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Which is several months after Avengers 2, which means Ant-Man will probably be introduced as a character in that film.

dx23 wrote:Ant-Man with Edgar Wright directing will be released on November 6, 2015.

Just in time for award season....

Of all the possible super-powers, what could be more interesting than changing size and having a special helmet to communicate with ants? And just like all the rest, it'll surely be a character who needs to be musclebound and wear skin-tight costumes.

He also has the superpower of hitting women so naturally Paul Rudd is perfect for the role.

knives wrote:He also has the superpower of hitting women

That was a storyline from the eighties comics, right? Probably safe to say that a mid-to-big budget Hollywood movie is not going to have the main character beat his wife. In the comics that was probably easier to do because he was (at least back then) more of a second-tier team character. And even then only after years of input from various writers.

I think the movie will turn out well. Or at least better than usual for this type of fare. It's not like Wright has a penchant for pointless grittiness. Should be fun.

As opposed to that Batman / Superman movie, which just screams all kinds of awkward. If there ever were two characters who really don't belong in the same room together.

There's some question of which Ant Man Rudd is going to be playing, as there are evidently two of them and it's been reported that they're both present in the script. As far as going for the unsavory elements of his character- they did pretty much do Iron Man's Demon in a Bottle storyline. That said, I'm pretty much on board with whatever Wright has in mind for this, Ant Man is usually a pretty silly character and I'd love to see a sort of Scott Pilgrim hyperreality thing in a more mainstream comic movie.

knives wrote:He also has the superpower of hitting women so naturally Paul Rudd is perfect for the role.

Paul Rudd beats women? This is the first I've heard about this.

Beats their hearts because he's such a qt

Matt wrote:

knives wrote:He also has the superpower of hitting women so naturally Paul Rudd is perfect for the role.

Paul Rudd beats women? This is the first I've heard about this.

I need to remember that tone does not go through the Internet. It was a joke on how likable Rudd is. He's the last person I'd image being abusive.

The wife beater thing wasn't even really done in the comics, IIRC. The "infamous scene" had him arguing with his wife and turn around abruptly, accidentally elbowing her in the face. Then to give him character development, they had him feel really guilty for a while.

The other ant man being considered was from 5 or so years ago. I only read a couple issues, but he was an immature slacker SHIELD agent who accidentally got shrinking powers and used them to sneak into girls showers. I stopped reading at that point, so I don't know where he went from there.

knives wrote:I need to remember that tone does not go through the Internet.

Yes. I googled "Paul Rudd assault" after reading that post just to see if he had ever been arrested. Maybe Chris Brown would make a decent Ant Man?

matrixschmatrix wrote:There's some question of which Ant Man Rudd is going to be playing, as there are evidently two of them

Henry Pym and Scott Lang. The latter character (at least in the eighties) was more of a happy-go-lucky persona. The former was gradually given a tortured personality through the seventies and early eighties. Which is why I think Wright will surely use the more innocent 1960s storylines as a foundation- no doubt an excellent fit for his sensibilities.

matrixschmatrix wrote: As far as going for the unsavory elements of his character- they did pretty much do Iron Man's Demon in a Bottle storyline.

Didn't the executives nix that storyline from the Iron Man movies?

matrixschmatrix wrote:Ant Man is usually a pretty silly character

Well, they're all silly. It's just that some characters are more malleable than others and not so set in stone. As long as the suits don't try to drown the movie in special effects trying to force a blockbuster out of it.

Numero Trois wrote:

matrixschmatrix wrote: As far as going for the unsavory elements of his character- they did pretty much do Iron Man's Demon in a Bottle storyline.

Didn't the executives nix that storyline from the Iron Man movies?

They didn't do it word for word, but Tony's alcoholism is one of the major plot points in the second movie.

Knives- there's also Irredeemable Ant Man (i can't remember his real name), which is the shower perv I referred to. I had heard rumors a while back that this was the one they'd use

matrixschmatrix wrote:They didn't do it word for word, but Tony's alcoholism is one of the major plot points in the second movie.

I saw it on TV. That movie had so many baubles flying around that it was pretty much in one ear / goes out the other. Truly forgettable. I haven't read the original story, but its a safe bet that it was much darker than what was allowed onscreen. Likewise, its hard to imagine the suits allowing a "lighter version" of spousal abuse, as if such a thing was even possible.

Director Edgar Wright Exits Marvel's 'Ant-Man' Due to Creative 'Differences' (or possibly due to being way behind on production, if rumors are correct)

Werewolf by Night wrote:Director Edgar Wright Exits Marvel's 'Ant-Man' Due to Creative 'Differences' (or possibly due to being way behind on production, if rumors are correct)

I was wondering how long an original and unique voice could last in the Marvel machine. Oh well, it's probably for the best

Apparently the fact that Wright was behind schedule and production bleeding money was the reason. And it's really such a shame he's gone.

Drew Goddard (Cabin in the Woods) has now bailed as showrunner of Marvel's Daredevil series for Netflix.

I know that Edgar Wright had been working on Antman for ages but frankly I'm glad that he can now put his time and talent to better use than some middling Marvel movie. Frankly I don't see the attraction to the Marvel films. Besides Robert Downey Jr. nobody seems to be making big bucks from these films. Marvel are notoriously cheap; locking in actors and talent into multi film deals with subpar pay (relative to performance). Also seems to be a creatively stifling environment with Marvel micro-managing everything.

The films have also been pretty mediocre. (IMO)

The thing that bothers me greatly is that Ant-Man had potential with Wright on board. If there's one thing that I don't like how high concept projects can turn out is that they can be wasted. And I love high concept projects.

I haven't seen any of the Marvel redux films but I liked the idea of Paul Rudd and Michael Douglas in an action movie so I watched Ant-Man, or perhaps a better title would be Demo Reel For a Video Game I Don't Want to Play. I just could not believe how much of this movie was virtually animated, in a style bearing no resemblance to the world we live in, and in an inexcusably unimaginative fashion. Rudd and Douglas and Michael Pena get a few spare laughs, and there's one legit funny running joke near the beginning involving an ice cream parlor's reputation that has all the hallmarks of coming from Edgar Wright's original script, little else of which I suspect actually made it to the screen. But overall, man, between this and the horrible Jurassic World (what an awful idea for a double feature tonight), my tolerance for feature-length screensavers is as low as it's ever been.

Saw Ant-Man. It was fine. Humour and action mostly worked; characters and story did not. Spent some time wondering what bits of Edgar Wright were in there (cell phone bit?). But mostly I realized this film is essentially an old-fashioned martial arts movie. Old master finds down-and-out younger man, trains him throughout the second act, then unleashes him on an old enemy in the final act.

I like that it was also the sequel to a movie that doesn't exist, which is something that can be done a lot more with an extended universe like this. I had a lot more to say when I was thinking of writing this post, but now that I am, indifference has let me forget most of it. Rewatched Iron Man, tho', and it is still a lot of fun and one of the most enjoyable comic book movies.

Marvel also announced that Michelle Pfeiffer will play Janet Van Dyne (The Wasp, founding member of the Avengers in the comic books and wife of Hank Pym) and Lawrence Fishburne will play Bill Foster, the second Giant Man, better known as Black Goliath. If I'm not mistaken, Fishburne will be the first actor to have roles in both the DC and Marvel Cinematic Universes. He's been very critical on the shit job that WB has done with the DC films, so I wouldn't be surprised if his DC character, Perry White, is re-cast in the future.

Ant-Man and the Wasp is elementary-school-level fodder for underdeveloped man-children and those who indulge it are actively undermining our otherwise healthy culture of adult-oriented artistry and entertainments.

Just kidding, it's not that, but it's also not very good. This latest MCU entry tries to skate by almost entirely on the charm of its cast (which is absurdly stacked to an extent that's profoundly irritating if thought about for too long) and a handful of cute uses of the shrinking/growing tech-magic the film's heroes exploit, but fails to do much of anything interesting with its action, villains, or plot mechanics. Even the trip to the quantum realm isn't particularly fleshed out or interesting, nor nearly as hallucinogenic in its imagery as Doctor Strange.

Still, the movie's most significant failing is in thinking that just putting all these talented people up on the screen with some special effects is enough to get by, but the rampant misuse of characters, replacement-level directing, and an undercooked script leave the cast hanging. Rudd's comedic abilities are severely underutilized in favor of playing up the cute dad persona, and Walton Goggins is mostly wasted (while sinking further into the overly-loquacious-and-smoothly-sinister-villain typecasting quicksand). Evangeline Lilly is a solid presence but is given basically zero characterization, though that's a micrometer more than Michelle Pfieffer gets. Laurence Fishburne's character is basically schizophrenic in his motivations and decision-making, leaving Michael Pena's comic relief character as the only one who garners any actual notice, and even that is pretty slight.

What has usually made it worth giving a shot to these B-side entries in the franchise has generally been a willingness on the part of Marvel to let them have a bit more personality, weirdness, and genre experimentation than the core Iron Man/Captain America/Avengers movies, but when they're as blandly directed and narratively insignificant as this one ultimately is*, they're utterly skippable even for those who are more deeply invested in the larger series.

*

Spoiler

Literally the only thing that has any significance to the wider direction of these films happens in a forty-five second post-credits sequence