Thoughts I Had... while looking at sudden Ant-Man stuff
Wednesday, August 20, 2014 at 8:00PM Ant-Man (2015) has only been filming for a few days and already we have a first image, a complete cast list, cute tweeting between cast & director, and so on. It's the new age of filmmaking in which you can be totally sick of a project before it ever nears post-production. I kid, sort of. I'm not sick of Ant-Man yet but I'd rather be watching it than wondering about it.
Nevertheless let's do what we do. My thoughts as they come to me without censorship...
• If TFE were like most movie blogs I would immediately start theorizing what the license plate "D69W01Y" could possibly mean. Is it a secret message? the code name of some scientific invention? a codebreaker to unlock the titles of all those announced Marvel movies in the pipeline?
• But TFE is not like most movie blogs and we'd rather live in an imaginary world where people got more excited about films that exist already. Or intense upcoming dramas about Women Who Lie To Themselves™. Online film culture seems to be solely reserved for wondering about the minutae of new superhero movies.
• minutae. Hee! Get it? Ant-Man. Because he shrinks. (I'll be here all week.)
• What if Ant-Man crosses the bridge and meets Ape-Men? That's where they live!
• Everyone I know loves San Francisco except for me. Maybe I should give it another try?
• What's in the bag? I hope it's the Wasp all shrunken already. I'm so starved for female superheroes
• True Story: when I first saw this image I thought that was an eyebrow piercing on Paul Rudd and I was like "wow, that's edgy for Hank Pym." But then I blew the image up to investigate. My ulterior motive was I lurve Paul Rudd's nose -- like probably more than one should love other people's noses -- so I just wanted to see his face better. MmmmPaulRuddy
• This image is so nondescript it could really be from any movie. And I picture it's a gritty crime drama about tough cops. Like Copland II or The San Francisco French Connection. But I can't really picture Paul Rudd as a tough cop under duress but then I can't really picture him as a brilliant scientist either so...
• This just in: I do not follow superhero movie news closely enough because I just looked it up and he's not playing a brilliant scientist -- that'll be Michael Douglas as Hank Pym, who in the comics was the original Ant-Man -- but a con man named Scott Lang who was the second Ant-Man. All my confusion about Ant-Man chronologies and identities surely stems from the fact that I didn't care about him and was all about The Wasp (and the long forgotten team The Micronauts) when it came to tiny heroes.
Here is an image of Peyton Reed directing Paul Rudd. My absolute favorite thing about directors is the frames they are always making with their hands. I wonder if they also do it at home when describing their day at work or bossing their kids around. I hope Ant-Man makes maximum use of Peyton's gift with exuberance, stylization and the funny (think Bring It On & Down With Love).
Over at Coming Soon you can watch a ton of 6 second vine footage of (wait for it) Paul Rudd walking down the street or waiting to walk down the street.
Reader Comments (10)
Ant-Man: Two things to share.
1. Evangeline Lilly is going to play Hope, with conflicting reports on her last name being Pym or Van Dyne. Now, if they're going to have the character share the moral compass of the comic version with, at the very least, that first name? She just might be Ant-Man 2's "villain."
2. I posted guesses on the cast list, and no one really "bit" as to likelihood, so here are those guesses again:
Michael Pena: Tarantula/Black Tarantula (Yeah, two very similar characters with very similar code-names who both happen to be appropriate for him. Yeeeeeah. Still, these are the likely bets.)
Abby Ryder Fortson: Cassie Lang (becomes a superhero in her own right so, let's hope she's not just a generic "cute kid.")
John Slattery: Howard Stark (This one is all but assured and would place Ant-Man's flashbacks as, roughly, in the 80s.)
Judy Greer: Janet. (I was honestly hoping they could use M.E. Winstead and Aaron Paul for the parts of young Pym and Janet (they've worked together before, so likely have at least some chemistry, and Paul would almost certainly be able to handle playing a young Pym/possibly match being a young Michael Douglas) and use comic book style super science for de-aging coolness (maybe with Gena Rowlands or someone like that as old Janet), but once they all but confirmed that she's dead, that hope shrank, and this casting clinches it.)
Wood Harris: Bill Foster
T.I.: Tom Foster
Bobby Canavale: ? (Probably the one holding Cassie Lang hostage. Single film role.)
David Dastmalchian: Richard Fisk (It's an easy way to foster interconnection with the Marvel Netflix stuff, and you can imagine him flitting between scenes with little to nothing in the way of lines and we'll see him report his observed findings to daddy in the Netflix Daredevil show.)
Gregg Turkington: Young Hank Pym (We're not going to be seeing a young Hank Pym in any major capacity if him or Dastmalchian are Young Hank. Shame, because we almost definitely NEED young Pym in a major capacity if a future director wants to helm, say, an Ant-Man's Big Christmas adaptation.)
You're not alone. Noses can be sexy: David Duchovny.
Yawn. That is all.
I was just a couple of hours ago considering writing an entire post about how infatuated with Matthias Schoenaerts' nose I am, Nat, so united we stand. (Or sniff, as it were.)
Give us another try.
Love,
San Francisco
Regarding "intense upcoming dramas about Women Who Lie To Themselves™" (LOL): I have just seen Clouds of Sils Maria, utterly fascinating and great performances!
Paul Rudd's nose. YES.
When I saw that picture of him in the hoodie, my first thought was "Is that Russell Crowe?"
This photo makes me think of Ryan Gosling in Blue Valentine.
How can you not love SF?
Are u trying to lose your core audience???
:-( <~~~~~ all your CA readers.