...which opens the door for Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), a down on his luck ex-con fresh out of prison who just wants to do right by his daughter, Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson), to be our protagonist. And what a good choice this was by Marvel, due to the fact that Scott is a great, great deal more relatable to the general public than Pym would be. Having been sent to prison for screwing over the company he had previously worked for, distributing millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains back to those the company had taken them from, Scott finally gets out and is determined to go straight.
However, he eventually cracks when he flits from job to job due to his criminal record and is convinced into a heist by some of his friends...to rob the house of one Henry "Hank" Pym, during which he steals a suit right out of some astonishing tales...and prepares to make a few of his own, though not without a certain scientist hanging on his ear and asking him for some help in dealing with a problem that has spouted up at Pym Tech.
The problem being Pym's former protégé Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) coming close to replicating Pym's work on the Pym Particles - which can shrink a person or object and increase their density, meaning (in the case of Ant-Man) small size, big punch. With this technology in hand, Cross could send the entire world into chaos. Rather than do the logical thing and call the Avengers (which is actually brought up and shot down with two lines), Pym decides he needs to get a hold of Scott Lang and have him take on the mantle of Ant-Man.
What follows is, essentially, a heist film. Of course, that's not before Scott goes through some heavy training to use the suit as well as communicate with the ants for which Ant-Man is known for communicating with. But once he's done so, they plan to infiltrate Pym Tech and stop Cross from selling off his "Yellowjacket" prototype to HYDRA (who are totally not evil now, honest) and causing chaos throughout the world.
Let's get the characters out of the way. Paul Rudd plays an amazing Scott Lang. I had only ever seen him in comedic roles before this (such as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy), but I have to admit this guy can pull serious drama when he needs to. You can see his anguish about not being able to see his daughter and provide for her, his love for her - indeed, before he goes into the final battle, one of the last things he does is visit her. He's not perfect by any means - more Iron Man than Cap - but he is trying. He wants to do right and is determined to do anything he can to be the man his daughter sees him as.
Hank Pym fits into the mentor role, and I do like that Marvel didn't just cast him aside or relegate him to a background or flashback-only role in the story. The original inventor of the Ant-Man suit and the Particles after which he's named, Pym was a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent until Stark and others crossed him...though his disassociation with them began long before that with the disappearance of his wife, Janet van Dyne (Hayley Lovett) due to his technology. This makes his desire to not want to call in the Avengers to solve his problem all the more poignant, and also feeds into the third of the main trio of the film.
Evangeline Lilly plays Hope van Dyne, a new character who is the daughter of Hank and Janet. She's capable, witty, and tough, all the things you'd expect from a child raised by two superheroes. However, she's become estranged from her father and thus worked with Cross to remove him from Pym Tech's board of directors...until she realized Cross was a homicidal maniac with a god complex and started working with Pym to take him down. She even says herself that she'd be better suited to put the Ant-Man suit to use than Lang (which he agrees with), though Pym refuses due to the loss of his wife years earlier. Nevertheless, she forms an integral part of the plan due to being in Cross's inner circle.
And, at last, we come to out villain - Darren Cross. Now the CEO of Pym Tech, he wants to sell off weapons to HYDRA because...profit. No, really. That's his motivation. He's basically the same character that Ezekiel Stane was in Iron Man (he even has the Bald of Evil going on!). The former assistant of Pym, he became resentful of his mentor for excluding him from the secret of Pym Particles, and so began work on trying to re-discover the secret himself...which has driven him to an obsessive insanity not helped at all by his exposure to the Particles which has driven him even more insane.
One also should consider Scott's three partners in crime (Michael Peña, David Dastmalchian, and T.I.). Of many nationalities as we know all gangs in the world must surely be, they serve as the comic relief for the film, but also a handy group of Chekov's Gunmen when their skills are needed to help Scott in the final heist. Unlike many comic relief characters who do nothing but take up space and shoot off corny one-liners, they're at least useful to the plot with said skills, so I won't give Marvel too much grief for them.
I would also like to give props to the crew's work with the shrinking, which as not used in a gimmicky way as I feared it would be. Much like the comics of yore, it's actually used to make relatively mundane environments - such as a bathtub, a child's train set, or the inside of a suitcase - seem very big and grandiose, playing on their former mediocrity in some rather amusing ways, especially later on in the film.
It's a rather enjoyable film, even if the plot is very Iron Man in its delivery - simply swap out Pym Particles for the Arc Reactor and Cross for Stane - but if they're going to copy any of the Marvel films that have come before, it should be that one given how it still remains universally beloved. Though it is greatly spiced up by Paul Rudd in both drama and comedy, and the rest of the cast rounds out nicely what is overall a very enjoyable film.
Oh, and the post-credits scene...
Marvel, Civil War better not suck...the slippery slope is a whole lot more slippery...
Ant-Man is now in theaters from Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Motion Pictures.
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