Ant-Man Review: 8 Ways It's Better Than Avengers: Age Of Ultron

7. Every Character Gets Development

For a franchise that bills itself on having a massive shared world populated by all manner of colourful heroes, recent Marvel films have been a bit iffy about actual character development. They've still featured notable arcs, but it's been rather superficial to ensure that the characters don't change too much from their recognisable brand. Age Of Ultron took this a step further, silently altering previous resolutions (Thor suddenly doesn't care about being with Jane Foster and is planning to return to Asgard) and in some cases repeating themes from previous films (Tony Stark vows to leave Iron Man behind at the end, just like in Iron Man 3). This was probably the film's biggest problem - for all the talk of things never being the same again, the status quo remained mostly unaltered; the ending even brought back S.H.I.E.L.D. in all but name. Maybe it's helped by featuring new characters, but everything in Ant-Man works opposite to this. The arcs of Scott Lang, Hank Pym, Hope Van Dyne and even the secondary characters are clearly defined and thematically linked through their shared addressing of the past, making for a film that, for all its alleged disconnect from the wider universe, feels incredibly progressive.