Ant-man? Is actually really good...

I haven’t posted for a while, but I have seen the Ant-man movie.

It’s great. Go see it. Get it on Blu-ray/DVD – you’ll want to freeze-frame the Easter eggs.

This is the first film in twenty years I’m going to see twice at the cinema. The one before that was Terminator 2.

Raving aside, seriously, aside from a slightly weak villain, it’s really good. It benefits from being a heist movie not a superhero movie, it has an excellent script and supporting cast, and best of all it is fun. A few squeamish moments don’t detract from the tone, it doesn’t take itself entirely seriously even though it is played straight, and it has a great ending.

A few tropes are heavily subverted, particularly the ones about women in superhero films. The Wasp’s cameo made me cheer, just because so often women with children suddenly become useless with everything in movies and she was still an obviously-capable superhero. Hope van Dyne (Yes, I know it’s Hope Pym) was intelligent, made only one slip I saw in the whole film and it’s made a plot point, and even though she isn’t in the suit she’s still vital to the heist (and possibly in more danger because she’s not in the suit). The mid-credits was great.

Slight spoiler: The supporting cast aren’t bumbling and useless, everything ties together from early shots to Chekov’s Guns you won’t see without a freeze-frame but still remember when they fire, and frankly it has one of the best depictions of a blended family seen on screen. There’s a nice touch at the beginning which establishes Scott Laing as not the best judge of character when he is whining about his ex’s new husband. If you take a step back from following the hero, its pretty obvious he’s extremely biased by his views of the guy. Overcoming this is one of the major arcs, and works so well.

If you can catch it on it’s last week do. If not, get the DVD.

Dear Marvel,
Can we have another film like this? Please?
Regards,
Tirial

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This blog has now moved to http://www.rablogs.co.uk/tirial, where the original article can be found.  Ant-man? Is actually really good... - http://rablogs.co.uk/tirial/2015/08/11/ant-man-is-actually-really-good/ was published on August 11, 2015 at 5:14 pm.