We got to go see Ant-Man recently, thanks to getting a baby sitter after work one night. Here, I’m going to talk about the casting choices more than anything. I’m also going to give Marvel a pat on the back to go with the slap I gave them from the sexist issues they had with the last Avengers movie.
I liked that they did not have Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) as Ant-Man but did show him as the original. I also thought it was good that they did address his anger issues at least partially. Pym is not a hero for today. Paul Rudd as Scott Lang was the perfect actor for the type of character Marvel is going for here after the success of Guardians of the Galaxy. They are treating Ant-Man almost as a B-squad character, though really, he could easily be a greater hero than Iron Man. Because of that, he could get away with humor and bumbling sidekicks who still manage to beat the bad guy. Rudd definitely doesn’t take himself too seriously and that’s a good thing for the movie. And the suit was great. Loved the retro styling on it, though I hope for the next movie he gets an update to make it his.
I liked the little hints that they could possibly bring back Pym’s wife. Mike disagreed with me on that and said they were only going to have Hope (Evangeline Lilly) as Wasp, but I think they made too much of an effort to talk about what happened to the original Wasp, to point out that time and space don’t matter where she is, and to not show her face in photos, leaving open the possibility of choosing an actress to portray her in a future film. We’ll see.
Speaking of Evangeline Lilly as Hope, her character made me happy. Here was a self-assured woman, played by an actress who is not 20 years old. She is a full-grown, fully developed, fully aware of who she is, but still capable of growing emotionally and kicking-ass WOMAN, not a girl. I loved that they had an actress in her 30s play a character who was also about 35 years old. It was a breath of fresh air and I have to give Marvel a pat on the back for that. Especially after the stumbles they had in the latest Avengers. It was a great thing to see an older Hollywood actor have a more-than 20-something year-0ld-actress play his DAUGHTER and not his ridiculously too young wife. This casting was great.
The story was a bit campy. But it also fit with more of the worried about the world through the eyes of our family, rather than world-destroying super bad guys. That being said, Thomas the Train is scary enough when he’s little, let alone those creepy eyes the size of a real train. But I did like the growing little things big idea to lay the groundwork for a possible Giant-Man. Something Mike and I have discussed in the last two movies we’ve seen (the new Jurassic World and this) it is really bothering us both when kids are put into danger in these movies in ways that it would not have before The Boy came along. Guess we are starting to grow up too.
For me, I rate movies on whether or not they are worth full-price. Most movies are not. On this occasion, we even had to pay extra for the RPX (Regal’s version of IMAX) showing of the movie.
Most movies we see, are matinee that we catch before dinner on days when we’ve brought The Boy to stay with his grandparents for the night. Speaking as a parent to a young kid, I love date days like that since it covers much of his nap time and it guarantees we’ll be back before bedtime.
This was a good movie. I would rather have paid less to see it, but I did not feel like paying full price was asking too much, though I did think the price difference in the rudely sounding squeaky seats we got for RPX was definitely not worth it.
Rating: Worth full price, not RPX/IMAX
RachaelStanley.com 