Ant-Man

I give up. I give up trying to doubt Marvel with their movies right now. I thought Guardians of the Galaxy was an over reach when it was announced. I loved it so much it is in my top three favorite movies that Marvel has put out.

When I they announced Ant-Man, I was like "Really? WHO is asking for an Ant-Man movie?!" and I thought this would be the one to due them in. I really liked this movie too. So what do I know. I can't doubt these guys anymore. Everything will come up roses for these guys.

So let's talk about this movie. First off, I liked that the scale for this movie was small. (See what I did there?) By that I mean, there was not some evil villain that was trying to take over the world. You just had a d-bag business man doing bad things. At the end of the day, this was essentially a heist movie. That is about the best direction you could take with this character.

Like most of my comic movie reviews, I'm not going to compare this to the source material. That kind of thing serves no one. I look at these like I would any other films. Sometimes with rose colored glasses. So let's dive in.

First off, I want to say this movie was a lot of fun. In Paul Rudd, you had the right amount of snark and charisma to play some of the scenes tongue in cheek. You have to when a guy's power equates to shrinking down and talking to ants. Anyways, he helped to keep things light. When the movie started to sink into melodrama (one particular scene with father and daughter pouring their hearts out), he cuts the scene with a quip.

I could talk about Michael Douglas or Evangeline Lilly. They were good, but that's not who I want to give praise to. Michael Pena stole every scene he was in. He was how you use comic relief. Sparingly, before he wears out his welcome. There was such an innocence to his character that you can't help but to love him. When I first saw he was added to the cast, I didn't know what to think. He's a great actor, but I didn't know how he'd fit in. In this weird little universe, perfectly.

I do like how they did the fight scenes in this movie. The shrinking back and forth was pretty cool. I really loved the cameo they have from one of the Avengers in here. I won't spoil it.  There were also a couple of little easter egg moments, typical to these movies. It's that little bit of deep cut, nerd lore that speaks to me. At one point, the villain made a comment about "Tales to Astonish" and I broke into a wide smile.

There were a couple of things I didn't like about this movie, however. As movies rely more and more on special effects, I yearn for the days of practical effects. So I did not like seeing all these CG ants running all over the place and the CG stunt men used in the action sequences. Honestly, there's no other way you can do it. It's just that this kind of stuff takes me out of a movie.

The other thing that bothers me is that Marvel has a real problem with the villains in their movies. The heroes are always layered, fallible and well-meaning. The villains are always one note, cookie cutter caricatures. They practically twirl their mustaches. They are clearly an afterthought. I think the only good villains we've had so far are Loki and practically the whole stable of villains in Winter Soldier. I love Marvel, but you can only go on so long with crap villains weighing down your movies.

With all this being said, I think you should definitely go see this movie. If you're reading this, we both know you're already invested in these movies. Go have fun and see this one too.