Phase 2 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe ends with a much
smaller movie than Avengers Age of Ultron, yes Road to Infinity War is
rewatching Ant-Man this week!
How does it hold up?
Due to its scale (no pun intended), Ant-Man does feel very
much like one of the solo movies from Phase 1. Not that this is really a bad
thing, it’s still a great movie that’s entertaining from start to finish. We
get a relatively straight-forward superhero origin movie that’s well made, and considering
all the drama with Edgar Wright dropping out as director just before filming
started, it’s amazing it turned out as good as it did.
Whilst watching it I did find myself thinking about the
comparisons and similarities with the first Iron Man. To be honest at one point
I was really beginning to debate which movie is better. I think I settled on
Iron Man overall, however I think the final act of Ant-Man is stronger and has
much more inventive action sequences throughout, yet I think the charisma of
Robert Downey Jr gives Iron Man the edge.
Saying that, Paul Rudd as Scott Lang holds the movie and is
a great lead. Michael Douglas and Evangeline Lilly do great work supporting as
Hank Pym and Hope Van Dyne respectively, and Michael Pena is absolutely amazing
(so funny!). Unfortunately the villain Darren Cross / Yellow Jacket (Corey
Stoll) is one of the weaker MCU villains, he serves his purpose for the story
but he’s pretty forgettable.
Technically, I particularly like the fact they use the 1.85:1
aspect ratio again (basically means the image fills the TV screen and there’s no
black bars at the top and bottom), as this really helps bring dynamic to the
shrinking scenes. These scenes also look exceptional, the image quality
is super-sharp and the detail in the environments is phenomenal. And whilst we’re
talking about technology, the opening scene with a young Michael Douglas? Wow,
still looks so good.
Although Ant-Man tells a relatively self-contained story, I did
pick up on a few world building bits (specifically Civil War set-up) I missed the
first time. The first one being when Ant-Man is flying on the back of an ant
through the bus, he lands on a newspaper with the headline “Who’s to blame for
Sokovia?” The second is when Michael Pena’s character gives details on Falcon
looking for Ant-Man at the end, originally I thought this was just a funny
skit, but it’s obviously when Falcon goes to recruit Ant-Man for Civil War.
Even though Ant-Man isn’t on the same level as Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Guardians of the Galaxy, this is pretty much the
point in the MCU when Marvel Studios had completely perfected the formula for
making solid / entertaining movies. So even though it’s not a 10/10 movie, it's still a great one!
No comments:
Post a Comment