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With tremendous achievements in the visual elements, let alone a charged script, the Ant-man film does a phenomenal job of capturing Stan Lee’s original vision for the superhero he created decades ago. When it came time to write the script for the original comic book, Stan Lee had great difficulty in relaying what he wanted and so getting the artists to capture the size, scale, and vision of an ant sized superhero did not come across on the pages in the beginning. Stan Lee believed in the character but early comic book sales were slim. During the recent edX Smithsonian course “The Rise of Superheroes and Their Impact On Pop Culture,” Stan Lee spoke to Michael Uslan about how his vision of the ant hero had to involve stark visuals of a man, shrunken to ant-size, alongside dramatically larger, to-scale, objects and combatants. He admits it was partially his fault, because the artists just did not know how to do something like that; like many of Stan Lee’s ingenious creations, it had never been done before. Stan Lee insisted on making Ant-man a pivotal member of the Avengers in the comics and eventually the cult fan base built up a great love of the characters in the Ant-man books. The Ant-man movie has it all: innovative action sequences, effects, and cinematography, witty comedy that infuses a bit of a love story, a spot-on cast, and a great overall introduction for the future potential Avenger. Possibly most importantly for Lee, the movie captures the amazing visuals of a world from the point of view of an ant and unfurls unique and thrilling action sequences off of that premise. Honey I Shrunk the Kids was a great flick but this is a bit more action intensive. A great script, originally penned by Edgar Wright of the Cornetto Trilogy genius and Joe Cornish (before Wright left the director’s chair for Peyton Reed) provides smart and slapstick comedy in a brilliant mix throughout the film, making Ant-man very lovable, while still kicking plenty of bad-guy butt and (*SPOILER ALERT: even an Avenger gets whooped). How does the whole ant thing work? A super shrinking potion invented by one of the world’s best scientists, Hank Pym, played to perfection by Michael Douglas, combined with a suit gives Ant-man the ability to shrink to ant size and wield an ant’s extraordinary strength. And Ant-man can even call on an army of programmed ants to assist him! Paul Rudd is Scott Lang, the next generation hero to don the Ant-man suit, and does a surprisingly great job of being a hacker and thief turned superhero, and while retaining his sarcastic wit and his charm, he throws down in some riveting fight scenes. The Ant-man on the silver screen has all of the components to make a sum total of excellence. And Stan Lee is very happy with the result.
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