simply as himself as a scientist who kept an inventory of weapons and gadgets shrunken but available on demand. The movie did a great job of paying homage to all but the giant-sized incarnations of the comic character while also making Ant Man a capable fighter as well, even if they fudged the logic of the "science" some (more). But hey.... Hulk gains mass from literally nowhere, so I can overlook it. As an addition to the Avengers in the movies, a character with this unique ability can be an asset in ways others can't. This was alluded to in the post-credits trailer. I suspect that Falcon is looking for Ant Man to get him to shrink down and get inside Bucky's mechanical arm to disable it for them.
BTW, did you ever give Daredevil another chance?
You know, Daredevil kind of grows on you much as Ledger's interpretation of Joker - vs say Jack's go or Devito's Penquin. So I would say that as time goes by I am remembering the newest reboot of that franchise.
Your point about Hulk's mass got me thinking. Not to mention that points about energy and various others were oft brought up and then forgotten almost as quickly. But I can
remember puzzling over the mass but then just accepting it as things progressed, or
fantastic four or many others. For some reason....Ant Man just never seemed to allow us time to suspend belief, my main reason to suggest it for a younger crowd, but your point of being homage to what came before, does make a great deal of sense.
Am I any more likely to add it to my small collection? No, but I do appreciate the fan service done and still I realize that I am whistling against gathering shadows since I still have to admit that it was a hands down success.
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