Little Big Man: Regarding Ant-Man

Everybody had kind of written off Ant-Man, including a lot of the people that made it. First pitched as a standalone by Stan Lee himself in the late 80s with Howard Stern trying to buy the rights in 2000 to make his own version of it, Ant-Man was among the MCU movies first announced in San Diego in 2006 along with Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk with Shaun of the Dead writer/director Edgar Wright at the helm. The thing is, Marvel themselves never really considered the adaptation a priority so they let Wright take his time on the script while they moved forward with their other projects. And Wright didn't consider it a personal priority much either tentatively writing the flick in between working on Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and The World's End.

Anybody else think Thomas the Tank Engine always looked kind of creepy?

By the time Wright had finished his final obligations on The World's End and could dedicate himself fully to Ant-Man, it was 2013: All the Avengers had been introduced, teamed up, most of them got sequels (Hell, Iron Man already had two!). The Marvel Cinematic Universe had been firmly established in the ensuing seven years and Wright quickly discovered while he was still interested in making a Marvel film, the studio wasn't too keen on making an Edgar Wright flick. With the studio pushing for a rewrite from an outside screenwriter, Wright walked weeks before production was officially slated to kick off; scrambling, Marvel hired comedy director Peyton Reed to replace him with Anchorman director Adam McKay handling rewrites with star Paul Rudd.

Not for nothing, but how the hell does this man never age?

What you get with creators with that sort of background is the most comedic film in the MCU at that time (Not really challenged until the third Thor film of all things). MCU definitely had their funny moments but with a property as outlandish as a dude that can shrink and command ants, Reed doesn't take things seriously at all. And, maybe after the dysfunction of Age of Ultron, shadow conspiracy of The Winter Soldier, dark fantasy of The Dark World, and PTSD-tinged Iron Man 3, that's what the MCU needed; the multi-franchise continuity was built largely on charisma and levity, after all.

Kinda forgot T.I. is in this movie.

There are some genuine laugh-out loud moments throughout this flick largely because after working in comedy for decades and just being so damn likable, Rudd can do it in his sleep at this point and still garner a chuckle. More surprising is Michael Peña who's omnipresent grin and motormouth delivery as Scott Lang's friend Luis help ground the cast from the techno-babble delivered by Michael Douglas and Corey Stoll who is easily the worst out of the entire ensemble. Bad Marvel villains (Malekith, Ronan) are usually just boring; Stoll's Yellowjacket is just BAD.

"Remember when I was on House of Cards?"

If Iron Man 2 and Thor were about the relationships between fathers and sons, Ant-Man is largely about the relationship between fathers and daughters. Everything Scott Lang comes from a place of love for his daughter; after losing his wife and his livelihood, he puts on the suit to do right by Cassie. The other side of that is Michael Douglas' Hank Pym and Evangeline Lilly's Hope van Dyne: Hank Pym withdrew so far after the pain of losing his wife while saving the day as the original Ant-Man that it strained his relationship with Hope for decades. Maybe, just maybe Scott can help the two finally mend fences.

If Edgar Wright had ditched Ant-Man far earlier in the creative process, there's a good chance Marvel may have let this project never come to life; with a cast assembled, test footage shot, and VFX rendered, it made sense to carry on even with the sudden loss of director. And that would've been a damn shame because the film is one of the bigger surprises from the studio's middle period with a standout action sequence of Scott navigating a rave while tiny for the first time and Ant-Man's climactic battle with Yellowjacket. And there's a strong argument that Scott Lang steals the show, if only for a moment, in his subsequent appearance in Captain America: Civil War, the diminutive superhero proving he absolutely deserves to stand among the Avengers. Both written off constantly by people on the screen and behind-the-scenes, Ant-Man proves that even the little guy deserves his day in the sun.