Ant-Man.
There may be a couple of spoilers in this post, so heads up to anyone who hasn't seen it yet.
Not a huge disappointment, but I wasn't overly thrilled with it. It was entertaining enough, but it never elicited any real excitement out of me. There was not one moment that made me go "Wow!"
I could sum up this movie in one word - Fine.
The cast is fine. The direction is fine. The story is fine. But none of it elevates beyond that point. I'm not sure if Edgar Wright's version was going to be much different, but I'm just afraid we probably missed out on something special for him not being involved any more. He left because Marvel wanted his movie to look and feel a certain way (as well as shoving in scenes that don't need to be there) and I think he could have brought a certain energy, something different to the table.
I liked the idea of Ant-Man being a heist movie. Great idea! But the heist takes up so little of the actual plot it seems. Rudd's character becomes an expert in the suit after training for what seems like a couple of days. And once again we have been given a one-note villain in a Marvel movie. His should have been an interesting turn, from protege who feels he isn't getting everything from his mentor, to the man who wants to help the world by creating these special suits, even if he has to do evil things to accomplish it. But no, he just starts off as evil and has nowhere to go from there. They really dropped the ball on this character.
Also the scene (which I'm sure will be the one so many people will talk about) where Ant-Man fights Falcon is completely unnecessary. It's just squeezed in there to have an Avengers tie-in. It serves absolutely no purpose. Seriously, you could drop that entire scene and it wouldn't affect the movie one little bit. Maybe if they used that time to spend on developing the villain it would have been much better served.
There are things I liked about this movie.
I liked Rudd and Douglas. They play their roles well and have good chemistry.
I liked that Bobby Canavale's character wasn't a total douchebag, as most movies tend to treat the 'hero's former love's new boyfriend' characters.
I liked the smaller scale of this movie. A gripe I have had over most of the recent Marvel movies is that the stakes are always so damn high. They raised them so high already that there's nowhere to go now. They brought it right back down with this movie, which is a good sign.
So after not really caring about an Ant-Man movie...then getting all excited over an Ant-Man movie because Edgar Wright was writing/directing it....to then not really caring about an Ant-Man movie again, my consensus is that this movie has turned out....OK.
Nothing special, but still enough to entertain you for a couple of hours.
6 out of 10.
