Heroes and the Creation of Myth: Ant-Man

Superheroes occupy a nearly-unique position in the history of human character creation. They are creatures of myth, but at the same time people with the concerns of human beings, even when they are themselves alien. This puts them in a position to not only be the subjects of myth, but to interact with and in some cases control the creation of the mythology which surrounds them.

In this series I set out to analyze the different ways heroes participate in the creation of their own mythology. I've decided to begin with the largest single continuity ever attempted in film, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I was going to watch or rewatch the eighteen existing MCU films in order to look at them specifically from this perspective in the time leading up to the release of The Avengers: Infinity War. I totally didn't get there in time, but I'm going to finish anyway. Today I'm looking at the last film of Phase 2 of the MCU, the somewhat-marginal Ant-Man.

While Scott Lang is the titular superhero in this movie, the central myth is really that of his mentor and former user of the Ant-Man suit, Hank Pym. Scott's narrative is much more human than superhuman: he's just an ex-con who wants to be able to spend time with his daughter. In a mid-movie sequence when he encounters and fights Falcon of the Avengers, Scott is largely self-effacing and apologetic, characteristics not common among superheroes, especially in this universe.

Hank, on the other hand, is very much a peer of Tony Stark. He's wealthy, innovative, and completely convinced that he knows the right way to do everything. He invented the Ant-Man suit, but he also hid it from the world for years because he believed it was too powerful. He protected the world as Ant-Man for years, but then passed off the legend as a fiction created as a marketing ploy. He failed to anticipate that his former lab assistant would eventually duplicate his work, but when he found out he came up with a convoluted plan he wouldn't allow anyone else to criticize. He's a quieter, more private megalomaniac than Tony Stark, but one nevertheless.

Hank has learned how to manipulate ants using the power of his mind. His plan to manipulate Scott is only less technical, not less forceful. Nor does he have any qualms about using his own daughter, Hope, against her boss, his former assistant Darren Cross. He wants to keep her out of the Ant-Man suit to protect her, but is willing to let her play the double agent without any protective superpowers.

What caused this obsession? Midway through the movie we learn that Hank's wife, Janet, was the superhero The Wasp, sharing in Hank's shrinking powers. The Wasp shrank herself entirely out of the observable universe in order to stop a nuclear missile, and Hank has never been the same.

While this myth is set up nicely, it doesn't really get a chance to go anywhere. The rest of the movie is focused on Scott's warming relationship with Hope, training him to control the ants, and developing the eventual heist with the help of his criminal friends. Hank has to be there at the end, to confront Cross and be wounded in the melee, but his role as mastermind is never challenged, never threatened. The dangers Hope faces on his account don't seem to be meaningful to him until the mid-credits scene where he offers her a prototype Wasp suit.

We're clearly supposed to buy into this last scene as Hank having had a change of heart about giving Hope super-abilities and no longer being afraid that she will share her mother's fate, but this isn't developed anywhere and it doesn't really work. The MCU post-credit scenes work best when they feel like authentic character interactions, and worst when they feel like artificial teasers for the next movie, and this is one of the latter. It's one of the things that makes Ant-Man a mildly-entertaining heist movie rather than a strong work of modern mythology like some of the films with which it shares a continuity.

Previous entries in this series:
Part 1: Iron Man (2008)
Part 2: The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Part 3: Iron Man 2 (2010)
Part 4: Thor (2011)
Part 5: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Part 6: The Avengers (2012)
Part 7: Iron Man 3 (2013)
Part 8: Thor: The Dark World (2013)
Part 9: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Part 10: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Part 11: The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

_{All images in this post are from Ant-Man, copyright 2015 Marvel, used in this post under Fair Use: Criticism. Provided courtesy of Movie-Screencaps.com}