The Marvel Cinematic Universe movies are generally designed to be family-friendly adventures that, while violent, always keep the tone strictly PG-13. No other MCU movie embodied that principle more than Ant-Man, and the lighthearted movie is probably the closest Marvel came to making a straight comedy to date. So why does it feature the MCU's most gruesome death?
The scene is an easy one to forget about. The film by and large focuses on establishing the character of Scott Lang, portrayed by Paul Rudd, and his journey to becoming the successor of the titular "Ant-Man" title. The true meat of the film features his discovery of his mentor Henry Pym's secret double life, training to fill the role, and fleshing out his supporting cast of friends and families. There are jokes galore, and not a lot of screen time goes toward the overarching plot or the film's villain. Maybe that's why Marvel could slip in such a horrifying scene audiences did not give much thought to.
In the scene itself, the film's villain Darren Cross meets in the bathroom with a Pym Technologies executive named Frank. Frustrated by his years-long frustration at the inability to properly reproduce the Pym Particles that create Ant-Man's shrinking effect, Cross is on the brink of finally getting what he wants. His Yellowjacket suit sits on the cusp of approval, but executives like Frank stand in his way. "There are laws," Frank reminds Cross.
"What laws?" Cross asks in the scene. "Of man? The laws of nature transcend the laws of man, and I've transcended the laws of nature." When Frank tries to press the issue Cross interrupts him by pulling out an experimental shrink ray. Although the shrink ray does a pitiful job at successfully stabilizing Pym Particles like the Ant-Man suit does, it does an exemplary job as a weapon. It reduces Frank to a small mass of goop in the blink of an eye. With mild consideration, Cross uses a bit of tissue to wipe him off the bathroom surface and walks away with a clean murder.
Part of the nastiness in the scene is enhanced by the material of the goop the prop department used to convey Frank's body postmortem. There's very little blood in the MCU in general beyond some broken lips or scratched eyebrows here and there. Most often the most violent moments involve alien organisms that produce some technicolor fluid visually quite different from blood. But Frank's corpse goo looks so weirdly human and so eerily reminiscent of the organism it once was that it's unsettling.
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Compared to other death scenes in the MCU the sense of tragedy is so much greater in the Ant-Man death precisely because of how much more mundane it is. Far from Endgame's "I am Iron Man" finger snap, the goopification is quiet and nauseating. Even Thanos' death toward the film's beginning, when Thor beheads him on compare, has a flash of drama, shock, and justice to it that it does not come across as quite so gruesome.
The scene is so small and receives so little focus in the film that it's easy to slip by, but it's actually quite horrifying. Imagine what it feels like to have your innards and bones squashed up into one little drop of goop. The way that Cross unceremoniously cleans up and disposes of the "body" only underscores the horror. Far from some big dramatic sacrifice or prolonged scene, the price Frank pays for his principled stance isn't a noble sacrifice or dramatic monologue. Instead, it's a square of tissue, a trash can, and a family that likely never finds out the truth of his fate.
The ending of Infinity War had the most major movie deaths per-minute in the MCU (and possibly in film in general) but portrayed each and everyone with a sweeping grace. Reduced to dust that dissipates in a sudden gust of wind, or gently floats toward the ground, the deaths in Infinity War have a hopelessness and a tragedy to them, to be sure, but they also have a beauty and elevation. Nobody wiped Peter Parker off of cold tile after he said he didn't feel too good.
So when thinking about death in the MCU, make sure to leave no stone unturned. The biggest and the saddest movies aren't always the ones with the most gut-wrenching deaths. In order to find those sometimes it's best to look in the unlikeliest places. Pour one out for Frank the executive, and if thinking about him moves you to tears spare a second thought for the Kleenex you throw away afterward.