Before watching Ant-Man, it would be safe to predict that the movie would be the film that destroys the foundations of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is a film that has suffered from well-publicised production troubles, leading many to question the artistic integrity of the directors the studio chooses to helm its projects, whose directorial vision has to be sacrificed in order to create another chapter in studio head Kevin Feige’s grand master plan. Production troubles sometimes lead to fantastic movies, but more often than not, they lead to gigantic box office flops – not even the seemingly unbeatable Marvel can overcome that, surely? The biggest surprise of Ant-Man is that not only is it an energetic and purely enjoyable movie, revitalising the cinematic universe after the overstuffed and frequently boring Age of Ultron, it has a visual style of its own that doesn’t fit neatly within the parameters of the MCU as a whole.

This isn’t because director Peyton Reed is an auteur who demanded to see his vision intact onscreen – it is because he has ripped off the visual stylings of ousted director Edgar Wright so much it could easily be identified as a Wright film from those who don’t know better. It’s strange that Wright has left the project due to creative differences, only for a director to come along and make something that looks exactly like an Edgar Wright movie – and most importantly, due to his first-billing on the screenplay, can still be enjoyed as such.

A Hero – but not a super one

Decades ago, scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) hung up his Ant-Man suit for the last time, denying that he ever was the hero when questioned about it. Now, his former protege Darren Cross (Corey Stoll, the most delightfully sleazy blockbuster villain in years – no other blockbuster villain this year will massacre a baby lamb to get what they want) has taken over Pym’s company. After seeing through Pym’s lies that he wasn’t the Ant-Man, he has militarised his own shrinking-device suit: the Yellow Jacket. With his own daughter working against him at Cross’ company, Pym needs somebody to don his original Ant-Man suit and destroy this new creation.

Step forward Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), a bumbling former con, who upon being released from prison needs to make some quick cash in order to pay child support and see his young daughter again. His housemate Luis (Michael Peña) has heard about an easy heist over at Pym’s apartment, one that has been devised by Pym in order for Scott to seize the Ant-Man costume and discover his true destiny. Scott reluctantly accepts, puzzled as to why Pym just didn’t contact the avengers for help instead.

From there, Ant-Man has Marvel’s most nonsensical plot to date, yet it registers because this is the first time their hero has been so recognisably human, complete with all the flaws that separate him from the bulk of their cinematic universe. The most human character in the Avengers is famously Hawkeye, one long dubbed the most boring character in that superhero tag-team. Marvel don’t need to care about humanity, they are in the business of telling superhero stories after all, yet by making their hero an average guy (not a billionaire playboy philanthropist or a result of a scientific experiment gone wrong) they have given this movie far higher stakes than anything they’ve attempted previously. We know that the Avengers will always defeat their enemies, but for an average guy teaming up with an army of insects, it isn’t exactly a given.

The screenplay (credited to Wright, Joe Cornish, Paul Rudd and Adam McKay, an impressive lineup of comedy writing talent) is also admirably reluctant to portray him as a superhero, always acknowledging Lang’s character flaws and never fully lets him off the hook for committing idiotic crimes in order to get his daughter back into his life. But rather than creating a hero we are supposed to idolise, Marvel have ingeniously given us one we are supposed to empathise with. This is by far the most humanistic movie in their cinematic universe, the first time they’ve created a hero figure who is just an average guy, albeit one whose path to becoming a superhero is one we are refused to look up to.

This still feels like the film Edgar Wright would have made

I am reluctant to credit director Peyton Reed with this film for two reasons: firstly, Marvel are so infamous with seizing creative control from their directors, the characters and story have likely been shaped in order to fit in with the rest of the MCU (with the exception of a surprisingly funny cameo from a minor Avenger, this is kept to a minimum here). More noticeably is the fact that, as I stated earlier, Reed has ripped off Edgar Wright so much here, you half expect Wright to be making furious phone calls to the Directors Guild of America demanding for his name to be reinstated on the credits. Reed only sparingly uses the techniques that characterise Wright’s movies, yet when he does use them you are in doubt that he is trying to channel Wright’s artistic spirit.

Firstly, he directs visual comedy scenes with a panache not seen usually seen in mainstream comedy (outside of Wright’s work, of course). Here, the sped-up montage technique used for Shaun’s plan to go the Winchester pub until “all of this blows over” in Shaun of the Dead is recycled as Luis tells Scott where he heard about the heist. More significant is that he uses a visual style that actually makes the movie look like a comic book, in ways not dissimilar to Wright’s Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. A good example are the rings that form around Scott as he shrinks that look hand-drawn, whilst the training montage of Scott being shown how to shrink uses jump cuts to different images of a door frame in a way that looks like it has been ripped straight from the panel.

If Age of Ultron’s attempts at mimicking a comic book style fell flat due to shoving too much into the frame, Ant-Man succeeds with aplomb. In fact, the action sequences as a whole are the most visually inventive Marvel have ever done. With both The Winter Soldier and Age of Ultron, I grew increasingly bored due to the repetitive nature of the action; with fight scenes consistently changing sizes from miniature to full-sized, Ant-Man never runs the risk of being boring. When the climactic fight scene starts introducing inanimate objects growing to full size, the result is one of the most joyous scenes Marvel have ever done; I almost felt like jumping to my feet and applauding at the sight of Thomas the Tank Engine turning into the size of an actual tank.

Naturally, it is the screenplay that is most reminiscent of Wright – only he and Joe Cornish could devise a sub-plot about training ants telepathically to put sugar cubes in a cup of tea and not have the end result look ridiculous. Yet without his direction, elements that likely played well on page don’t fully translate to the screen. For example, the character of Luis is played by Michael Peña with a giddily infectious glee that renders his every other line hilarious. Unfortunately, despite the character clearly being devised to counter Hispanic stereotypes (he enjoys wine tasting and abstract art), introducing the character firstly as a criminal, then as somebody whose mother has been deported and father has subsequently been imprisoned, isn’t exactly doing the best job of overcoming the worst stereotypes, let alone diversifying the breadth of roles Hispanic actors can perform. He’s not even the worst offender, but even though they are criminally underused, the less said about Lang’s other two housemates/criminal accomplices (played by rapper T.I. and David Dastmalchian) the better. Reed can easily mimic the style of Wright, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he can mimic the tone.

Conclusion

As the closing piece of Marvel’s hit-and-miss phase two, Ant-Man bodes well for the future of the MCU. Hopefully, the studio will loosen their grip and start giving creative control back to their directors, as Ant-Man proves the studio can still create crowd-pleasing entertainments without conforming to the tried and tested narrative formulas.

At the end of phase two, what have been the best and worst Marvel efforts so far?

Ant-Man is released in the UK and US on July 17. All international release dates can be found here.

(top image source: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)