Ant-Man and Marvel’s Confusing Third Phase

Ant-Man

In just over one month, Ant-Man will be released to the world, and I for one am extremely excited. The trailer looks fantastic: we see an old Hank Pym portrayed by Michael Douglas and Scott Lang by Paul Rudd. They both seem great in the parts from the trailers, but I would like to raise a few points of confusion about this movie, and its relation to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the comics books themselves.

Ant-Man in this movie is Scott Lang. Fine, but we still have good old wife beating Hank Pym, so why wasn’t Hank Ant-Manning about during The Avengers or any other point during phase one or two? Yes, Hank in the movie appears in his 50’s to 60’s but as it says in the trailer: ‘when you’re small, you have superhuman strength’. If that is true, then why didn’t Hank help out in The Avengers? Personally, I can’t think of a reason without linking back to comics, because him Ant-Manning would have linked in very well with that conflict he feels in the comics after developing Ultron.

Secondly, we have already been told Hank Pym was “a founding member of The Avengers”. So why haven’t we seen him? A more important question would be why wasn’t he there helping Tony Stark develop Ultron? Or helping track Loki’s scepter? Or any other moment in which more scientist would have been helpful.

Ant-Man is unfortunately a less than well-known superhero, so it is understandable that Marvel would be hesitant about making a movie based around him, but then again, Marvel made the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. As brilliant as Guardians was, it doesn’t hide that fact that they were even less well known than the aforementioned Ant-Man, not to mention the fact that after doing some reading up on old Guardians comics, the line-up is different and the characters that stay constant, e.g Star-Lord, have traits and personalities so far removed from the original that they are essentially new characters.

Look Marvel, we get it, you don’t want the MCU to be exactly like the main Marvel universe (Earth – 616) but what is the point in going back and retconning Hank Pym’s long-time involvement with Shield and The Avengers? A lot of fans who are actually aware of Hank Pym and his history have been asking for connection to him since the beginning, well since we heard about Age of Ultron. But we’re now AFTER the prime time to do it, the time when it would have made perfect sense to. But no, you’re chucking the already iffy Ant-Man name in during Phase 3 as Scott Lang, but keeping Hank Pym and in doing so, raising so many questions and plot holes – it will just hurt the Ant-Man name or whatever he is calling himself this week. Giant-Man? Wasp? Golia… wait maybe it’s YellowJacket… Oh who cares.

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