A couple of months after Earth’s Mightiest Heroes fought a robot army on a floating Eastern European city in Avengers: Age of Ultron, the Marvel Cinematic Universe scaled back and gave fans Paul Rudd shrinking down to break into an office with his tiny six-legged friends in Ant-Man.

RELATED: Ant-Man: 5 Reasons His MCU Arc Should End (& 5 Possibilities For Future Stories)

Edgar Wright was initially slated to direct the movie, but dropped out due to Marvel’s creative restrictions and was replaced by Peyton Reed, who didn’t bring an ounce of the personality that the director behind Hot Fuzz and Baby Driver would’ve brought to the movie. While Ant-Man is a perfectly fine film, it also has plenty of flaws.

Right: Casting Paul Rudd As Scott Lang

Paul Rudd on the Avengers compound in Ant-Man

When it was first announced that Paul Rudd would be playing a superhero, The 40-Year-Old Virgin star seemed like an odd choice, but Marvel’s casting guru Sarah Finn has never gone wrong.

Rudd proved to be the perfect person to portray the MCU’s incarnation of Scott Lang as a charming goofball, and went on to play an integral role in Avengers: Endgame.

Wrong: Predictable Origin Story

Scott Lang finds the Ant-Man suit

By the time Ant-Man came along at the end of Phase Two, the MCU had given us a bunch of superhero origin stories and fans pretty much knew the score. They all hit the same old story beats and feature the same old stock characters.

Scott Lang is reluctant to be a hero at first, gets trained by an aging mentor, and develops a romance with a love interest. The escalation toward the third-act set piece and its resolution are entirely predictable.

Right: Shrinking Effects

Ant-Man in the bathtub

Proportional human shrinking is a fascinating sci-fi concept that’s only been tackled by a handful of movies, but can be really cinematic and immersive if the effects are done right.

The shrinking effects in Ant-Man — particularly in the “trial by fire” sequence when Scott first tries on the suit — really immerse the audience in what it would be like to be tiny.

Wrong: Sidelining Hope

When Hank Pym decided to sneak into his old corporate headquarters and steal the Yellowjacket technology from his evil rival, it would’ve made a lot of sense for him to give the task to his daughter, Hope Van Dyne, who knows the layout of the building and how to use the shrinking tech.

RELATED: Ant-Man 3: 5 Reasons We Need It (And 5 We Don't)

Okay, Hank didn’t want Hope to suffer the same fate as her mother, who got lost in the Quantum Realm, but it was still pretty disappointing for the movie to sideline Hope and put off her transformation into the Wasp until the mid-credits teaser.

Right: Lighthearted Tone

Thomas the Tank Engine in Ant-Man

There was no way that Marvel would’ve been able to get fans to take Ant-Man as seriously as they take Iron Man or Captain America or Thor, so they didn’t bother. Instead, they gave Ant-Man a lighthearted tone that poked fun at the character’s ridiculousness.

While Guardians of the Galaxy was the first overtly comedic MCU movie, Ant-Man was the first one that could be described as a full-on comedy, and comedy superstar Paul Rudd is right in his element.

Wrong: Undermining Dramatic Moments With Comedy

Scott and Hank in Ant-Man

While Ant-Man’s general tone as a lighthearted comedy did it a lot of favors, its insistence of undercutting every ounce of drama with anticlimactic humor — also known as “bathos” — did it a disservice.

In several scenes in Ant-Man, Michael Douglas beautifully delivers a heartfelt monologue about Hank Pym’s failings as a father, then Paul Rudd totally undermines the performance with a goofy wisecrack.

Right: Luis’ Storytelling

Whenever Luis tells a story, he goes into a ridiculous amount of detail as the movie cuts through a montage of the people he’s talking about, all relaying his words.

Michael Peña delivered all these monologues hilariously and Luis’ storytelling has since become one of the most beloved running gags in the MCU.

Wrong: One-Dimensional Villain

Darren Cross looking menacing in Ant-Man

When it comes to villains, the MCU has a lot more Malekiths than Killmongers. That is to say, the franchise has a lot more villains that are flat and one-dimensional and instantly forgettable than sympathetic figures whose motivations are understandable and who serve as a perfect counterpoint to the hero.

RELATED: Ant-Man 3: 10 Ways It Could Be The Ragnarok Of The Ant-Man Franchise

Ant-Man’s Darren Cross is as one-note and generic as they come. His characterization is razor-thin. He’s yet another unscrupulous businessman type; he’s evil, just ‘cause. Corey Stoll is a great actor, but Cross isn’t a great role.

Right: Unconventional Hero

Not every superhero movie opens with the hero in prison. Although his superhero origin story follows a pretty predictable arc, Scott Lang himself is an unconventional hero.

Scott is also one of the only superheroes who’s a single parent. Most superheroes are childless bachelors, and the ones with kids usually belong to a nuclear family unit. Scott being a single father was great for representation of seldom-seen types of family.

Wrong: Losing Edgar Wright

Scott learns to jump through a keyhole in the outfit in Ant-Man

It’s pretty widely known that Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright was initially attached to direct Ant-Man, but left the project when Marvel Studios placed too many restrictions on him with regards to fitting the movie into the larger franchise.

Wright’s replacement, Peyton Reed, did a fine job as a director-for-hire, bringing Marvel’s vision to the screen while playing it relatively safe. But if Wright’s filmography is anything to go by, he could’ve set a new benchmark for the MCU.

NEXT: The Avengers: 5 Things It Got Right (& 5 It Got Wrong)