Henry Pym was born in 1962 in a story titled “The Man in the Ant Hill” in which Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers saw a character fooling around with shrinking technology. Lee once stated that the fun of the character and his initial popularity caused him to think about turning him into a super hero, but it’s unclear as to whether Stan Lee would have ever imagined Pym, or Ant-Man, as a super secret agent.
That’s how director Edgar Wright sees him.
He’s still working on a script for a possible adaptation of the comic to fit into the Marvel universe, and he’s revealed that he’d like Ant-Man to be a technologically advanced spy.
“Even something like The Incredible Shrinking Man, which is a fantastic film, is about a guy in trouble. But this is going to be nothing like that. It’s essentially a high-tech spy heist film with somebody with a very particular power.”
Wright’s quote to Vanity Fair and his insistence that the movie will be “cooler than you think” are all the marks of a fan with an uphill battle to prove that a super hero with an army of ants can take down heavy crime bosses. It’s honestly difficult to see, but his evoking the Jack Arnold sci-fi classic might be there to show what the film won’t be, but it’s also a great example of a time where the high concept works really well.
So, if the film ever gets off the ground, we might see Ant-Man shrinking down to ant levels and sneaking into the ears of people in order to steal their ideas while they’re asleep.
It would be different, but it might be the sugar needed for audiences to swallow the pill here.
What do you think?
Related Topics: Comics, Edgar Wright
