#That is comedy gold and my favorite way to do hero son with villain dad

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I can’t believe I’ve never seen anyone talk about a Miraculous Ladybug Lego ninjago au before. I feel like we are missing a golden opportunity

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The Path to Avengers: Endgame. Part 12 of 21--Ant-Man

Observations and opinions. Feel free to disagree. I ain’t trying to convince you of nothing. Ant-Man begins flashing back to the 80s. Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man, doesn’t get along with Howard Stark. Pym has created a juice that can change the very fabric of reality. In other words, it can make things small. His protege wants to make things small for evil purposes. He must be stopped. Pym isn’t up for the fight, so he recruits Scott Lang, a burglar with a heart of gold, to do the tiny heavy lifting for him.

For years, all I knew about Ant-Man was what I learned from Garrett Morris playing him on Saturday Night Live. Morris said he could shrink to the size of an ant and still have the strength of a human. Then the other superheroes mocked him for having the strength of a human. That all changed when the announcement came that Edgar Wright had been hired to write and direct Ant-Man. Wright is one of the most creative and exciting directors working today. He was an inspired choice. Giddy-up!!!

Let me recommend a video to you lovers of film:  The late, great Every Frame a Painting did a piece on how Edgar Wright towers above other modern comedy directors. They compare and contrast his movies to other comedies. Wright knows he’s working in cinema and he knows how to use all of the cinematic tools at his disposal to imbue his movies with life and imagination.  It’s on YouTube. Search for "Edgar Wright - How to do Visual Comedy". It’s good stuff— even though it barely scratches the surface of what Wright does. But clips are taken from R rated movies, so prepare your sensibilities. 

Onto Ant-Man’s title: Marvel does Iron [space] Man or Ant [dash] Man and Spider [dash] Man. Whereas, DC is pretty consistent about letting no daylight shine through in their compound nouns, e.g., Batman, Superman, Aquaman… Although, if they were truly consistent, she would be “Wonderwoman”. 

This is the first new character to get its own movie since The Avengers formed— except for the Guardians, I guess. This is the second first new character to get its own movie since The Avengers formed. And after the epic Age of Ultron, Ant-Man is a nice downsizing in scope — in more ways than one. This pattern is repeated later, going from Infinity War to Ant-Man and the Wasp. Both seem like a chance to catch a breath and have a few laughs.

Speaking of funny, how can you not like Paul Rudd as Scott Lang? He has a nice, easy, natural charm. He’s a likable actor and an unlikely superhero. This is also the first time we see a Marvel hero as a parent with a child. A child child, that is. You know, of childlike age. It’s nice to see and immediately gives the hero stakes worth fighting for. 

As I’m writing this I’m realizing that Hawkeye had kids in the previous movie. His kids were just kind of thrown in there, weren’t they? I just watched Ultron a few days ago but I have no mental image of his kids. Now that I think about it, they should have been used to better effect. Total extinction of the planet was at stake and I don’t remember Barton being concerned about his kids. He did look at their picture during the final battle. Am I forgetting something? Am I being unfair? Lang’s little girl is a major part of his motivation. That is new. And that makes him more relatable than other characters.

Anyway, back to speaking about funny, Michael Pena might have the best comic performance in a Marvel movie. Maybe. There's a lot of good ones, but he's a solid contender.  In fact, some of the TV ads that came out after the movie was released focused on him. Well deserved. 

Heyley Atwell, Agent Carter, is the first and only person to be with the two different Howard actors, Dominic Cooper and John Slattery. But that’s not too surprising since the only other character John Slattery had previously been seen with was Tony as a tyke in Iron Man 2. As noted in The First Avenger, Bucky had no scenes with the younger Howard. Civil War hindsight being 20/20, that’s a missed opportunity.

Michael Douglas is the first in a series of actors to get the de-aging treatment— Robert Downey Jr. in Civil War, Kurt Russel in GotG II, Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg in Captain Marvel, Michell Pfeiffer and Laurence Fishburne in Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Zoe Saldana in Infinity War. 

Scott Lang gets a job at Baskin Robbins. I wonder if he works at the same Baskin Robbins as Saul Goodman. Son of Zorn is the Baskin Robbins customer!!! I hope his dad becomes an Avenger for Endgame. They could use the help- and I hear they have some openings. Also, what happened to Son of Zorn?  It was a funny show.  

Edgar Wright has a trilogy of movies called the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy-- Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End. It’s about as loose of a trilogy as it can be. It’s a trilogy because in each movie the someone eats the same fictional brand of ice cream. Wright should have had Lang working at a Cornetto Ice Cream shop instead of Baskin Robbins to turn the trilogy into a quartet. Quartet? Is that what's one more than a trilogy?

I love Falcon’s cameo. Returning characters appearing in unexpected ways is one of my favorite things about these movies. Although, I do have a problem with how he arrived on the scene. I can buy a man shrinking to the size of an ant. I can buy a man controlling ants with his mind. But Falcon responding to a sensor that is set off by ants? That I cannot abide. Maybe they have high tech pest control at Avengers HQ.

I wonder if Edgar Wright ever had Captain America in his script. He had worked with Chris Evans on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Brie Larson is also in that movie. That's both Captains. Martin Freeman is in all three of Wright’s Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy. David Bradley is in two of those movies. He gets killed off by Red Skull in the beginning of The First Avenger. Wright has a long history with MCU actors.

The biggest problem with this movie is the Hank/Hope relationship. The conflict between them is deep-seeded, complicated and should be emotional. But It's mostly in the backstory. And the backstory is all done with exposition. Then it's resolved with dialogue. It’s not the least bit visual. Hank leaving SHIELD is done with a flashback. Janet disappearing after going subatomic is done in flashback. 

Hank says Hope never looked at him the same after Janet disappeared. Why didn’t they show a glimpse of that in flashback? Hope had the deciding vote to cast her father out of his own company. That sounds like a crushing moment for Pym. Why isn’t that in flashback? This whole subplot couldn’t be less cinematic if they tried. This isn’t Edgar Wright’s typical style at all. This is the kind of laziness Every Frame a Painting contrasted against Edgar Wright’s work to make him look good. This is very disappointing.

Do I come across as not liking this movie? I have mostly quibbles. I love this movie. It’s loads of fun.

I like that Lang says, “Our first move should be calling the Avengers.��� Pym responds, “This could change the texture of reality. Besides, they’re probably too busy dropping cities out of the sky.” Hank Pym created Ultron in the comics. He better hope that texture of reality doesn’t change too much. He’s not blameless in another reality. 

Earlier, Scott flies across a newspaper with the headline “Who’s to blame fo Sokovia?” Fun tidbit. 

The ability to control ants creeps me out a little. I can’t stop thinking about Killgrave. He is a great, creepy villain in Jessica Jones. His mind-control powers are a big part of his creepiness. I wonder if the ant world sees Pym and Lang as their Killgrave. To deactivate a bomb, Janet had to go subatomic so she could go through solid titanium. That small, how was she big enough to deactivate the bomb? I want to understand.

Hank Pym likes to remember his wife by looking at a picture of her hat. If they ever do recuts of these movies like they do with Star Wars, they should insert Michelle Pfieffer into that old picture of Hank and Janet. It’s a little odd that Hank’s favorite picture of his long lost wife doesn’t include her face.

Although this movie is a lot of fun, after reading Edgar Wright worked on it for eight years, I have to say, the directing and editing is a disappointing. I mean, Baby Driver came out just two years later and it is filled with verve and visual delights. Clearly, the director had much more of passion and panache in the latter's case. In comparison, the directing style of Ant-Man leaves the charisma of the actors to carry the movie—which is fine.  They do it well. 

Speaking of which: Michael Pena drives the last scene with more of Luis' storytelling. In the last bit of dialogue in the movie, he alludes to Spider-man. This is the first hint of Marvel’s most popular character. Marvel had been wrangling over rights to Spidey with Sony for years. He’s coming home. As an aside, there are a couple people in Wright’s Hot Fuzz with their faces painted like Spider-Man. It was almost prescient, like it was meant to be. Wait. What? Who’s Peyton Reed? Stan Lee Cameo— Bartender lip syncing to Luis’ story. Mid-Credits Scene— Hope gets a suit Post-Credits Scene— Sam knows a guy Returning Characters— Howard Stark, Peggy Carter, Falcon, Captain America, Bucky