‘Ant-Man’ Trailer: Superheroes Don’t Get Bigger Than This
Ant-Man may provide Marvel it's biggest challenge yet. Yes, even bigger than that movie that starred a talking tree and a talking raccoon. But, just as they turned the little-known Guardians of the Galaxy into one of the biggest movies of the year, Marvel may be able to do the same with Ant-Man. The new Ant-Man trailer has a balance of action and humor that might remind you of some friends from another part of the Galaxy.
Marvel knows how ridiculous an Ant-Man movie is, and they want you to know that. In the last trailer, Paul Rudd's Scott Lang asked if it was too late to change the name. In this trailer he says, “I'm Ant-Man! ...I know, it wasn't my idea.” And that's part of the appeal of Ant-Man. It's hard to take a movie where a guy talks to ants seriously, so why take it seriously? We've heard all along that the script, rewritten by Rudd and Anchorman director Adam McKay, would be heavy on the comedy, and we do get some of that here.
But, we also get lots of action, including a fight sequence that looks almost directly adapted from some of the work Edgar Wright was doing on the film. The one sequence where Ant-Man runs up the barrel of a gun and knocks out a pair of armed guards is very similar to the test footage Wright previewed at Comic-Con. And one of the great sequences in this trailer is a battle between Ant-Man and Yellowjacket that takes place across a speeding train, which when you zoom out to regular size is a Thomas the Tank Engine toy set in a little girl's bedroom.
Just recently, we heard about how Ant-Man would connect to Avengers 2 and Captain America: Civil War, and the answer is not really. It seems like there will be some thematic connective tissue between the films — “It picks up the thread of Age of Ultron in terms of heroes – major heroes, Avengers – coming from unexpected places,” said Kevin Feige this weekend — but don’t expect any major crossover.
In addition to Rudd, ‘Ant-Man’ also stars Michael Douglas as Hank Pym, Corey Stoll as Yellowjacket, Evangeline Lilly as Hope Van Dyne/Wasp, Michael Peña, and Judy Greer.
Ant-Man opens in theaters on July 17.