Now that Marvel has unleashed Avengers: Age of Ultron unto the world and continues its worldwide box-office domination, the studio behind Earth’s Mightiest Heroes can focus on their next big (ahem, small) film: Ant-Man. A new poster for the size-shrinking hero has arrived, while a revealing Tweet sent directly from Marvel Studios also suggests that Paul Rudd's future as a member of the Avengers team is inevitable (and unavoidable). More on that in a second. First, the new Ant-Man poster!
More interesting than this poster, however, is Marvel’s tweet, which references the success of Avengers and calls Ant-Man "the latest member of the team."
In addition, the official story synopsis for the film is quick to point out that Ant-Man is a "founding member of The Avengers" in the comics. Do you see where I’m going…
[Warning: We’ll be discussing the ending of Avengers: Age of Ultron below, so proceed at your own risk.]
The final scene of Age of Ultron saw the current line-up of heroes disbanded, though perhaps temporarily, and a new crop of recruits stepping in to take their place. With Captain America and Black Widow leading Scarlet Witch, War Machine, Falcon and The Vision, could Ant-Man also become the next recruit? Let’s be real, these movies are all leading up to the big Avengers: Infinity War, which is all but certain to include Lang fighting alongside folks like Doctor Strange, Black Panther and Captain Marvel. Though, this wording gives more strength to the reports that Ant-Man will be appearing in Captain America: Civil War, so he could be joining the team sooner than we thought.
Back to the poster for a second. Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang is front and center in the new Ant-Man one sheet, and he’s haunted by the ghost of his criminal past, as seen in the floating head to his left. In fact, he’s haunted by a lot of floating heads, something that Marvel just loves to include in their posters. (See posters for Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.) To Ant-Man’s right is Michael Douglas’ Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man and the inventor of the Ant-Man suit and the size-shrinking Pym Particles. Also shown are Evangline Lilly as Hope van Dyne, Corey Stoll as Darren Cross/Yellowjacket, Bobby Cannavale as a character named Paxton, and Michael Pena as Luis.
The conflicts of Ant-Man also provide a nice lead-in to the events of Civil War. In this film, coming out July 17, Cross discovers that Pym has been keeping his Ant-Man technology under wraps, which prompts him to steal it for himself. We hear Pym in the trailer fearing the implications of giving everyone God-like powers. Will the events of this film spill into Civil War? Knowing Marvel, that's probably a yeah.
