As promised, Marvel released a new full trailer for its first post-Age of Ultron movie, Ant-Man, directed by Peyton Reed. And, guys, it… looks like a superhero movie trailer. For the most part, the images are just showing off both the Ant-Man suit, worn by Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang, and his training, both from Evangeline Lilly’s Hope Van Dyne and Michael Douglas’ Professor Hank Pym. He jumps around, shrinks and grows, talks to ants, and has a big fight with the film’s big baddie, Darren Cross a.k.a. Yellowjacket played by Corey Stoll. A few quips aside, it pretty much just felt like your average superhero movie origin story trailer; I was reminded of Raimi’s first Spider-Man and especially the first Iron Man movie.
That is, until the end. We get a quick couple of shots of Yellowjacket about to be run over by a Thomas the Tank Engine set with loud, bombastic trailer music blaring, then a cut to a wide shot of what that actually looks like to the naked eye–just a toy falling over. This is the kind of humor they NEED to be showcasing here. The script began with Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish and ended up being written by Adam McKay and Rudd himself–there is GOING to be sillier humor in it on top of the comic book action, and that’s exactly what needs to happen. If Guardians of the Galaxy proved anything, it’s that a funny comic book movie can still excite and delight people. A we’ve-seen-it-before origin movie largely will not.
All we can do is hope the movie is a lot more of the jokes made at the rather ridiculous premise and less “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility,” because we’ve seen that. A million times.
What do you think of the trailer? Do you agree with me that the humor is where it’s at?