Marvel Wants to Remind You That Ant-Man Is a Marvel Movie

Marvel Studios

Consider this for a moment: It’s been a while since Marvel has used a stand-alone movie to introduce a new hero. If we set aside Guardians of the Galaxy for a moment, which was Marvel not just introducing a new hero but an entire team plus an entire galactic presence, when’s the last time they had a solo hero in their own movie? 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger.

So Ant-Man brings them back to a place where Marvel has thrived in the past, the building of a new world full of new characters and using subtle detail to tie it into their larger plan. To date, no other Marvel movie has made any significant mention of Hank Pym, Scott Lang or the Ant-Man technology. It should be fun to see how Peyton Reed’s film stands on its own before these characters are integrated into the larger Avengers story.

Of course, Marvel’s other problem is that they need to keep audiences connected to each individual property, not just for financial reasons. There’s a good chance that Ant-Man will have ramifications to the Marvel Cinematic Universe that will be important in future Avengers films, so they need to remind everyone that this is a piece of the puzzle. Which brings us to this week’s marketing barrage from Team Marvel. This includes three new posters that show Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang, in his Ant-Man suit and shrunk down, hanging out with some of the MCU’s most iconic weapons. It’s a nice play on the scrappy nature of Ant-Man as a character:

There is also a new TV spot in which Lang suggests that The Avengers should be called in to assist Ant-Man in his situation. Perhaps it’s not as silly as the clip suggests:

Ant-Man drops into theaters on July 17. And even though we’ve just been overwhelmed with Avengers: Age of Ultron, it will be nice to see another Marvel movie on the big screen, especially if it’s the simpler, more focused Marvel that we’ve enjoyed since 2008’s Iron Man.

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