I Still Believe in Ant-Man

Don’t get me wrong, it is a tragedy that director Edgar Wright stepped away from the Ant-Man movie because Marvel Studios tampered with his script. I love Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and taken as a whole, the Cornetto Trilogy is among my Top 5 movies of all time. And if you haven’t seen Wright’s TV show Spaced, then do yourself a favor and find it, because Spaced is glorious. Wright is a comedic genius, as far as I’m concerned, and I was looking forward to his Ant-Man film more than Joss Whedon’s Avengers 2.

But in life, we don’t always get what we want, and even the world of silver screen superheroes can be bitter and heart-breaking.

But I have not given up on the Ant-Man movie. I still have some big expectations for that tiny little dude.

Spider-Man who?

Last week, Marvel announced that director Peyton Reed had signed on to take over from Wright. Reed has had success with comedies such as The Break-Up and Yes Man, neither of which anybody remembers. However, according to the Interwebs, both have made more money than any of Wright’s films, so the world is just a screwed up place to begin with. Director Adam McKay, of Will Ferrell and Anchorman fame, will help out with the script. Though it remains unknown if Marvel is going to start over from scratch with the script or if they’ll use Wright’s original script and just tweak it to fit what they want.

Based on the movie synopsis, also released last week, it sounds like they’ll just be tweaking.

Armed with the astonishing ability to shrink in scale but increase in strength, con-man Scott Lang must embrace his inner-hero and help his mentor, Dr. Hank Pym, protect the secret behind his spectacular Ant-Man suit from a new generation of towering threats. Against seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Pym and Lang must plan and pull off a heist that will save the world.

That synopsis sounds awesome. That’s exactly what I want the Ant-Man movie to be about.

So after all of that drama, it looks like Ant-Man is finally coming together. I still think Paul Rudd is going to be amazing as the lead, Scott Lang, and Michael Douglas should provide more than enough gravitas to Hank Pym.

For some reason, though, a lot of comments I read about this news were that people weren’t going to bother to see Ant-Man now that Wright is gone. First of all, shame on me for reading Internet comments from angry nerds to begin with. That’s never going to end well. (Other than comments on my blog, which are some of the smartest, handsomest, prettiest, most well-thought-out comments on the web!). But second of all, why would anyone think Ant-Man is going to be terrible without Wright?

I’ll be the first to say that Wright was probably going to make an amazing movie. But Marvel Studios has not let us down yet, movie after movie. And they’ve lost directors before and still produced amazing films. Losing Wright is a terrible loss. But Marvel have more than earned our trust.

Ant-Man is going to be great. But maybe now I’m looking forward to Avengers 2 just a little bit more…

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About Sean Ian Mills

Hello, this is Sean, the Henchman-4-Hire! By day I am a mild-mannered newspaper reporter in Central New York, and by the rest of the day I'm a pretty big geek when it comes to video games, comic books, movies, cartoons and more.

Posted on June 9, 2014, in Avengers, Marvel, Movies and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink. 5 Comments.

  1. Joe McCormick's avatar Joe McCormick

    …Aw shucks *bats eyelashes, our comments aren’t that great.

    In all seriousness, as much as I love Wright and his work, I don’t think this will necessarily make the movie any worse, sure some of Marvel’s movies have been less than stellar, but they’ve all been good movies so i’m not worried about it.

    • Hear! Hear! People keep treating Marvel like it’s some gulag of a movie studio. But that’s probably just because Marvel is so new and awesome right now. How many of the bigger, named, establishment studios have annoyed a director with script re-writes before?

  2. Joe McCormick's avatar Joe McCormick

    All good points, but no one ever listens *shakes fist

  3. I still have a glimpse of hope for Ant-Man. But alas, Edgar Wright leaving was really a big blow as he’s really the rock to this whole project. Without him, I don’t think Ant-Man would have even crossed Marvel Studios’ mind. Ant-Man is a case of “What could’ve should’ve been.” But I’m with you, Age of Ultron is now more appealing to me now. Now let’s hope that the Daredevil Netflix show is amazing to help remedy my broken heart over Ant-Man. Sigh.

    • Have faith, friend! I read an interesting article on Cinema Blend today that pointed out the benefits of Reed and McKay, and how both of them have strong TV backgrounds, and how working for Marvel Studios is more like working for a TV network planning a season of a show instead of an individual movie project. It definitely raised my spirits.

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