Now that Ant-Man has a new director and writer, things finally seem to be moving along for the long-awaited film that will introduce Marvel’s popular, pint-size superhero — and that means the rumor mill has started spinning again, too.
The latest unconfirmed, unofficial, and entirely-speculative-at-this-point report on the film concerns the villains Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) will face and the form his costume — and the powers it gives him — will take when he makes his big-screen debut. Of course, even with all of this being the stuff of rumor right now, it’s probably worth a POTENTIAL SPOILER WARNING, just in case any of these details prove true.
Now that we have that out of the way…
According to JoBlo.com, a recent Disney media event revealed the primary villain of the film to be Darren Cross, a scientist who owns Cross Technological Enterprises. CTE is a powerful scientific research and development company that rivals Stark Industries. The report suggests that Ant-Man and Darren Cross will battle while wearing similar, size-changing suits, though the villain’s suit will be more militaristic and feature a black-and-yellow color scheme with a “tendril” apparatus on the back.
In Marvel Comics canon, Darren Cross was diagnosed with a rare heart condition that prompted him to use an experimental pacemaker on himself. It ended up mutating his body and turning him into a pink, Hulk-like figure who must swap out his current heart for a new one periodically. Assuming the rumor is accurate, it looks like the film will depart from the source material when it comes to this particular character.
Soon after this Ant-Man rumor surfaced online, The Wrap reported that The Bourne Legacy and Non-Stop actor Corey Stoll is expected to play Darren Cross in the film, with Patrick Wilson (Watchmen, The Conjuring) playing Darren’s cousin, William Cross. (In Marvel’s comics continuity, William Cross eventually becomes the villain Crossfire.)
In addition to the Ant-Man villain rumors, the initial report from JoBlo also offered up an (again, unconfirmed) report regarding the suit Rudd’s character, Scott Lang, will steal from scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) en route to becoming the superhero Ant-Man. The film appears to follow that element of the character’s comic-book history fairly close, with Lang stealing the suit in order to pursue a cure for his sick daughter.
“The Ant-Man suit will be much more elaborate than we’ve seen so far with the helmet being able to open and close much like Iron Man and an assortment of red lights all over the suit, again in ‘TRON’ fashion,” reports the site. “The helmet eyes will also glow red when closed. It’s said to be a much more complex and futuristic suit than we’ve seen so far.”
As always, all of this information should be considered speculative at this point, but we only have to wait until Ant-Man hits theaters July 17, 2015, to know all the official details.
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