Ant-Man

StokerScore 9/10

Picture the scene. A dark, cloud-filled sky seems to pour forth rainwater of biblical proportions. Sombre, foreboding music, coupled with our hero's facial expression, that depicts so much angst and inner turmoil, allows us an insight to impending DOOM for someone. 

This is not Ant-Man. 

The difference between Marvel and DC characters being portrayed on screen at the moment would appear to be the amount of fun that it s possible to have. I understand the whole "with great power comes great responsibility" thing, ironically a line from a Marvel character, but just imagine that you've been given superpowers, or at the very least tech that could lead people to believe that you have superpowers, what would you do? That question is somewhat answered in Ant-Man, Marvel's latest step down the road to bringing all of my childhood (and adult, I admit) comic purchases to life.

It's had a rough-ish ride towards the big screen, in comparison to the rest of the MCU movies. An earlier, much-publicised but never fully explained falling out with original director Edgar Wright was cause for some initial trepidation. That Wright's and Joe Cornish's names appear on the screenplay and story credits went a long way towards removing that, especially with Marvel's Kevin Feige assuring people that much of their initial story remained. It has also been saddled with being the film expected to burst Marvel's bubble in their run towards cinematic domination.

I mention these things for the simple reason that Peyton Reed, the film's final director, and Edgar Wright could not be more different in terms of their cinematic output to date. Maybe Reed was more manageable in delivering Marvel's vision of the character, who knows, but the outcome was, for me at least, a really fun superhero movie that allowed you to enjoy the characters, feel for them when things got tough, and ultimately leave the cinema with a smile on your face and with key images flooding your mind on some sort of loop. So as for the second concern, sure, it's no Avengers with action from the first minute, how could it be? We need to get to know the characters involved first and the film does that from the outset. I can only begin to imagine that the way to make Michael Douglas look as young as he did in The Streets of San Francisco was to have taken images from that show and cut them into the movie. But Karl Malden is no Howard Stark and the 1970's police procedural was never that bothered about technological advancements.

This movie was a lot of Fun with a capital 'F'. It contained no existential message other than the good vs evil thing, the action set pieces were excellent, especially when juxtaposing the size difference between regular Ant-Man and shrunken Ant-Man.The Indonesian audience with whom I saw the movie audibly appreciated the visual humour as well as the drama and I'm really looking forward to watching this again.