New Ant-Man Trailer Gives Tiny Glimpse into VFX Potential
The first sneak peek into Marvel Studio's latest cinematic comic resurrection came out this week. However, like the film's diminutive hero himself, the trailer gives us only a small glimpse the film's VFX work. The main vendor for the film is Double Negative along with Luma Pictures, a studio with a diverse portfolio that includes Ironman 3, Oz: The Great and Powerful, True Grit, and No Country for Old Men. Luma is also adept at creature creation from transforming Uma Thurman into the snake-headed Medusa of Percy Jackson & the Olympians to sculpting evil flying Griffins for I, Frankenstein. The film will be released on July 15th.
These creature building talents for both VFX houses will probably be on display for a movie that deals with a superhero of ant-size stature. Unfortunately, the trailer contains few of these types of scenes; however it does depict Ant-Man mounting a wasp and taking flight. There will probably be many more The Incredible Shrinking Man or Honey, I Shrunk the Kids type moments that require modeling and animating giant versions of everyday objects and people.
The trailer mostly informs us about the film's story line with Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) donning the Ant-Man suit developed by Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) in order to save the world. The trailer also shows all of the requisite super hero story elements: convincing of the hero to assume the hero identity, grueling training montage, and finally a look at the plotting bad guy, which in this case is super-villain and snappy dresser, Yellowjacket (Corey Stoll).
Ant-Man looks to be a continuation of the same successful formula that made Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy so popular: a lighthearted, funny film punctuated with heavier moments surrounding family and connections. Rudd's filmography (Anchorman, This is the End) along with his "everyman" persona make him a natural fit for the role. In addition, Rudd also helped pen the screenplay along with SNL veteran, Adam McKay.
What dialogue we get from the trailer suggests that the movie is definitely not taking itself too seriously. However, in box officer terms, this new laid back attitude for superhero movies seems to be exactly what Hollywood is considering a seriously bankable movie. Rudd's humorous delivery of "Huh" to Douglas request he become Ant-Man probably sums up the entire film's approach to dialogue and story line. It should be a fun movie.