Tonight's Mid-Week Matinee is the 2015 Marvel film called
"ANT-MAN!"
I don't normally watch very many modern movies, but for various reasons, I did kind of want to watch "Ant-Man."
"Ant-Man" and I go back a long way, in fact this is the only Marvel comic I still have from my collection as a kid that used to include "Spiderman" #5, and "The Avengers" #1.
I never expected them to make "Ant-Man" into a movie, because like "Dr. Strange," back in the day, he wasn't really that popular, and that is why after only fourteen issues, they changed him into "Giant Man."
"Ant-Man" never really had his own comic, but was just a featured character in "Tales To Astonish" which was a Sci-fi comic of different stories. The first reference to an Ant character was in issue number 27 of "Tales To Astonish" in 1962.
After that, they went back to their normal format consisting of Gorilla Men, Space Beasts, Swamp Things, Mummies, Evil Quicksand, Invading Enemies, and Jack Kirby's silly monsters like this for seven more issues before re-introducing "Ant-Man."
In issue # 35 "Ant-Man" returned and was ready to take on the world, which brings us to the subject at hand.
After doing time for a sophisticated heist gone wrong, Paul Rudd as Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man, is released and ready to give it a new start!
But of course he can't find a good job, and can't even hold on to a bad one, because he lied about his criminal past!
Michael Douglas is the creator of the Ant-Man, Dr. Hank Pym!
Scott Lang goes by to see his daughter who is living with his ex-wife and her cop husband. For some reason, he brings this hideous stuffed animal to her!
It's Ant-Man!
Shrinking people in the movies is not a novel concept, the first time it happened was in a 1901 short that was made by Georges Méliès titled "The Dwarf And The Giant," although the shrinkage was minimal in that initial effort!
This shot brings "The Incredible Shrinking Man" from 1957 to mind, or maybe "Attack OF The Puppet People" from 1958.
It was kind of hard to get decent stills from this film because Ant-Man is so small!
There are plenty to choose from, but "Fantastic Voyage" from 1967 is another excellent film featuring microscopic people!
Learning how to get along with your new friends can be difficult at first!
You've gotta dig Ant-Man's best pal Anthony!
Evangeline Lilly will go on to be in the sequel as The Wasp.
If they ever make a film about Louise Brooks, I think Evangeline would be a fine candidate for the lead role!
If they ever make a film about Louise Brooks, I think Evangeline would be a fine candidate for the lead role!
Corey Stull is the ultimate scumbag villain Darren Cross!
Corey is also the one who dons the suit as The Yellowjacket!!
Well, this certainly looks familiar!
I'm pretty sure you knew that already!
So there you go! Downtrodden but intelligent ex-con gets a new suit, and a new chance, and goes on to save the world, or on a smaller scale, at least the relationship with his daughter!
3 comments:
Oh, man! I love this post so damn much! I also was an Ant-Man fan back in the day I had the "Tales to Astonish" issue that featured "Return of The Ant Man!" But, like you, I hated Giant Man. I didn't find anything redeeming about how Ant Man became a giant.
I loved the Ant Man movie, too, with Scott Rudd -- who has to be the nicest actor in all of Hollywood, and, hey, he's from Kansas, too, just like Clark Kent (and me).
And, finally, Evangeline Lilly as Louise Brooks! You hit the jackpot with that observation!
The funniest line in this post, though, has to be: "Learning how to get along with your new friends can be difficult at first!" Yes! I mean, right!?
My wife and i went to see this one at the theater simply because it didn't seem to be all tied up in knowing which super hero is which and which super villain was which. We enjoyed it as a comedic movie, and dang, it was just plain fun, almost as much as Shazam! was. Bring on more MOVIES like this one instead of overwhelmingly large casts with characters you need to have a score card to keep track of.
We saw this first ANT-MAN on DVD and it was entertaining. But the sequel with THE WASP in the title, seen in a theater during the summer of 2018, was a very different experience. For the first time in my 60+ years, I actually fell asleep in a movie theater, about halfway through the movie! Thankfully, my wife didn't bother me or try to wake me up, because she understood--she didn't like it very much either.
The "overwhelmingly large casts" Randall mentioned is the biggest problem with a lot of the Marvel movies, especially the AVENGERS films, and I think it started back when the Marvel films forcibly shoe-horned the Venom into SPIDER-MAN 3 (2007), when that film's main story of the Sandman as "guest villain" was both adequately exciting and very touching.
I think part of the issue comes down to the short attention spans of many of the current, younger film-goers, raised in an era of frantic videogames.
The only videogame I play today? Mahjong. :)
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