A tale to astonish...

It’s been a tough old time at the movies lately for those of us who are approaching what I choose to characterise as the new 40. Hollywood has been conducting a scorched earth attack on the treasures of our childhood and teenage years for most of the past decade.

The Lone Ranger, The Great Gatsby, Sherlock Holmes and Superman are just some of the icons that have been debased in recent years; my stomach heaves at the thought of my once-treasured Man from UNCLE in the hands of Guy Ritchie. I can’t help but have images of a gorilla juggling a Ming vase.

Imagine how I felt then as I sat nervously waiting for Ant-Man. A little context first. Tales to Astonish 42 was the first US comic I ever read back in 1962. I remember seeing the cover in the bookshop and thinking it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. It’s probably still in my top ten covers.

This was my gateway drug to a four-colour world which I have cheerfully inhabited for more than 50 years so I was apprehensive about how the Marvel Cinematic Universe would handle it. In fact not only do they do a good job, they actually treat the character with probably more respect than anyone else in the MCU.

Ant-Man is the story of Henry Pym (Michael Douglas), a scientist who has worked out how to alter the distance between atoms allowing things to shrink, and also grow. His invention could have changed the world but Pym, after a brief superhero career as Ant-Man, retired almost forty years before this story takes place. Instead his protégé Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) has taken up the mantle but wants to weaponise the technology. When Pym realises what is at stake, briefed by his estranged daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly), he recruits a hi-tech burglar, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), to use his original shrinking technology to break into Cross’s lab and steal the new tech.

This is an engaging, exciting, and often funny heist movie which acknowledges the Marvel Universe while existing on its fringes. At one point Lang suggests getting the Avengers to handle the job. The performances from all concerned are fine, the film moves along at a fair clip, and the effects are excellent especially in an astonishing performance by Michael Douglas in the prologue.

What I love about this film is the way it contextualises the Marvel Universe. Henry Pym is one of the foundation myths of Marvel. He and his shrinking technology make their first appearing in Tales to Astonish 27. His first appearance as Ant-Man is in Tales to Astonish 35. Well done incidentally for slipping the name of the comic into the script as one of several clever Easter Eggs in this movie.

Henry Pym and his ‘Pym particles’ are part of the core scientific tenets of Marvel, he’s a founder-member of The Avengers, yet we haven’t heard of him up till now. That always puzzled me but credit to this film for closing the loop. Pym was Ant-Man, just as in the comic books, but now – again as in the comic books – Scott Lang takes over the mantle. There’s actually a third Ant-Man but two is enough to be going on with at the moment.

This film does an excellent job of filling in Pym’s back story in a way which is not only credible to the specific narrative but also into the overarching narrative of the MCU. As we see here his absence until now makes perfect sense. 

There’s a lot of speculation about how this film might have turned out in the hands of the original writer-director Edgar Wright. He left close to the start of shooting and was replaced by Peyton Reed. I have no idea what went on but my suspicion is that Wright’s comic instincts may have seen Scott Lang as a figure of fun; there is a great tendency for Ant-Man to be seen as Marvel’s Aquaman. This film however suggests Marvel wanted one of the cornerstones of their universe to be treated with the respect his legacy deserves and I think they’ve done it rather well.