Movie Info
Movie Name: Ant-Man and the Wasp
Studio: Marvel Studio
Genre(s): Comic Book/Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Comedy
Release Date(s): June 25, 2018 (Premiere)/July 6, 2018 (US)
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Scream if you like Ant-Man, but you don’t love Ant-Man!
Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is trying to go straight. He’s under house arrest and the close eye of agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park). When Scott has a dream of Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pheiffer), Hank (Michael Douglas) and Hope (Evangeline Lilly) think that he could be the key to locating Janet in the quantum realm…but a black market runner named Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins) and a mysterious attacker named Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) have other ideas.
Directed by Peyton Reed, Ant-Man and the Wasp is the twentieth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Following Avengers: Infinity War in 2018, the movie is a sequel to 2015’s Ant-Man. The movie was met with positive reviews and a strong box office return.
We should team-up more in this movie about us teaming up
The first Ant-Man was a fun movie but I felt that a lot of its identity was based upon the tone and pacing of Guardians of the Galaxy which was a surprising hit. This movie seeks to make Ant-Man his own and it succeeds for the most part, but it also feels like more of the same.
The movie is pretty much a direct sequel to Ant-Man with the events of Captain America: Civil War factoring into the status of Hank, Janet, and Scott. This sets up a solid basis for the story and the fact that a villain who simply wasn’t like Wasp and Ant-Man and wasn’t a classic “villain” character. I felt Walton Goggins was a bit forced into the story to push things along and the movie ends (at least the post-credit scene) as you’d expect if you saw Avengers: Infinity War.
The Ghost with the most!
Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly work well together, but the story doesn’t have them working together enough except a few battle scenes. Hannah John-Kamen is an interesting choice for the lead enemy (doing a gender swap on the Marvel character), and it works since she can’t touch people and Wasp and Ant-Man are skilled at evasion. The Michael Peña-Tip “T.I” Harris-David Dastmalchian trio provide the fun back-up, and Abby Ryder Fortson is a solid child actor as Scott’s daughter Cassie. It is also nice that Michael Douglas continues to be part of the “family”, and Michelle Pfeiffer could be a good addition for future films. I also wish we had gotten to see the Black Goliath version of Laurence Fishburne, and Walton Goggins feels wasted in a rather weak role.
Hey, pretty impressive right? I did it in Civil War as well…
Visually, the movie is strong, but it doesn’t feel like it offers anything new. We saw Giant-Man in Captain America and the only part which seemed different was mid-sized Scott in the school scene. The shrinking/growing gimmick is finessed in the movie, but it also is just like the first movie (which did play with the innovation). We’ve seen shrinking and growing and it still is fun…but still I hoped for something inventive.
Ant-Man and the Wasp is solid fun in line with the other Marvel movies and the previous Ant-Man movie. The addition of Wasp does add the extra spice it needs, and I hope that a future Ant-Man and the Wasp movie might really add some extra spice…and maybe realism (there’s no way that guy could have a place like that in San Francisco and whoever heard of Lombard Street being that empty on a nice day). Ant-Man and Wasp is followed by Captain Marvel in 2019.
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