Ant – Man is a solid movie but the tone of it is was really stuck with me. Ant-Man exists in a relatively new cinematic space as a movie add on, the movie version of an up charge option. Put another way I felt the movie was built on the premise that people loved the Avengers so much that they will pay to see something anything made in that universe even if it doesn’t affect the larger Marvel Story arc.
This created a feeling in the movie that whatever happened there would be, wait could be no larger implications. No matter what Ant-Man did you knew from the beginning that nothing in the broader fictional world could change, the Avengers plot was sacrosanct to the point where after encountering one of the lesser Avengers, The Falcon, their whole interaction is played for laughs in that Falcon takes the whole incident and buries it at the end to hide his failure exclaiming that no one needs to know he was defeated by Ant –Man. This scene sadly encapsulates the movie, the fight between Ant-Man and Falcon was breezily fun, had some cool effects and made sense visually, which is a great complement given the current state of fight choreography, but in the end it meant nothing. Not even fictional nothing, I feel slightly cheated in that I still feel like every movie should at least attempt to stand on it’s own. I mean I wanted whatever movie I am watching to have some gravitas, to make an attempt towards relevancy.
I feel right now we are so far ensconced in the Marvel movie franchise that each piece, especially the lesser character solo movies are really just a two hour ad for the series as a whole. They may be entertaining ads, but ads nonetheless. Did I enjoy Ant-Man? Yes I did it was ….. fun. My troubles faded and I smiled as a simple story of good versus evil (albeit tragic evil brought down by it’s own hubris) played out. Am I troubled by what this mean for those who aspire to meaning even in silly popcorn movies? Yes. Should I be, I am not sure.
Here is my final thoughts on this, from the point of view of a guy who views the action movie as an almost sacrosanct part of culture. Right now I feel we are on the cusp of something interesting in cinema, the cost of producing a visually arresting movie in the block buster style has risen so dramatically that studios are creating more and more derivative works with built in fan bases already suckling on the teat of known fictional worlds / characters to insulate them from potential failure. However as costs for slick computer aided imagery drop this is not going to be the case forever. Soon anyone with a computer could create something on par without the onus of selling that product to millions of people to earn back their investment. Part of why I enjoyed Ant-Man is I envision someone else watching this movie and saying to themselves. “This movie is awesome, but I could do it better, and mine would mean something.” To them I say good luck, and I will see you in the theater.
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