REVIEW: Ant-Man Blu-Ray & Special Features

If you're reading this, you probably have a backlog of superhero stuff to watch. Even if you're not watching anything animated, there's Gotham, Supergirl, Flash, and Arrow for DC, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, Jessica Jones, and Daredevil for Marvel. Heroes will be done soon. Dawn of Justice isn't far away. So why Ant-Man?

Ant-Man has something the previous properties aren't. It's a shrinking movie, a heist pic, and a comedy, seen through the macro-lens of superheroics.

And none of the previous shows can match the sheer enthusiasm director Peyton Reed has for Ant-Man. It's a technical showpiece, a great use of Paul Rudd and Michael Pena, and it "captures the human fascination with shrinking" (Reed's words).

The cast's enthusiasm about the film seeps into the bonus features. The making-of featurettes are kinetic, exhaustively explaining the style of the piece, the how-to of the stunts, and methods used to show a view of our world from the size of a quarter. (Hint: the use of the 1.85:1 aspect ratio meant a more vertical space, essential for showing things as small.)

Since this is a DVD review, it might be best to list the positive and negative as bullet points. (If you thought after reading the last sentence "More like bullet ant points!", you should buy the thing immediately.) Marvel's Ant-Man comes out Tuesday December 8th on DVD, and is already available on digital.

Reasons you ought to buy Ant-Man:

• You missed it in theaters, having seen Amy Schumer's Trainwreck or the Terminator trainwreck.
• You are curious about how they did the stunts
• You want to see more of the comedic stylings of Greg Turkington and Michael Pena
• You're a Hank Pym fanatic and want to see the extended opening sequence
• You want to see Scott Lang mess around with his powers, cheating in casinos, sneaking into the 2001 Philadelphia cheerleaders' locker room… there's an hour's worth of deleted scenes, shot at a big picture budget but removed for tone or pacing.
• You're a cinephile and want to know everything you can about advances in macro camerawork.
• You don't want to watch Frozen again with your family, but secretly love composer Christopher Beck.
• You liked it but lack a photographic memory, and want to see Ant-Man in the future.
• You want to catch one of the 30,000 references that appeared in the film.

Maybe not if:

• You're Marveled out; this is still a big-ticket action movie with bright costumes, tragic backstories and three act structure.
• You are watching absolutely everything else on the air, and are watching this in the frantic 30 seconds of a "Last Time On"
• You'll catch it on TV sometime, eventually
• You are afraid of insects (this movie contains a lot of them and they're very large! This is not a problem with Spider-Man or Black Widow.)
• You didn't like Anchorman 2 (the Pym laboratories is the exact same building as that building's news headquarters).
• You are Brandon Routh, and are still regrowing the "HEY, BIG MAN" pattern Paul Rudd burned into your lawn.

So go buy Ant-Man, today! Let us know what you think ComicBook.com readers!