Ant-Man

Dear­est Edgar,

How’re things old stick? Long time no speak!

I see you’ve kicked off a sec­ond life as a pro­gram­mer and ad-hoc 35mm preser­va­tion­ist. Hope that’s all work­ing out for you… The twins say hel­lo. Bar­ney broke his wrist climb­ing the pear tree. He didn’t realise it was rot­ten… So, the chase: just saw it and want­ed to send over a quick note. Do so, of course, with­out the inten­tion of rub­bing any kind of salt into any kind of wound, mere­ly as a way to trans­mit a few ini­tial thoughts about how it turned out. Obvi­ous­ly the nature of your part­ing from the project is some­thing that you don’t want to discuss/​disclose, and that’s A‑OK. I don’t real­ly want to know. (Is this a real­ly unclassy thing to do? If so, please, stop read­ing now, toss this ol’ thing in the bin and I’ll chat to you at Ruby’s wed­ding next month. Ha ha… You are coming?!)

Realise that you may well be utter­ly con­tent with your cur­rent lot and the exis­tence of a film which has been pro­duced from con­cep­tu­al blue­prints that you no-doubt slaved over. But the rea­son I want­ed to write to you is that it was uncom­fort­able to watch a movie which squirmed and lum­bered awk­ward­ly out of your gigan­tic and dis­tinc­tive cre­ative shad­ow. I know, it’s impos­si­ble and even a lit­tle seedy to sec­ond guess what your ver­sion of this film would’ve looked like. I’m sure that future press inter­views will pos­i­tive­ly over­flow with such vul­gar inter­ro­ga­tions, and the flame of this myth­i­cal almost-movie will like­ly burn longer and hard­er than the movie itself. Jeez, it’s crazy to think how much this whole thing was writ­ten about and fussed over. An affir­ma­tion of how much peo­ple love you, I think, more than inter­est in the movie. Just my opinion…

The only piece of con­jec­ture I feel com­fort­able mak­ing is that you like­ly intend­ed to jolt the soporif­ic Mar­vel-movie tem­plate when you came on board for this project. You had fried gold on your mind. (Sor­ry). What’s inter­est­ing about the resul­tant #prod­uct that has emerged from this tiff (can we call it a tiff?) is that it’s a vision of what could have been more than a sat­is­fy­ing sto­ry in its own right. It seems strange to pit movie direc­tors against one anoth­er, but they do it at film fes­ti­vals, so why not here? Mr Pey­ton Reed, your hum­ble replace­ment, has an ear for com­e­dy. That much is clear. But there’s no sen­si­tiv­i­ty, no eye for move­ment, no feel­ing for the way a cam­era can cre­ate emo­tion out of noth­ing, no heart beat­ing beneath its cel­lu­loid skin.

It seems obvi­ous with this movie that the kind and gen­er­ous folks over at Mar­vel HQ know what works and what they want, so fair play to them for stick­ing to their for­mu­la, how­ev­er con­temp­tu­ous that is of audi­ences with a desire to expe­ri­ence orig­i­nal­i­ty. Maybe there’s some­thing to be said about main­stream moviemak­ing being the sworn ene­my of orig­i­nal­i­ty by way of an emp­ty redress to explain your depar­ture, but it would no doubt be an asi­nine gen­er­al­i­sa­tion, as inter­est­ing films do break through, they do make mon­ey. Look at… Grem­lins, for instance…

But let’s not kid our­self that your movie would just have been a bet­ter direct­ed ver­sion of the one that was made. You make great movies about human redemp­tion – a buzz­word in Hol­ly­wood at the moment. All scripts must con­tain this word. Peo­ple have to say it. Redemp­tion. Redemp­tion. Redemp­tion. [An aside to say that the cat has just jumped on my lap and says hel­lo] They, as in your movies, are great because they accept the tough, anti-com­mer­cial tru­ism that, to quote Nick Cave, peo­ple ain’t no good. They real­ly aren’t. Or maybe that the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a full-scale trans­for­ma­tion is instant­ly more mean­ing­ful when a malev­o­lent char­ac­ter tran­scends his own ingrained shitbaggery.

Here we have Paul Rudd (such a fun­ny lad) as Scott Lang who hap­pens to be the nicest, coolest, most benign, fun­ny, awe­some, strong, roman­tic felon in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma. (I have not seen every film ever made, but you catch my drift…) His whole sto­ry appears to ser­vice the myth that, actu­al­ly, some white collar/​Robin Hood crimes are admis­si­ble as long as they’re car­ried out by cheeky chap­pies with a cute quiff and cuter kid. There are par­al­lels with Simon Pegg’s lunatic dilet­tante, Gary King, from The World’s End, but there was a film in which we were invit­ed to extend sym­pa­thy for the dev­il – a bedrag­gled, post-Brit­pop dev­il per­ma-leathered on Bass tops. Scott Lang’s suc­cess as a man who can trans­form him­self into the size of an ant in order to bring down cor­po­rate greed is a fait accom­pli from frame one. I’m sor­ry, but it’s true.

I don’t want to get bogged down recount­ing the sto­ry, because I’m guess­ing you know the sto­ry. (too soon?!) But there were two spe­cif­ic moments where you jumped to mind, moments that I couldn’t help but think: what would a real direc­tor have done with this? The first involved a move which I am at pains to describe. I want to call it The Crouched Mar­vel Stance. You know the one, where a super­hero char­ac­ter lands with one arm flail­ing out to the side, head bowed and legs crossed? Then the rise up, chest puffed out, fists clenched, ready for a dust-up. It’s like Mar­vel lore is attempt­ing to furtive­ly realign time-hon­oured safe­ty reg­u­la­tions for humans drop­ping from dan­ger­ous heights. That was the moment where it solid­i­fied in my mind that I’d seen this film before. Many, many times. The same sto­ry, the same peo­ple, the same threat, the same like­li­hood of the threat hav­ing any impact on the world, and the same sil­ly stance. (Sor­ry for the pot­ty mouth, just don’t ever show this to the twins next time they’re round…)

The oth­er moment was at the end when Ant-Man goes ​“sub-atom­ic” in order to save human­i­ty. What we got was a screen saver mon­tage, a lousy, digi­fied 2001 knock-off. Maybe it was meant to look bad. An iron­ic nod to bare­ly-con­cealed b‑movie method­ol­o­gy which was some­how meant to explain away the cos­met­ic crum­mi­ness of the whole thing. That was the moment where your alche­my would’ve nudged this movie into some­thing bet­ter, more valu­able. You’d have torn our flip­pin’ eyes out. In a nice way.

It’s iron­ic that super­hero movies are about reg­u­lar Joes and Jolenes who grab pow­er or have it foist­ed upon them. They are bestowed with a resource that allows them to change the world. Direc­tors of super­hero movies should them­selves be super­heros, will­ing to put their neck on the line for an eccen­tric, long-odds play. But, for what­ev­er the rea­sons may be, they so sel­dom do. Maybe I just need to stop think­ing about things so much and ​“just have fun with it”? Yet why shouldn’t I expect more? Why?

Sor­ry, I realise that got mite ram­bling and bit­ter there. It’s not a bad movie. It’s just one that lacked for some­thing new to say. We can talk about this more next time we meet, or we can nev­er talk of it again. Entire­ly your call. Any­way, I must dash. The phar­ma­cy clos­es in 20 min­utes and I need to stock up on corn plas­ters (long sto­ry). Take care, and real­ly hope to see you soon.

Luv you peanut.

Kiss­es XXXX