Ethan Dowley

16th Dec 2015

Ant-Man (2015)

Question: At several points in the movie, Scott Lang, while small, jumps into and punches a man, who goes flying backwards. However, in the battle with Cross after falling into the swimming pool, Cross, while small, jumps at him and Scott, while large, is able to effortlessly swat him into the bug zapper. A similar thing happens during Scott's fight with The Falcon. So, in a collision between someone large and someone small, who is supposed to win, and who is supposed to go flying?

Ethan Dowley

Chosen answer: Despite the explanation given in the movie for being able to reduce objects and people being "reducing the space between atoms", there are clear indications that there's more to it than that as that explanation wouldn't enable changes of mass (i.e. No way an ant could carry the full weight of a man even if he was reduced in size). Therefore there is some way of changing mass at the same time as size and the two aren't necessarily linked (Scott has low mass when riding ants but much higher when he's punching people). Based on this its apparent that when Scott swats Cross into the buzzer he had low mass. So the answer to the question is - it depends on the mass of the smaller person at the time of the collision.

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.