Ant-Man
Scott Edward Harris Lang
Movie · Phase 2
Ant-Man
2015 · 117 min
Fresh out of San Quentin for corporate whistle-blowing that the film calls burglary, Scott Lang cannot hold a Baskin-Robbins job or see his daughter. Hank Pym recruits him for a heist because Pym's…
The Infinity SagaDisney+83%Released
The story
Fresh out of San Quentin for corporate whistle-blowing that the film calls burglary, Scott Lang cannot hold a Baskin-Robbins job or see his daughter. Hank Pym recruits him for a heist because Pym's protégé Darren Cross has reverse-engineered the shrinking formula and intends to sell it as a weapon.
It is the smallest-stakes MCU film by design — a caper about a father trying to be worth visiting, with a finale fought on a Thomas the Tank Engine set. The quantum-realm detour Scott takes to defeat Cross is also the single most consequential thing in Phase 2, though nobody knew it for four years.
Key facts
- Release date
- 17 Jul 2015
- Status
- Released
- Phase
- Phase 2
- Saga
- The Infinity Saga
- Runtime
- 117 min
- Certificate
- PG-13
- Director
- Peyton Reed
- Writers
- Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam McKay, Paul Rudd
- Streaming
- Disney+
- Timeline placement
- 2015 — shortly after the Battle of Sokovia, with a 1989 prologue
Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Paul Rudd | Scott Lang / Ant-Man |
| Michael Douglas | Hank Pym |
| Evangeline Lilly | Hope van Dyne |
| Corey Stoll | Darren Cross / Yellowjacket |
| Michael Peña | Luis |
| Bobby Cannavale | Jim Paxton |
Characters
Easter eggs
- The 1989 prologue puts a de-aged Hank Pym in a room with Howard Stark, Peggy Carter and Mitchell Carson at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Triskelion.
- Scott fights Sam Wilson at the New Avengers facility, and the mid-credits scene has Cap and Falcon deciding to call him for Civil War.
- Stan Lee cameos as a bartender inside one of Luis' rambling second-hand stories.
- Garrett Morris cameos as a startled taxi driver — he played Ant-Man in a 1979 Saturday Night Live sketch, the character's first live-action appearance.
- The Wasp prototype suit revealed to Hope in the post-credits scene sets up the sequel three years early.
- Luis' 'I know a guy' line about a web-slinger in the mid-credits scene is the MCU's first oblique nod to Spider-Man.
- Hank's original 1960s Ant-Man helmet appears in a display case, matching Jack Kirby's design from Tales to Astonish.
- The Quantum Realm sequence explicitly warns that going subatomic means falling outside time, which is the mechanism Endgame later uses.
Trivia
- Edgar Wright developed the film for roughly eight years and departed weeks before principal photography over creative differences; he retains story and screenplay credit with Joe Cornish.
- Peyton Reed took over on short notice, with Adam McKay and Paul Rudd rewriting the script during pre-production.
- Michael Douglas was digitally de-aged for the prologue in one of the MCU's earliest large-scale de-aging jobs.
- The shrinking sequences used purpose-built macro photography rigs and oversized miniature sets rather than pure CG, a technique borrowed from nature documentary work.
- Corey Stoll's Yellowjacket suit was entirely digital; he performed in a motion-capture rig.
- Paul Rudd trained and dieted for roughly a year, and has said the strictness of the regime was harder than the stunt work.
- Michael Peña's Luis monologues were shot multiple ways and the lip-synced flashback device was developed in the edit.
Box office
- Budget
- $130 million
- Worldwide
- $519.3 million
- Domestic
- $180.2 million
Reviews
Critics
83%
Led by a charming performance from Paul Rudd, Ant-Man offers a much-needed change of pace from Marvel's bigger, brasher blockbusters.
The MarvelGossips verdict
A palate cleanser that turned out to be load-bearing. Rudd and Peña are effortless, the heist structure gives it a shape most MCU films lack, and Darren Cross is a copy-paste evil-mirror villain. Its real legacy is a throwaway line about time not working the same way down there.
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Frequently asked
Why did Edgar Wright leave Ant-Man?
Wright and Marvel parted ways in May 2014 over what both sides called differences in vision, weeks before shooting. He had co-written the script with Joe Cornish and developed the project since 2006, and still holds story credit.
How does Ant-Man set up Avengers: Endgame?
Janet van Dyne warns Hank that the Quantum Realm sits outside linear time, and Scott survives going subatomic. Endgame turns that into the time-heist mechanism that undoes the Snap.
Is Hope van Dyne the Wasp in this film?
No. She trains Scott and is denied the suit by her father, and only receives the prototype in the post-credits scene. She debuts as the Wasp in the 2018 sequel.
Who is the first live-action Ant-Man?
Garrett Morris, who played the character in a 1979 Saturday Night Live sketch about a superhero nobody respects. Marvel cast him in a cameo here as an in-joke.