Comic fans know how the Avengers began: with the Hulk on a rampage, the greatest heroes of the day – alerted by ham radio operator Rick Jones! – assembled to stop him, discovering along the way that the evil Norse god Loki was behind it all. Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man and the Wasp formed that initial core group, and a couple of issues later they were joined by the newly thawed out World War II legend, Captain America. That team stayed intact for a year or so, and they’ve since been seen as the true line-up of the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
And they may all be coming together in the movie version of The Avengers – including Ant-Man. That’s a character I didn’t expect to see in the team-up film, mainly because his solo movie hasn’t yet been scheduled on Marvel’s list of release dates. I had assumed that the set-up would be solo film first, followed by the team-up extravaganza, but Jon Favreau says it ain’t so. Talking to USA Today he says “the [characters] Marvel is talking about now are Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man and Iron Man. I would love to see that.”
Ant-Man’s sort of a weird fit in a cinematic superhero team, but that’s not my main concern – my main concern is that Marvel’s full-speed ahead efforts to get The Avengers on screen may interfere with Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish’s plans for the character. With Edgar going off to do Scott Pilgrim this fall (fuck yes), he wouldn’t be able to get around to Ant-Man until some time in mid to late 2009 – and that’s if he ramps up his current fairly laid back period between films. I want Edgar and Joe’s take on Ant-Man more than any random screenwriters and director, so I hope that Marvel’s rush to cinemas won’t end up Favreauing Edgar.