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The
Ant-Man is a 2015 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics characters of the same name: Scott Lang and Hank Pym. Produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, it is the 12th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The film was directed by Peyton Reed from a screenplay by the writing teams of Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish and Adam McKay & Paul Rudd. It stars Rudd as Scott Lang / Ant-Man alongside Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Peña, Tip "T.I." Harris, Anthony Mackie, Wood Harris, Judy Greer, Abby Ryder Fortson, David Dastmalchian, and Michael Douglas as Hank Pym. In the film, Lang must help defend Pym's Ant-Man shrinking technology and plot a heist with worldwide ramifications.
Development of Ant-Man began in April 2006 with the hiring of Wright to direct and co-write with Cornish. By April 2011, Wright and Cornish had completed three drafts of the script and Wright shot test footage for the film in July 2012. Pre-production began in October 2013 after being put on hold so that Wright could complete The World's End. Casting began in December 2013, with the hiring of Rudd to play Lang. In May 2014, Wright left the project citing creative differences, though he still received screenplay and story credits with Cornish. The following month, Reed was brought in to replace Wright, while McKay was hired to contribute to the script with Rudd. Filming took place between August and December 2014 in San Francisco and Metro Atlanta.
Ant-Man held its world premiere at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, on June 29, 2015, and was released in the United States on July 17, as the final film in Phase Two of the MCU. It grossed more than $519 million worldwide and received positive reviews from critics, who generally welcomed the film's smaller stakes than other MCU films, as well as its cast (particularly Rudd, Peña, Lilly, and Douglas), humor, and visual effects. Two sequels have been released: Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023).
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THE PLOT
In 1989, scientist Hank Pym resigns from S.H.I.E.L.D. after discovering their attempt to replicate his Ant-Man shrinking technology. Believing the technology would be dangerous if replicated, Pym vows to hide it for as long as he lives. In the present day,[a] Pym's estranged daughter, Hope van Dyne, and former protégé, Darren Cross, have forced him out of his company, Pym Technologies. Cross is close to perfecting a shrinking suit of his own, the Yellowjacket, which horrifies Pym.
Upon his release from prison, well-meaning thief Scott Lang moves in with his old cellmate, Luis. Lang visits his daughter Cassie unannounced and is chastised by his former wife Maggie and her police-detective fiancé, Paxton, for not providing child support. Unable to hold down a job because of his criminal record, Lang agrees to join Luis' crew and commit a burglary. Lang breaks into a house and cracks its safe, but only finds what he believes to be an old motorcycle suit, which he takes home. After trying the suit on, Lang accidentally shrinks himself to the size of an insect. Terrified by the experience, he returns the suit to the house but is arrested on the way out. Pym, the homeowner, visits Lang in jail and smuggles the suit into his cell to help him break out.
Pym, who manipulated Lang through an unknowing Luis into stealing the suit as a test, wants Lang to become the new Ant-Man to steal the Yellowjacket from Cross. Having been spying on Cross after discovering his intentions, Hope and Pym train Lang to fight and to control ants. While Hope harbors resentment towards Pym about her mother Janet's death, he reveals that Janet, known as the Wasp, disappeared into a subatomic Quantum Realm while disabling a Soviet nuclear missile in 1987. Pym warns Lang that he could suffer a similar fate if he overrides his suit's regulator. They send him to steal a device from the Avengers' headquarters that will aid their heist, where he briefly fights Sam Wilson.
Cross perfects the Yellowjacket and hosts an unveiling ceremony at Pym Technologies' headquarters. Lang, along with his crew and a swarm of flying ants, infiltrates the building during the event, sabotages the company's servers, and plants explosives. When he attempts to steal the Yellowjacket, he, along with Pym and Hope, is captured by Cross, who intends to sell both the Yellowjacket and Ant-Man suits to Hydra. Lang breaks free and he and Hope dispatch most of the Hydra agents, though one flees with a vial of Cross' particles and Pym is shot. Lang pursues Cross, while the explosives detonate, imploding the building as Pym and Hope escape.
Cross dons the Yellowjacket and attacks Lang. During the fight, Lang is arrested by Paxton and Cross takes Cassie hostage to lure them back. Lang overrides the regulator and shrinks to subatomic size to penetrate Cross' suit and sabotage it to shrink uncontrollably, seemingly killing Cross. Lang disappears into the Quantum Realm but manages to reverse the effects and returns to the macroscopic world. Out of gratitude for Lang's heroism, Paxton covers for Lang to keep him out of prison. Seeing that Lang survived and returned from the Quantum Realm, Pym wonders if his wife is also alive. Later, Lang meets up with Luis, who tells him that Wilson is looking for him.
In a mid-credits scene, Pym shows Hope a new Wasp prototype suit and offers it to her. In a post-credits scene, Steve Rogers and Wilson have Bucky Barnes in their custody. Unable to contact Tony Stark because of "the accords", Wilson mentions that he knows someone who can help.
PRODUCTION & DEVELOPMENT
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CASTING
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The
FILMING
Principal photography ...
VISUAL
EFFECTS (VFX)
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Special
effects
RECEPTION
Ant-Man grossed $180.2 million in North America and $339.1 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $519.3 million. Deadline Hollywood calculated the film's net profit as $103.9 million, accounting for production budgets, marketing, talent participations, and other costs; box office grosses and home media revenues placed it 14th on their list of 2015's "Most Valuable Blockbusters".
Ant-Man made $6.4 million from its Thursday night showings in North America, with 48% of tickets sales for IMAX and other large-format showings, and $23.4 million on its opening day, including Thursday's previews, making it the second-lowest opening day for a Marvel film, only ahead of 2008's The Incredible Hulk ($21.4 million). It fell 18% to earn $19.25 million on Saturday, and for its opening weekend total, earned $57.2 million. It marked the second-lowest debut for Marvel ahead of the $55.4 million debut of The Incredible Hulk in 2008. IMAX contributed $6.1 million to the opening gross, with premium large format screens comprising $6.4 million and Cinemark XD comprising $1.3 million, respectively. Ant-Man continued Marvel's streak of number one opening films, giving the studio its twelfth consecutive win. Disney reported that the film drew the largest share of families (28%) and women (32%) of any Marvel superhero title. It was also the biggest live-action opening ever for Rudd (breaking Knocked Up's record of $30.7 million) and a record opening for Douglas. It continued to be the top film at the box office in its second weekend.
Outside North America, it earned $55.4 million in its opening weekend from 37 countries, debuting in third place at the international box office behind the Chinese film Monster Hunt and Minions as well as an IMAX opening of $9.1 million. The top openings were the UK ($6 million), Mexico ($5.6 million), and Russia ($4.9 million). It had the biggest opening for a first-installment Marvel film in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. The film's opening in South Korea in early September 2015 earned $9.3 million, the highest opening for an international market at the time, before being surpassed by the Chinese opening in mid-October 2015, which earned $42.4 million, with $5.1 million coming from IMAX. The large opening weekend in China helped Ant-Man place first at the international box office for the first time, with the Chinese opening the second largest for an MCU film in the country behind Avengers: Age of Ultron. The film stayed at number one in China for a second week, earning an additional $22 million. As of November 1, 2015, the largest markets are China with $101.3 million, followed by the UK with $25.4 million, and South Korea with $18.9 million.
CRITICS
The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 83%, with an average score of 6.9/10, based on 341 reviews. The website's consensus reads, "Led by a charming performance from Paul Rudd, Ant-Man offers Marvel thrills on an appropriately smaller scale – albeit not as smoothly as its most successful predecessors." On Metacritic, the film has an average score of 64 out of 100, based on 43 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. CinemaScore reported that audiences gave the film an "A" grade on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it 4 out of 5 stars.
Justin Chang of Variety said the film "succeeds well enough as a genial diversion and sometimes a delightful one, predicated on the rarely heeded Hollywood wisdom that less really can be more." Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter remarked, "Although the story dynamics are fundamentally silly and the family stuff, with its parallel father-daughter melodrama, is elemental button-pushing, a good cast led by a winning Paul Rudd puts the nonsense over in reasonably disarming fashion." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Playful in unexpected ways and graced with a genuinely off-center sense of humor, Ant-Man (engagingly directed by Peyton Reed) is light on its feet the way the standard-issue Marvel behemoths never are." Kim Newman of Empire wrote that it "straddles as many genres as the Avengers films have characters but manages to do most of them pretty well. Extremely likable, with a few moments of proper wonder." A. O. Scott of The New York Times said, "This film is a passable piece of drone work from the ever-expanding Marvel-Disney colony."
For some critics, Ant-Man is seen as one of the more exceptional films in the Marvel franchise. Richard Brody of The New Yorker cited the film as "the non-bombastic superhero movie" that strays from the grandiose tone of other films in its genre, stating that the film is "a bracing, giddy delight.... [a neoclassical comedy] more closely related to Alfred Hitchcock's [To Catch a Thief] and to hectically skimpy B-movies than to the other members of the Marvel family." Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com praised how the film "[f]eels handmade, not Marvel factory-approved. [It reminded me] of Zemeckis when Zemeckis was fun." In May 2016, ten months after Ant-Man was released, Seitz admitted that his "affection for it has increased with time" and compared its sweet and melodramatic sensibility to Spider-Man 2.
Conversely, Alonso Duralde of TheWrap said the film "serves up jokes that don't land and thrills that don't thrill." Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times said Ant-Man "is a lightweight, cliché-riddled origins story that veers between inside-joke comedy, ponderous redemption story lines and admittedly nifty CGI sequences that still seem relatively insignificant compared to the high stakes and city-shattering destruction that take place in most of the Avengers movies." Catherine Shoard of The Guardian wrote, "Ant-Man is a cut-and-shut muddle, haunted by [Edgar Wright's] ghost, produced by a high-end hot dog factory, by turns giddying and stupefying." Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal said that it is "a film that will surely be popular, given Marvel's marketing might, but one that's woefully short on coherence and originality." Christopher Orr of The Atlantic said, "It's difficult to shake the sense that the film was assembled hurriedly and somewhat haphazardly. Which, from all available evidence, is exactly what happened."
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