Within the grand scheme of things going on in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Ant-Man arguably feels like it has had the odds against it for a long time. It’s been in development since 2006, stars a superhero with a weird name and weird powers, and has the stigma left by a director leaving at the last moment. You’d think all of this might hurt the morale of those involved with the making of the project, but the reality is that director Peyton Reed actually sees it as a rare and important opportunity.
Last year I joined a small group of other film journalists to visit the set of Ant-Man while it was still in production, and it was while talking to the man at the helm of the project that he described his feelings on the project’s perceived "underdog" status. He began by addressing the basic weirdness that the premise of the movie suggests, and noted that a big motivation for working through the project is convincing the naysayers that Ant-Man is a hero deserving of his own blockbuster film. Explained the filmmaker,
I really like the idea that anybody walking into the movie theater lobby could see a poster for Ant-Man where it’s going to be Paul riding an ant or whatever, and think, ‘Well, that looks ridiculous. How is Ant-Man going to be cool?’ This movie is answering in a very definitive way how it can be cool.
Reed freely admitted that part of the underdog feeling comes from the fact that he came to helm the project as late as he did, replacing Edgar Wright a few months before Ant-Man was supposed to go into production, but it puts him in a position that he actually claims to "love." Clearly liking the idea of working against expectation, Reed said,
As a filmmaker, you maybe tend to only get one chance to be an underdog, like maybe your first movie - and it either does well or it doesn’t, and then you don’t have that position anymore.
Embracing the different expectations for Ant-Man has interestingly also allowed Peyton Reed to make the movie he wants to make, especially where the titular character’s fantastic powers are concerned. It turns out that the director really likes playing with the hero’s ability to grow and shrink, but is even more enamored with the stranger part of his skill set, telling us,
The controlling of the ants is the weirder power, and the one I’m more into in a weird way, because you have this sort of freedom to create these situations with this army of ants and to see how something so small can be mobilized.
The bonus that comes with lowered expectations is the ability to surprise, and Ant-Man is ready and primed to do just that. We’ll just have to wait and see if it delivers when it hits theaters on July 17th.
