Ant-Man Storyline Review/Analysis

 Warning: Review is spoileriffic


 

When the plot of Ant-Man was revealed, many hardcore Marvel fans and comic purists reacted in outrage.  The belief is that Scott Lang should not be the protagonist with Hank Pym relegated to a mentor role.  There was claims from some of the purists that Age of Ultron would also have been ruined to make way for this new screenplay, as it was Hank Pym who created Ultron in the comics, and not Tony Stark, and that Joss Whedon wanted to include Hank and Janet as the new heroes for Age of Ultron rather than Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver but was told not to by Marvel.  The justification is that Hank needed to be a founding member of the Avengers to justify the creation of Ultron.  By contrast the purists believe, to have Tony create Ultron makes him look like a completely irresponsible moron, and was later treated like an afterthought and was totally inconsequential.   

Furthermore in neglecting a younger Hank  and Janet, it is believed their role in the Avengers storyline would be marginalzied, fighting Aliens, robots and extra-dimensional threats are not Black Widow's thing, and Hank has more of an iconic impact compared to Scott in the comics.  However, as noted in a recent post, adherence to nostaligic beliefs of what things "should be" dosen't necessarily guarantee a good movie, and there are ways to tell a storyline with completely new themes. 

The premise of Ant-Man appears to be over the top, even for the MCU--a guy uses a suit and communicates with Ants to save the world.  It appears less to be anything serious and more of a situation that could turn on it's head, furthermore as Marvel Cinematic Universe has gotten more and more expansive, the scope becomes more and more epic, so why a small-scaled and self-contained movie at this stage of the game?

Except it turns out to be a pretty-well done movie, with a relatable protagionist and a couple of significant themes which I will discuss for this post, these themes being the theme that of the hero's journey, and the responsibility to be a good role model for others, in particularly your children.

The Story:

In “Ant-Man,” Scott Lang is a well meaning-thief who’s just been released from  prison. With few legitimate prospects due to his criminal record and a young daughter and ex-wife to pay child support to to ever see his daughter again, Scott agrees to go on one last heist with his cell-mate to rob an impenetrable safe in the house of a old rich man.


Said old rich man however turns out to be Hank Pym, founder of Pym Technologies and once a Super Hero known as Ant-Man who was active in the waning years of the Cold War.  In 1989, Pym resigned from S.H.I.E.L.D. after discovering that they attempted to replicate his Ant-Man shrinking technology. Believing the technology is dangerous, Pym vows to hide it as long as he lives. However, in the present day, Pym's estranged daughter, Hope van Dyne, and former protégé, Darren Cross, has forced him out of his own company. Cross, who serves as the main antagonist of the film, is close to perfecting a shrinking suit of his own, the Yellowjacket, for military use--even if it means selling it at the highest bidder to sinister groups such as HYDRA for their ends.  Horrified by this prospect Pym wants to find someone who could steal the Yellowjacket from Cross before he could unveil it.  Allowing Scott to steal the suit was the heist given to prove to Scott's capabilities to Pym.

When Scott gets the suit however, he is horrified by it's capabilities, but when promised freedom from prison and care for his daughter, Scott volunteers to steal Yellowjacket from Cross.  Now it is up to Scott to, with the help of Hank and his daughter Hope-who may have been secretly spying for Cross, to master the Ant-Suit, communicate with ants, and steal the Yellowjacket from under Cross' nose.

One of the ways this film is a sucess, despite it's smaller scale is how it takes itself.  Instead of taking itself too seriously, it proves to be a light-hearted romp through the examination of the idea of a man saving the world by shrinking down as an ant-suit, of which it does not take itself seriously.  We never see any nitpicks because the film has fun with the premise over simply telling a plot, an example is seeing the final battle between Cross and Scott as Yellowjacket and Ant-Man, respectively, you see it from their prespectives as well as from the prespective of something human-sized.  You see them knock over toy trains in the size of an ant and then see the toy trains fall hit without much of an impact.  This is mixed with Scott using the enlarging/shrinking disks Hank gave to him to enlarge both an ant and Thomas the Tank Engine, in two of the funniest moments of the film.  Yet at the same time, the film stresses the seriousness of the situation, with Cross threatening to kill Lang's daughter if he does not defeat him.  Thus, a key aspect of ant-man proves to be a fun movie is how it establishes a serious plot, but is a straightforward and fun adventure with funny moments all over the place.  Few other franchises manage to have that balance and in fact, most tend gain inbalance either completely becoming way too serious, or lose any focus on plot and become a self-parody too far in.

The Themes:

However, what makes the plot work is not only how it balances the plot with the absurdity of the premise, the absurdity at least in contrast to other MCU films, but also through the themes it chooses to follow.  For one, the story is an almost perfect reimagining of the Hero's Journey.

For those of you who don't know, the Hero's Journey, or momomyth is a pattern of narrative identified by the American scholar Joseph Campbell that appears in drama, storytelling, myth, religious ritual, and psychological development.  The Hero's Journey describes the typical adventure of the archetype known as The Hero, the person who goes out and achieves great deeds on behalf of the group, tribe, or civilization.  It can be aligned in these stages:

1.        THE ORDINARY WORLD.  The hero, uneasy, uncomfortable or unaware, is introduced sympathetically so the audience can identify with the situation or dilemma.  The hero is shown against a background of environment, heredity, and personal history.  Some kind of polarity in the hero’s life is pulling in different directions and causing stress.

2.        THE CALL TO ADVENTURE.  Something shakes up the situation, either from external pressures or from something rising up from deep within, so the hero must face the beginnings of change. 

3.        REFUSAL OF THE CALL.  The hero feels the fear of the unknown and tries to turn away from the adventure, however briefly.  Alternately, another character may express the uncertainty and danger ahead.

4.        MEETING WITH THE MENTOR.  The hero comes across a seasoned traveler of the worlds who gives him or her training, equipment, or advice that will help on the journey.  Or the hero reaches within to a source of courage and wisdom.

5.        CROSSING THE THRESHOLD.  At the end of Act One, the hero commits to leaving the Ordinary World and entering a new region or condition with unfamiliar rules and values. 

6.        TESTS, ALLIES AND ENEMIES.  The hero is tested and sorts out allegiances in the Special World.

7.        APPROACH.  The hero and newfound allies prepare for the major challenge in the Special world.

8.        THE ORDEAL.  Near the middle of the story, the hero enters a central space in the Special World and confronts death or faces his or her greatest fear.  Out of the moment of death comes a new life. 

9.        THE REWARD.  The hero takes possession of the treasure won by facing death.  There may be celebration, but there is also danger of losing the treasure again.

10.      THE ROAD BACK.  About three-fourths of the way through the story, the hero is driven to complete the adventure, leaving the Special World to be sure the treasure is brought home.  Often a chase scene signals the urgency and danger of the mission.

11.     THE RESURRECTION.  At the climax, the hero is severely tested once more on the threshold of home.  He or she is purified by a last sacrifice, another moment of death and rebirth, but on a higher and more complete level.  By the hero’s action, the polarities that were in conflict at the beginning are finally resolved.

12.       RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR.  The hero returns home or continues the journey, bearing some element of the treasure that has the power to transform the world as the hero has been transformed.

I will warn you that the plot will be spoiled here, abeit as an outline.  At the start of Ant-Man, Scott is clearly in an uneasy position, he thought the heist would give him money to provide for his daughter and get an apartment.  Initially he is horrified at the powers of the suit, and it is only through a meeting with Hank(the mentor figure) that changed his mind and set upon the task of stealing the Yellowjacket(the Elixir) from Cross.  As he perfects his powers with the help of Hank and Hope, he also gains allies among the ants such as Anthony, whom he learns to control, and new skills such as communicating with them and jumping through keyholes effectively.  He is assigned to steal from the Avengers, and gets into a fight with Falcon that he is unprepared for.  Yet he trimpuhs, but the danger grows as Hope, a mole for Cross, increases security on the basis of Ant-Man's skills and forces Hank to bring in his former allies as a thief to help break the security.  The climax of the film is Hank stealing the suit from Cross, defeating him as Yellowjacket, but at the cost of falling into the Quantum Realm(Road Back and Resurrection), yet he manages to escape by reversing the suit's mechanism as he falls into the microverse, through this "resurrection" he gains knowledge that the microverse could be survived and this gives Hank hope that his own wife, Janet, might be alive after all.

From this it can be seen that the film is a perfect rendition of the traditional Hero's Journey seen in myth and literature.  Yet what makes it so special, because this cycle has been present in all forms of fiction for centuries.  And that uniqueness is because it is tied to another theme that drives all the major character arcs--that of being a good role model for those who look up on you, in particularly children.

 A key part of Scott's character arc is wanting to return to his daughter, whom his ex-wife has forbade him from seeing until he can provide child care because only then could he be a true hero that his daughter thinks he is as she looks up to her.  As such we the audience are giving a character we can relate to and root for in hoping that he mends fences with his family and reunites with his daughter.  And this story arc also guides the characterization of Hank Pym, who was the hero his daughter Hope looked up to, but lost his own wife Janet) in one of their missions as Ant-Man and Wasp when she shrank subatomic to disable a Soviet nuke, which trapped her in the quantum realm.  In guilt at letting her die like this, Hank hid the truth from his daughter(saying that Janet died in a plane crash) and became more isolated, and as such his daughter grew more isolated with him, and that was because he didn't want her to get involved in this life and share her mother's fate despite Hope wanting to live in the footstep of her mother, as the loss of their only daughter would be too much for Hank after losing his wife. 

And this theme of being a good role model, being a father figure to the young also fits into the motivation of the villain as well.  The film shows that Darren Cross once worked with Pym, but grew obsessed with unlocking the power of the Ant-suit.  As Pym pointed out however, Cross was like Pym in his youth, always willing to experiment, only that Pym stepped away at the supposed death of Janet while Cross continued despite the ethics involved just to gain the power that the Ant-suit and the Pym particle technology could hold and was willing to allow chaos to spread to justify gaining that knowledge.  In a sense one could see that Cross was a "dark shadow" contrasting Hank Pym, the mirror image that was willing to do all that it takes to achieve perfection.  It was once speculated Cross looked up to Pym as a role model, but was shocked by his refusal to share the powers of shrinking technology with him.  In a sense one could see Cross looked up to Hank...but to his darker aspects and his intelligence, not his humanity, and Cross' disregard of that humanity is the driving cause of the friction between him and Hank.       

Criticisms:

While this movie proves to be a solid adventure, it is not without its flaws.  One key flaw is how it dosen't properly set up the storyline of Captain America: Civil War, which would revolve around the conflict between Captain America and Iron Man.  The Civil War storyline in the comics has the U.S. government passes a Superhero Registration Act ostensibly designed to have superpowered characters act under official regulation, somewhat akin to police officers. However, there are those "rogue heroes" who are opposed to the act, led by Captain America, as they feel it would allow politicians to decide who is a hero and who is a villain, and the opposition come into conflict against the supporters, led by Iron Man.  Caught in the middle, is Spider-Man.  What also makes this ambiguous is that the pro-registration side uses various villains to help hunt down rogue heroes, casting their actions in a darker light. 

A problem I feel with this film is that, aside from a post-credits scene, there isn't much foreshadowing of this event, in particular as to what defines a rogue superhero or what defines a "legal" superhero.  In an early part of the film, Hank states that he dosen't want Tony Stark to get his hands on the Pym particles formula, and wants Scott to, in his test, steal from a Stark Warehouse to get the formula but aside from that, we never see much of the foreshadowing for Civil War.  This is a missed opportunity because Ant-Man could indirectly point out the flaws in the Registration Act in that it could allow those who are morally deficient to be considered heroes because of their background due to how politicized any Registration Act could get, which could lead to a scenario in which someone like Cross could be considered a hero because of his initial plans to sell it to various governments to ensure stability(it was only when that didn't work that he decided to sell it to HYDRA), furthermore Hank and Pym's actions, as well-intentioned as it is involve theft and the destruction of property that could raise some eyebrows despite the intentions involved, and that could be an argument that pro-registration forces might want to address as the Civil War draws closer.

Conclusion:

Overall however, despite this nitpick, Ant-Man proves to be one of the stronger Marvel movies to date, it has a serious premise woven with themes of being the ideal role model for those who look up to you combined with a faithful rendition of the Hero's Journey.  Yet at the same time, part of its charms was that it balanced fun and lighthearted moments with the story, without caving in fully to serious or whimsical moments.  Thus, despite fears that the film would flop, either because of it's premise or because of the "bastardization" of the Ant-Man storyline feared by purists, Ant-Man establishes itself as one of the stronger films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.