Ant-Man

     The exhilarating Ant-Man is a huge advance upon The Incredible Shrinking Man and Them.  But it has one credibility problem. The ultra-brilliant scientist Dr Pym (Michael Douglas) commits a serious grammatical error. He uses “presently” as if it means “at present” instead of “soon.” No ultra-brilliant scientist would do that. But that’s what our universities are coming to. Once the Humanities die will humanity be far behind? 

But that’s another film. Or is it? 

This delightful, witty entertainment grows out of two traditions. The first is the mock-heroic, which John Dryden characterized as a very small man wearing a very very large suit of armour. In literature, that translates into a trivial issue treated as of major importance. Examples of the mock epic include Pope’s The Rape of the Lock and the recent Canadian leaders’ debate which focused on trivial issues instead of the most compelling and serious one — the current prime minister’s absolute disdain for democracy and his persistent attempts to undermine it.   

The very concept of the film is mock heroic. As the giant screen swarms with huge figures of superhuman strength, hulking hunks and tower-sized robots, it was only a matter of time before the estimable Marvel comix would proffer a mini-hero. As Superman begat Mighty Mouse the 3-D behemoths bred Ant-Man. The empowered hero Scott Lang is played by the usually nebbish Paul Rudd, who would usually out-nebbish Clark Kent, except for his extraordinary cleverness as a cat burglar — with a pussy’s idealism. 

Instead of empowering the weak the essential fantasy in this film is restoring father-daughter relationships. Scott is an ex-con frustrated in his attempt to see his daughter, post-divorce. Dr Pym lost his daughter, the aptly-named Hope (Evangeline Lilly), who now works for his arch-enemy and ex-mentee Darren Cross (Corey Stoll). As the scientist, daughter and ex-con join forces to save the world from an army of evil miniatures, the fathers win back their daughters and a second-generation romance promises to avoid past freezes and neglect. Cross lives out the son's rebellion against his surrogate father figure.

The second tradition reflects the current global military dread. The drama centers on the use of destructive power. As Pym observes, you can’t destroy power, just learn to control it. Most films present the war between good and evil as clashes between armies, nations, even cultures. Individual heroes may face off to settle the issue, but wars are between armies. 

By miniaturizing the war this film makes the army subordinate to the individual. True, Ant-Man commands an entomologist’s dream of obedient battalions, but that just puts him in harmony with nature, contra all the other bombers. (In further harmony, there is even music by Adam and the Ants.) This war is between the goodie Ant-Man and the baddie Yellowjacket. Ant-Man’s mobility seems trumped by Yellowjacket's laser shots, at least till he’s zapped himself by a patio light. Here the villain is a solitary shooter not a commander of men. That is, Ant-Man here fights off our current dread, the outlaw loner, the suicide bomber, the terrorist cell. Ant-Man may be a familiar kind of hero but his opponent — and the nightmare he personifies — is the dread evil of our times.