First of all, Kevin Feige's words and talking points show his extreme bias and prejudice against the characters of Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne. For the president of Marvel Studios so show so much disrespect for two of the founding members of the Avengers is just shameful, and his comments are invalid and without merit. Feige is a businessman and a studio executive. He doesn't know anything about writing or story structure. And his past association as Avi Arad's assistant shows that he has Arad's mentality when it comes to producing, which nearly buried Fox's X-Men franchise before DOFP saved it, and also doomed Sony's Spider-Man franchise. If Edgar Wright's script was the only reason that Feige agreed to do the Ant-Man film, then why did Feige later admit that it "just wasn't working?" Why isn't Edgar still directing the film? Why did he leave and get replaced by Peyton Reed? If it was that incompatible with the MCU that it forced Wright off the film, then it obviously wasn't nearly as good as advertised and shouldn't have been used in the first place.



Second, no one thought that Iron Man would succeed, given that audiences had never heard of the character, and Robert Downey Jr. was more well known for his substance abuse problems at the time and was not considered a box-office draw. Captain America had never been adapted to the screen successfully, and the last attempt was an 80's straight-to-video dud that was universally panned. The character was also seen as an outdated, jingoistic hero that was no longer relevant. Ang Lee's Hulk failed miserably, so there was no reason to think that another one would work. And Thor was another character that movie audiences had never heard of, so there was really no reason to think that any of these films had anything on Ant-Man at all. And there's no reason why an Ant-Man film with Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne couldn't be just as successful as the other MCU films, and there's definitely no reason why it wouldn't do as good or better than a Scott Lang Ant-Man film. Especially considering that Hank's abilities as Ant-Man and Giant-Man, as well as Janet's abilities as The Wasp, make them both far more cinematically appealing than Scott "I-can't-do-anything-but-shrink" Lang. As for why The Incredible Hulk underperformed, that has more to do with the nature of the character itself. Whedon stated that he's "not a superhero, he's a werewolf," so he works better in a group format.



Third, it was Joss Whedon's original intention to have Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne in the first Avengers film. He even included them in his original script instead of Hawkeye and Black Widow. But Joss was prevented from doing this because, to use his words, "Edgar had him(Hank) first. If Whedon wanted Hank and Janet in The Avengers, then he obviously thought they'd work as well. And here's a final point, which is that you cannot have the Avengers without Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne. Eliminating them has not only harmed the Avengers movies, but also the MCU as a whole. There are three reasons why:



1. Scott Lang is an irrelevant character as far as the Avengers are concerned. One of the principle rules of screenwriting and storytelling is that you keep only that which is relevant to the story and eliminate that which is irrelevant to the story. The narrative of the MCU is the creation of the Avengers, and Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne are not only relevant, they are vital and irreplaceable. Scott Lang has no relevance to that story whatsoever. You do not eliminate two of the central characters from a story and replace them with a character that is not relevant to that story. That isn't just nerd-servicing, that's basic writing 101. There is really nothing that Scott Lang brings to the story that Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne don't, but there is a lot that Hank and Janet bring to the story that Scott Lang cannot, and that's a fact. Scott Lang has no history with the Avengers and little story other than stealing Hank's Ant-Man suit to save his daughter. And the fact that Scott Lang will not only be the cinematic face of Ant-Man, but that this movie is affecting the comics to the point where Hank Pym has been merged with Ultron(and possibly killed) while Scott Lang becomes the main Ant-Man is unacceptable. Never let anyone try and say that the comics and the movies have nothing to do with each other, because one can affect the other. And having Hank Pym phased out of the Marvel universe completely because of Edgar Wright and Kevin Feige is an insult. The only reason Edgar Wright even used Scott Lang is because he wanted his film to be a stand-alone comedic heist film that had nothing to do with the Avengers, and that's the only format in which the Scott Lang story works. It doesn't work in the context of the Avengers because it eliminates Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne from their own story. And there is no narrative reason whatsoever dictated by the MCU storyline that necessitates Hank and Janet's removal.



2. Black Widow is not an adequate replacement for Janet Van Dyne, and this is simply a statement of fact. Joss Whedon was forced to use Black Widow by Kevin Feige's micro-managing of the MCU, but at no point in either of the films is it not apparent that Whedon is forced to work around the character's limitations in terms of what she can and cannot do. No disrespect to Scarlett Johansson or Natasha Romanoff, but fighting alongside the Avengers just isn't in Black Widow's scope of practice. She makes an excellent spy, assassin, and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, but she's not designed to go up against aliens, robots, and super-villains. Both Whedon and Marvel have faced criticism of the lack of strong female superheroes in the MCU and accusations of sexism regarding Black Widow's diminished status compared to that of her superhuman male compatriots. But that's not Whedon's fault, it's Kevin Feige's. Feige is the one who forced Whedon to use Black Widow in the Avengers movies, making the only female member also the weakest one compared to her male teammates.



Widow is often made the den mother of the Avengers, and is mostly shown hiding behind cars while shooing at Chitauri with 9mm pistols, or riding on the back of a Chitauri, or driving a Jeep while Hawkeye shoots arrows at HYDRA agents, or serving drinks from behind a bar, or putting the Hulk to sleep with a lullaby, or picking up Captain America's shield for him, or being Ultron's captive and assuming the damsel-in-distress role. Black Widow is best used in situations where her skill set best fits, such as in Iron Man 2(one of the worst MCU films) and Captain America: The Winter Soldier(hands down the best MCU film), but there's a reason why Black Widow in the comics is mostly a S.H.I.E.L.D agent and has little to do with the Avengers, and why her membership status on the team is as a "reserve member" only. The fact is that Janet Van Dyne as The Wasp is far more capable and well-suited to this role, as she is an actual superhero with actual powers. She can alter her size and mass at the subatomic level, she can fly at speeds exceeding 60 mph, and she can project bio-electric energy blasts with the power of thousands of volts. Janet is just the better choice for this role, and as the first and longest-running female member of the Avengers, not including her in the MCU was an insult not only to her character, but to fans. That's why a Twitter protest erupted with the hashtag #JanetVanCrime. It shows what many believe to be Feige's male-centric and sexist approach to the MCU.



I know what you're thinking: "Wait, Hawkeye doesn't have any superpowers, and he's an Avenger!" Yeah, but Hawkeye is Marvel's version of Green Arrow, and much like his DC universe counterpart and Justice League member Oliver Queen, Clint Barton has an arsenal(pardon the pun) of weaponized, high-tech arrows that give him a formidable amount of long-range firepower, which makes up the difference.



3. Making Tony Stark the creator of Ultron doesn't work, and makes the story fall apart into illogical nonsense. Joss Whedon himself has stated many times how Feige's interference caused problems for him in the production of Age of Ultron, even recently admitting that making the film "broke him." Considering that Edgar Wright walked out on Feige, I'm not surprised that Wehdon is also leaving the MCU for good. But here's the problem with altering the story from the comics to the screen. Every single review I've read for Age of Ultron all said the same thing, that the plot was preposterous, absurd, and nonsensical, not to mention generic and clichéd. Ironically, in changing the story for the screen, Marvel didn't really do anything different and only made Ultron no different from the Sentinels in X-Men: Days of Future Past. The problem with the plot of Age of Ultron was that again, it was made by committee, mostly Kevin Feige. Joss Whedon had to come up with some reason for Tony Stark creating Ultron, but not because the story necessitated it, but because Feige did, which is not good screenwriting. The plot of Age of Ultron makes Tony's entire motivation for creating Ultron so silly and absurd that it stretches logic, and makes Tony look like a completely irresponsible moron.



Hank Pym created Ultron by accident, as an experiment in artificial intelligence using his own brainwave patters as a model for the program. But he kept Ultron in a stand-alone hard-drive that was not connected to any other computer system. And he never intended to install Ultron in a weaponized battle suit or use him as a global peacekeeping program because Hank's not an idiot, and neither is Tony. Both would know of the dangers of A.I. and singularity. Ultron only escapes Hank through deception, intelligence, and a will to live. He then goes around masquerading as the Crimson Cowl and organizes the Masters of Evil to take down the Avengers, as well as take revenge on his creator, Hank Pym, and all of humanity. But that unique and original story gets omitted and replaced by a contrived and clichéd one where Tony goes from being a character in the first Iron Man, who tries to atone for making weapons of mass destruction, to purposefully creating an autonomous robot army to defend the Earth using an A.I. program taken from a HYDRA installation, and only because he got shell-shocked by the alien invasion of New York and Scarlet Witch gave him a bad dream. Stop me when any of this sounds like a smart idea.



If you have make a character stupid in order to make a plot work, then it's not working. It violates another principle of storytelling, which is that you do not dumb down a character or make that character act in ways that contradict previously established behavior for the purpose of pushing a plotline through. That's called "soap opera writing," and it's terrible. Tony seems to forget all of the lessons he learned from the first Iron Man. Not to mention that it's also basically the same plot as Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and the same thing that HYDRA tried to do with all of those S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarriers. And Winter Soldier was a much better film. Look at its current RT rating; it buries Age of Ultron. So ironically, in trying to do something different, Marvel only succeeded in ripping themselves off.





And Ultron's creation by Tony is so rushed through the first 20 minutes of the film, and so quickly treated as an afterthought from that point on that it seems to have been put there for no good reason other than to have someone, anyone other than Hank Pym create Ultron. Seriously, Tony goes from "I wanna armor the world" and "the world needs Ultron" to "Oops! My bad. This is funny, isn't ?" in the span of ten minutes, during which Ultron comes to life, wreaks havoc on the Avengers Tower during a dinner party, then escapes. And from that moment on, Ultron's entire creation is inconsequential. Aside from nearly getting his neck broken by Thor and a stern lecture from Captain America, there's no real consequences for Tony. He's the same arrogant ******* for much of the rest of the film. At least Hank Pym felt guilt and remorse for creating Ultron, and most of what happened wasn't even his fault. Tony Stark did what he did intentionally, and he should've at least been sued into bankruptcy for everything that happened, or arrested for violating dozens of federal and international laws. If shifting Ultron's creation from Hank Pym to Tony Stark doesn't improve the story in any way, and in fact only makes the story an illogical mess, then it really shouldn't have been changed at all.



And here's a final point. The MCU was flawed in its inception because Kevin Feige chose to work the entire Avengers storyline around Edgar Wright's Ant-Man script. But Edgar Wright stated time and time again that his script was intended as a stand-alone film with no connection to the Avengers, or the MCU, or any Marvel characters. It was supposed to be a heist film set in it's own separate universe. It is totally incompatible with the Avengers storyline. Now consider Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight films. It cannot be denied that Nolan's films, especially Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, were game-changing movies that set a new standard for comic book adaptations. But Nolan also stated many times that his Batman films were set in their own separate universe where no other heroes existed. In Nolan's world, there was no planet Krypton, no Amazon island of Themyscira, no Green Lantern Corps., no S.T.A.R. Labs, no Speed Force, no undersea city of Atlantis, no Fortress of Solitude. There was no Green Arrow or Black Canary, no Aquaman, no Hawkman or Hawkgirl, no Green Lantern or The Flash, no Wonder Woman, no Superman, and no Justice League. Are Nolan's films great movies? Certainly. But would they be in any way compatible with a DC universe where the Justice League exist? No, they wouldn't. Nolan's Batman films simply would not work in that context, and that's why Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman has Ben Affleck's Batman as a completely different character from Christian Bale's Batman, and has no connection to the Nolanverse at all.



The same could be said for Edgar Wright's Ant-man script. It could work as a stand-alone movie, but it doesn't fit into the Avengers mythology or narrative. And if Edgar Wright's Ant-Man script was the best way to go, then he'd still be directing it, but he's not. Edgar Wright quit the production and Kevin Feige himself stated that the script "just wasn't working." Well, a blind man could've told you that from the beginning, since Wright's script eliminates two of the central characters from the Avengers storyline. Edgar Wright's Ant-Man was dead the moment that Iron Man went into production, and if Wright's script "just wasn't working," as Feige said, then it shouldn't have been used in the first place. It's pretty much a violation of the rules of screenwriting to try and shoehorn that square peg of a script into the round hole that is the Avengers storyline, especially when it removes two of the main characters and founding members of the Avengers, Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne. And the MCU would only have been better with Hank and Janet in it, and without them it will never be as good as it could've been.