Ant-Man question: What does it actually mean to “shrink for eternity?”
Shrinking for eternity is one of the dangers of operating the Ant-Man suit, as explained by Michael Douglas (who was Ant-Man in the 1960s) to Paul Rudd (current, if reluctant, Ant-Man). On the suit, there’s a button of sorts that shrinks the wearer to the size of an ant, and returns said wearer to full size. This transformation of human-sized human to bug-sized human happens almost instantaneously. Apparently if you do some unspecified tampering to this button, the wearer can go “sub-atomoic”, entering a realm where time and space mean nothing, and one will be destined to “shrink for eternity.”
The notion that any object, human or otherwise, can shrink for eternity requires an elasticity of matter that I don’t believe would be supported by physical reality. A piece of paper can only be folded in half 12 times. Can a human body really shrink, forever? Probably not.
But even if one could achieve a state of eternal shrinking, how can our feeble, limited minds possibly understand the concept? Eternity itself is beyond the limits of human understanding. Religions have posited the notion of eternal life, and many have looked to this promise as a sign of hope in a world bound by entropy. But whatever your preacher might say to the contrary, an intellectually sound understanding of eternal life will always remain a mystery.
That any single activity can occur “for eternity” pushes us even further to the mental breaking point. Any individual activity is as unlikely as any other. No more can I imagine shrinking for eternity than I can playing basketball for eternity. Unpacking eternal shrinkage is a philosophical nightmare, a problem better left for cosmologists or theologians than for journalists or film critics.
And yet, Michael Douglas wants Paul Rudd, and the audience of Marvel’s Ant-Man to consider this possible fate. Why?
Ant-Man question: Is life as a bug-sized human better or worse than life as a human-sized bug?
Or, in the parlance of the modern century: Would you rather be the Gregor in Kafka’s Metamorphosis or Scott Lang in Marvel’s Ant-Man?
No film about a bug-person can escape a comparative analysis with Franz Kafka, and we should, as a nation mourn on behalf of English Lit teachers everywhere who will have to read the dimly lit college essays about how Paul Rudd and Gregor share so much in common because they’re insecty-lives are being oriented by forces beyond their control, be it a mysterious transformation into a literal bug or a hero-suit with a switch that turns one man into a micro-super-hero.
When you put it that way, I guess this becomes a no-brainer. Gregor was living a nightmare as a cockroach, hated and reviled by the world, nearly killed by his apple-throwing father, before he just sits around until he dies. Scott Lang, though, he gets to fight and quip and make eyes at Evangeline Lilly.
Ant-Man question: Why are fathers who do not regard the well-being of their daughters destined to wear the Ant-Man suit?
Here are two dads, Hank Pym and Scott Lang, both removed from their daughter’s lives by choices they made. And both are given the opportunity to heroically return to the good graces of their scorned/distant daughters because of their actions in the Ant-Man suit.
Hank Pym retreated from his daughter Hope after the death of his wife. Scott Lang, meanwhile, has been in prison for years after committing a Robin Hood hacking crime and stealing millions from the financial industry.
We should all hope for the successful reconciliation of fathers and daughters, so long as a healthy, respectful relationship can be established. But it seems like there are probably candidates for Ant-Man who are not estranged from their daughters. And these candidates would actually allow for a more successful Ant-Man. If you don’t have a daughter whose love you are desperate to earn, then there is one less child’s life that must be needlessly endangered by homocidal maniacs, when these homocidal maniacs realize that you’re desperate to earn the respect and love of your daughter, and thus integrate their plan for evil into the domestic drama of the hero.
Ant-Man question: Why are super-villains so eager to get involved in the domestic dramas of superheroes?
Not only is Darren Cross-the big bad little bad known as Yellowjacket-the student of Hank Pym, and the boyfriend of Hank’s daughter Hope, and the lead researcher on Hank’s former research, and the man who runs Hank’s company, but he also becomes involved in the personal life of the new Ant-Man, Scott Lang.
Why waste all that time, Darren? I mean, what do you actually want to do? You could’ve avoided all this nonsense by just selling your suit to Hydra, cashing your checks, and flying off to buy an island? Don’t you realize that by threatening the life of the daughter of the hero that you have sealed your fate? I understand that you have no history as character/human, and that you’re really only meant to serve as the anti-Ant-Man, but you’ve made such an obvious series of poorly thought out decisions that it’s hard to take you seriously.
Ant-Man question: In the 2015 summer of Paul Rudd vs. Paul Rudd battle, could Scott Lang even take Andy the Camp Firewood counselor?
I doubt it.
Ant-Man question: Would a joke about Micro Machines have made this movie better?
Edgar Wright worked for a decade on this film. It has 6 credited writers and god knows how many other people at Disney and Marvel had their hands on this story before it was finally released. You’re telling me no one thought to have micro-Paul Rudd driving a micro-machine?
Ant-Man question: Is Ant-Man any good?
This is the second Marvel movie of the summer, though it has almost nothing in common with The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Peyton Reed, who directed Ant-Man has provideda light lunch compared to the Joss Whedon pot-roast. But that’s exactly what Peyton Reed does. Ant-Man is pleasant enough. It stars Paul Rudd and asks him to use his charming, affable smile to carry audiences through a movie that feels like it was assembled by too many people. There’s some fun set-pieces and visual gags, the final action sequence is a real trip.
Yet it all feels so…insignificant. It’s going for Guardians of the Galaxy style break from the Marvel mold, but it doesn’t achieve it. Guardians was quite capable, when necessary, of hitting the audience with some weighty interaction. Ant-Man, though? It breaks from the hero-mold by changing perspective one too many times; we realize just how insignificant an Ant-Man really is.
If Disney really wanted this to land, they might’ve left off the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and made an action comedy with Paul Rudd, and then included much more Michael Pena, T.I. and David Dastmalchian, who play a trio of thieves that are far more deserving of a film than Ant-Man.
But this is late summer, and Marvel has a powerful and creative machine behind them. They can fire a director, find some talented actors, hand the screenplay of 5 times, only to cobble together a fine looking, funny, trifling movie with zero interesting characters and a stock plot taken directly from the book of stock plots, and critics still end up recommending it. No small achievement.
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