When I first saw Marvel’s line-up for this year, I started
to worry for Ant-Man and The Wasp.
Those worries were only reinforced when Black
Panther and Avengers:
Infinity War both became these massive game-changing juggernauts, even
by the already high standards of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If I were the
makers of this movie, I would’ve felt like a coffee shop folk singer performing
a set right after The Rolling Stones. But it wasn’t really like that at all.
Instead, it was more like when an anime follows up a really heavy/serious
episode with a lighthearted filler episode where everyone goes to the beach.
Our story reunites us with Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), an
ex-thief who uses a special suit that lets him grow or shrink to microscopic or
gigantic size, gives him superhuman strength and agility, and lets him
telepathically command an army of super-intelligent insects. Waiting out the
last days of his house arrest after violating the Serkovia Accords in Captain America: Civil War, he’s
contacted by the suit’s creator and original Ant-Man Hank Pym (Michael Douglas)
and his daughter Hope Van-Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), who are now wanted by the
law for being his accomplices, and although they’re still mad at him for making
them fugitives, they need his help. Since Scott was able to shrink to subatomic
level, enter the Quantum Realm and come back in one piece in the last film,
they want to do it again and try to find Hank’s wife Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer),
who did the same thing several years ago but never came back.
Ant-Man always seemed like the odd one out in the MCU. His
movies have always been largely inconsequential, usually acting as a fun romp
to relieve tension before or after big game-changing events (the first one
premiered between Age of Ultron and Civil War), and compared to his
comrades, he’s the most ordinary. He’s not a genius, a billionaire, an alien, a
super-soldier, a wizard, a king or a god, and he’s not motivated by his
attempts to redeem himself from the sins of his father. In fact, the only thing
that really makes him unique is that he has a criminal record. This gives it a
bit more leeway to tell its own story removed from the constant escalation of
the Avengers.
The other thing that separates it from the bunch is that it’s
essentially a superhero take on the heist film, having more common with Ocean’s Eleven than Iron Man. That means a lot of ticking clocks, a lot of moving
parts, and more than enough side plots getting in the way. Aside from the main
mission of rescuing Janet, they need to acquire some material from a shady
black marketer (Walton Goggins), coerce some information from an old frenemy of
Hank’s (Lawrence Fishburne), contend with a new villain called The Ghost
(Hannah John-Kamen) who wants Pym’s tech for her own purposes, and keep the FBI
off their track so Scott doesn’t get sent to prison for violating his parole.
While it keeps the plot moving and makes sure there’s never a dull moment, the overabundance
of technobabble about quantum realms, Pym particles and a bunch of other
made-up sci-fi gobbledygook can bog it down a bit. Scott somehow managed to
develop a psychic connection that’s never really explained, everything about Ghost
is both confusing and inconspicuous, but it’s all just an overcomplicated
explanation for a really cool gimmick. Much of the movie’s action set-pieces
revolve around using Pym’s tech to grow and shrink objects to their advantage. A
building is shrunk down to suitcase size and dragged around like luggage, during
chases they throw things like saltshakers and Pez dispensers then grow them to the
size of refrigerators to throw the bad guys off their track, and there’s a car
chase where a normal sized car is chasing around a car the size of a Hot Wheel.
That last one, by the way, can easily be considered one of the best scenes in
any Marvel movie.
It’s also incredibly funny. Not as funny or omnipresent as,
say, Guardians of the Galaxy or Thor:
Ragnarok, but a lot of the snappy humor from the first film does carry
over. Michael Pena returns as Scott’s motormouthed partner in crime Luis, and
like in Ant-Man 1, his rambling
stories are among the best parts of the movie. The size changing technology is played
for laughs some of the time. Aside from that bit with the Hello Kitty Pez
dispenser from the trailer, there’s also a running gag with a giant ant that’s trained
to take Scott’s place while he’s out of the house, and a recurring bit where he
tries to beat his parole officer (Randall Park) home whenever he suspects
something fishy. They also manage to mine some material from the budding
relationship between Scott and Hope, both as heroes and on-again-off-again
lovers without leaning on unnecessary sexual tension or anything like that. And
although it does kind of get pushed aside in favor of, well, everything I just
talked about, the little moments between Scott and his daughter Cassie were
genuinely sweet since being a good dad to her is his prime motivation, and it possibly set
her up for bigger things if the fan theories are to be believed.
Bottom line, Ant-Man and The Wasp was a nice distraction from the growing tension going on in
the Marvel universe. Compared to the original, I’d say it’s about on par, which
unfortunately does put it in the lower echelons of the Marvel pantheon, but considering
the track record they have, that’s not exactly the insult it may sound like. By
the way, if you’re wondering when this happens in the timeline in relation to Infinity War, just wait until after the
credits.
7/10
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