Movies

10 Years Ago, Marvel Teased A Very Different Kind of Ant-Man Movie (Watch)

Ten years ago, Marvel’s Ant-Man began its marketing campaign with a  very different kind of teaser trailer. 

Scott Lang in the Ant-Man suit (2015)

Today, an entire trio of solo Ant-Man movies exist on people’s Blu-Ray shelves. Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang had a prominent role in Avengers: Endgame, which was temporarily the highest-grossing movie of all time. 2023’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has undeniably dented the luster of Marvel’s tiniest superhero; however, the original Ant-Man movie has still garnered far more notoriety than anyone could’ve imagined when it launched in July of 2015.

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Long before all that, though, Ant-Man was in production turmoil. The capper to Phase Two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe controversially lost original director Edgar Wright just two months before it was supposed to start shouting. After that, a cloak of uncertainty lingered over Ant-Man, even when director Peyton Reed took over the helm. Then, a decade ago (on January 6, 2015), the world got its first official look at Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man teaser trailer. A decade later, this teaser is an odd anomaly in Marvel marketing, as it presents a kind of tone of seriousness that was never part of the Ant-Man franchise. Looking at it now, it’s almost like seeing the trailer for a completely different version of the movie!

WATCH: Ant-Man 1st Look Teaser Trailer

The Ant-Man teaser is a mournful affair, which follows a very precise structure Marvel Studios would employ on in the late 2010s (namely with Black Panther and Captain Marvel): An older supporting character speaks in a cryptic but mythic voice-over explaining the significance of a Marvel superhero in tune with somber music and “deep” character interaction moments – ending in a brief tease of the titular hero in action. In the case of Ant-Man, Michael Douglas’ Hank Pym solemnly intones to Scott Lang and viewers how “second chances don’t come around that often,” bringing gravitas that one hopes for from Douglas, but is not at all representative of what Reed would do in the final film or its sequels. Even Scott Lang’s humorous “huh!” upon hearing the name “Ant-Man” or his later inquiry “Is it too late to change the name?” don’t properly herald the drastic tonal shift we’d get between the teaser and final film.

[Related: The Eight Worst MCU Post-Credit Scenes]

Even by the standards of teaser trailers, the Ant-Man teaser is light on action or VFX shots. All the images of Scott in shrunken form interacting with bugs hail from test footage shown at San Diego Comic-Con 2014, rather than being new footage for the trailer. The teaser could only be footage from a motion picture that had concluded shooting only a few weeks prior: Simple shots of characters doing mundane scene work like sitting or walking. Ant-Man’s post-production had only begun as the teaser dropped and, unfortunately, it shows in the final product.

Subsequent MCU teasers for movies like Doctor Strange or Black Panther would ensure that at least a taste of the larger spectacle was ready to go for the teaser. Ant-Man, by contrast, eschewed silliness or spectacle in favor of gravitas, perhaps as a way to get over the film’s innately silly title.

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This approach did not score very well with audiences. Most online responses to the Ant-Man teaser were more confused than anything else. Why was a Paul Rudd Ant-Man movie from the director of Down With Love starting its marketing campaign on such a dour note? Subsequent trailers and ads would increasingly focus more on the digital ants and silly jokes. By the time the now beloved “ants!” promo involving Rudd, Douglas, and lots of knee-slapping arrived, the Ant-Man marketing campaign had truly left the days of this gloomy teaser in the dust.

In his time as a big-screen attraction, Ant-Man has worked well when he’s brought to life with creative teams unashamed of just leaning into his goofiness. This Ant-Man teaser, like Quantumania, reeked of panic from studio executives scrambling to make Ant-Man “accessible.” Given this bizarre teaser and all the hostile advanced buzz, it’s a miracle Ant-Man became a well-reviewed box office hit, earning over $500 million at the worldwide box office (on a budget of more than $130 million).

Ten years later, this first Ant-Man teaser makes one appreciate the zippier virtues of the final film – as well as smarter MCU teaser trailer debuts, in general. Ironically, this Ant-Man teaser serves as an ominous foreshadowing of all the severe tonal problems that would come to plague Ant-Man: Quantumania, years later. 

Ant-Man is now streaming on Disney+.