If you want a break from the emotionally heavy, plot-rich, high-stakes narratives of recent MCU entries, “Ant-man & the Wasp” will be a refreshing diversion for you. It moves away from the Infinity Stones story to follow a more self-contained narrative about Scott Lang’s attempts to balance family with heroism and the efforts of Hank Pym and Hope van Dyne to track down the long-lost Janet van Dyne.
The movie begins BEFORE the events of “Infinity War” with Scott under a two-year house arrest for violating the Sokovia Accords during the events of “Civil War.” That escapade also fractured his relationship with Hank (Michael Douglas) and Hope (Evangeline Lilly), who are running from the authorities after Ant-man’s appearance in Germany implicated them as well.
After Scott successfully returned from the quantum realm at the end of the first movie, Hope and Hank hypothesized that wife and mother Janet Van Dyne could’ve survived her trip into the quantum realm 30 years prior and might still be trapped there. They start working to build a device capable of entering the realm and locating her. Meanwhile, Scott has started a security business with his old crew called “X-Con” with Michael Pena’s hilariously awkward “Luis” returning as head of the company.
The crux of the story focuses on multiple characters trying to gain control of the quantum technology and Scott trying to balance his desire to be a hero with the responsibility he feels towards his daughter Cassie. Scott spends a great deal of the film wrestling with how to help Hope and Hank while desperately trying to avoid anything that might violate his confinement and send him back to prison and away from Cassie.
What you’re going to like:
Yes, it’s still really funny...probably funnier than the first movie. The humor does create some problems though, and we’ll get to that later.
The action in this movie is GREAT. It’s more diverse than the first movie, adding two awesome car chase scenes to greatly improved hand-to-hand action. The improvement in hand-to-hand fighting mirrors the growth of Hope & Scott in their mastery of the suits; they've trained themselves into absolutely outstanding fighters since the first film (especially Hope).
This movie does its best to tell it’s own self-contained story that doesn’t bleed over into the cosmic side of the MCU. The lighter tone and the low stakes feel completely different (in a good way) from the universe-saving mission of “Infinity War.”
There is lots of Luis. He gets more screen time and a bigger role, and he’s every bit as entertaining as you’d hope.
The movie also continued to build other strong and entertaining side characters. Luis returns with his running mates Dave (T.I.) and Kurt (David Dastmalchian), who are every bit as outrageous as in the first film. Cassie (Abby Ryder) plays a much larger role and is really good in all of her scenes, and bumbling FBI agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park) is a fun newcomer that’s constantly trying to catch Scott violating his parole.
The mid-credits scenes is one of the more important ones I can remember. It’s the only scene in the film that links “Ant-man & the Wasp” to the events of “Infinity War.”
What you might not like:
The amount of humor in the movie was a bit much at times. There were a few too many instances where it felt like everything ground to a halt in order to squeeze in more jokes. The overall result is that scenes saturated with humor started to feel almost campy. The movie was still funny, but it felt like Marvel tried a bit TOO hard to recreate the laughs that made the first movie so successful.
The science in the movie was frustrating to follow. The audience is bombarded with made-up-sounding terms and quasi-scientific explanations for why the heroes' rather insane-sounding plan is going to work. I get it -- it’s comic books, not “The Martian.” But you can do better than just throwing around words like “quantum entanglement” to explain how you’re going to try to fish someone out of a 30-year exile in a realm nobody understands.
Hank Pym is an a-hole. In their attempts to make him intelligent, griseled, and sarcastic they also succeed in making him a lot less likeable. It ends up backfiring because it’s so much harder to connect with him during some of the movie’s really emotional moments.
Unfortunately, this movie reverts back to the Marvel trend of underwhelming and forgettable bad guys. “Ghost” (Hannah John-Kamen) has a cool look and even cooler abilities, but I found her motivation to be rather weak and the resolution of her story arc to be less-than-satisfying. They do a great job of making her threatening, and her backstory is fine, but she never really feels like an important part of the movie. Sound familiar?
This film works really hard to engage the audience in the emotional tug-of-war Scott feels between risking imprisonment (and the loss of his daughter) and trying to help Hope & Hank. It also focuses a great deal on how hard Scott works to be a good dad and the closeness and intimacy he shares with his daughter. All that said, it’s really hard to balance that tenderness with the constant barrage of humor, and the result (for me) was that most of the movie’s emotionally-charged moments felt forced, and at times, almost out-of-place. Considering the emotional weight of the movie’s climax, that’s not a good thing.
Overall Grade: C+
It manages to retain most of the good elements from the first movie (and improve on some), but on the whole, the finished product just wasn’t as good to me. It’s still wildly entertaining, but it lacks the emotional connection of the first film, and it really needed that to carry the weight of what should be a super-dramatic climax. All that said -- go see this movie; it’s just too much fun to pass up.
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