Ant-Man

Marked essential, largely because Scott Lang becomes load-bearing in Endgame, and it is one of the most purely enjoyable films here. It needs almost nothing before it.

The scale is the point in both senses. After an alien invasion and a flying city, this is a heist film about a burglar trying to see his daughter, with a crew of three, a job in a suburban house, and a climax on a toy train set. The joke that the final battle is devastating to everybody involved and invisible from four feet away is the best thing the franchise has done with its own excess.

Its production history is the most public falling-out Marvel has had. Edgar Wright developed it for eight years and left weeks before shooting over creative differences, and Peyton Reed took over. Traces of the original remain, particularly in the comic set pieces and the shrinking gags, inside a film that is otherwise a conventional origin.

Paul Rudd is the reason it holds. Michael Douglas gives the exposition weight, Michael Peña's story-within-a-story device is the funniest running gag in Phase Two, and Corey Stoll's villain is a man in a yellow suit. The quantum realm sequence at the end is thrown away here and becomes the hinge of Phase Four.