Ant-Man is a film about families. OK, hear us out, because this next addition in the Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t that hockey. It’s an odd blend of contrasting elements, sure, and some of those elements jar from time to time, but for the most part it’s still an entertaining movie. It just might not get cred from the comic book snobs and cinema geeks.
Here are the basics: there’s a scientific genius who moonlights as a superhero, he retires and gives the mantle to a worthy prodigy, and this new masked man must use his own skills and the training of his master to fight the ultimate evil.
And yet, for all the tech talk, corporate espionage and political intrigue, the most engaging element of the plot is not the struggle against fascism, or the ways in which technology can greatly change our way of life – it’s about the family unit in its varying nature.
Professor Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), the original, size-changing superhero known as Ant-Man, has hung up his suit after he finds his skills being put to the test on battlefields rather than laboratories. After years of retirement, his corporate protégé Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) attempts to unlock the secrets that gave Ant-Man his power and plans to use them for ill purposes. Upon discovering this, Pym begins searching for the new Ant-Man, and is torn between handing the mantle over to his own daughter, Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), or a gifted rogue scientist, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd).
Pym fears that giving the power of Ant-Man to his daughter will mean losing her in the same violent circumstances he lost his beloved wife. Hope is jealous of her father’s apparent favourite choice, Scott, who looks to Pym as someone who can help him reconnect with his own estranged family. Even Cross, the evil corporate mega-mind, is only building his version of Ant-Man’s technology in order to impress Pym, the father figure who constantly pushed him away.
No matter how you surmise this movie, it seems like a confusing cluster of plot points. And yet, it somehow works.
True, there are plot holes that are by no means ant-sized, and sure there are moments where the ‘leading man’ is more the ‘comic relief that leaves you wondering why Ms. Lilly wasn’t given the star role’, but the very fact this movie took the over-the-top, bigger-than-mankind-itself dimensions of the modern comic book movie, and used it to look at the most intimate of human relationship structures – the family – is pretty brave.
It’s clever, and it’ll get thoraxes on seats.
3.5/5 stars
Ant-Man is in cinemas now.
