Ant-Man 2015
This was not a movie I was in a hurry to see. It got some lukewarm reviews and the whole premise of a tiny superhero throwing full grown people around seemed pretty silly. Still, I really like Paul Rudd and Ant-Man showed up in one of the other Marvel movies, so I recorded this when it came on cable. And, yes, this is definitely a lesser Marvel movie, even as they get more and more ridiculous. The premise of the tiny superhero generally doesn’t work, though it does give Ant-Man an advantage in sneaking into places, which he needs to do. He can also control insects, which is used to his advantage, but again seems kind of silly, though it does give him a way to fly. Rudd has a few funny lines, but is mostly serious in this, which again is unfortunate. Also, a lot of the large scale CGI just doesn’t work: when he is going down a pipe it looks like something from Land of the Lost. And that’s not the only bad example. Too many scenes are obviously just meant for 3D watchers. Then there is some hokey science, not least of which is how he jumps into a storm sewer to get into a water system (hopefully the two have nothing to do with one another) and then goes through half-full pipes when, even under reduced pressure, water pipes are always completely full. So it’s just incredibly lame sci-fi and if they can’t figure out basic civil engineering, what hope do they have with quantum mechanics?
One of the highlights, which has nothing to do with the quality of the movie, was seeing the old Georgia Archives building as the corporate headquarters since that building has a connection for me through work and I also went to see it imploded in 2017 (due to a number of problems the building hadn’t been used in years). It was weird seeing it located by the San Francisco Bay as it is in the movie and it seems like it would have been easy to use a CGI building, but it got quite a prominent role. Also I was glad to see Evangeline Lilly, who was so good in Lost, and the post-credit scenes indicate she could get to be a superhero herself. As I write this, they are about to start filming that sequel, once again in Atlanta, for release in 2018.
Written: 29 May 2017
Owned on: Digital