Mark Reviews Movies: ANT-MAN AND THE WASP

Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter

Review by Mark Dujsik | July 5, 2018

With the origin story out of the way, Ant-Man and the Wasp gives another superhero a chance to show what he brings to the table. The results are fairly inconsequential, considering that Ant-Man's new adventure sees the hero of changing sizes becoming a passenger in his own story. That almost makes sense in the context of this particular superhero. In a way, he is a perennial second fiddle, a lesser known superhero who's reluctantly brought into or completely ignored during the big battles of the Marvel franchise. His powers are, at best, a little silly, and, at worst, almost useless compared to his compatriots.

In a smaller scale story, like the one of this sequel, Ant-Man can work. Without the heavily plotted bluster and world-changing stakes of the bigger adventures, the character gets to be the reluctant, smart-mouthed hero that he is, and the movies themselves can play with the clichés and the spectacle of the genre.

This superhero's first movie, like so many of these initial introductions to such characters, fell into the trap of telling a familiar story with only a few changes to set it apart from the rest. For Scott Lang's (Paul Rudd) introduction as Ant-Man, the biggest change was one of tone. It was a superhero story that acknowledged and embraced the inherent silliness of its hero, whose primary power is to shrink to a size smaller than an ant.

The stakes were often trivial—for example, trying to avoid the relatively destructive power of water coming out of a showerhead and the roaring whirlpool of a drain. The climactic action sequence of the first movie partially was set on a toy train set, as if to remind us that these action sequences are mostly games and that their thrills are relative.

For the most part, the sequel, which thankfully feels fully isolated from the severity of what has happened in other parts of this cinematic universe, is a lark. It continues Scott's story, as a man under house arrest for taking part in that massive superhero battle royal at an airport in Germany. With his sentence drawing to an end, he wants to get his life on track—to escape the life of crime that led him to this place, to start a business with his buddies, to be a good and attentive father to his daughter. Naturally, such things are dull in the realm of superhero stories, so his dreams of normalcy don't last long.

The plot involves Scott's visions of the so-called quantum realm, where, after shrinking to sub-atomic size, he was momentarily trapped during the previous movie's climax. There's another human occupant there, trapped for 30 years: Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), the mother of Hope (Evangeline Lilly) and the wife of Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), who gave Scott his Ant-Man suit and trained him in the ways of fighting while tiny. The two want to rescue Janet, and they believe Scott's visions can lead them to her. Their mission more or less overshadows Scott's story.

The villain this time is more of an anti-villain: a woman named Ava (Hannah John-Kamen), aka Ghost, who was transformed by a quantum experiment gone wrong. She phases within reality—never really being in one place at a time, essentially. She believes that Janet holds the answer to curing her condition.

None of this really matters in the big picture, since the movie (written by Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Rudd, Andrew Barrer, and Gabriel Ferrari) is more about finding new ways to take advantage of the size-altering technology at the core of Ant-Man's powers. There are some inspired visual gags here, from an office building housing Hank's laboratory that shrinks to the size of a suitcase (and has wheels and a handle for easy transport) to a collection of functioning cars that have been shrunk to the size of toys.

The action sequences benefit quite a bit from this gimmick and from the inclusion of Hope as the Wasp, whose own shrinking suit is equipped with wings and blasters. A battle in a hotel kitchen sees common utensils as deadly hazards, and there's an inventive chase scene late in the movie that has a tiny Ant-Man wrestling with a windshield wiper and a giant Ant-Man using a truck like a scooter.

Without the requirements of introducing the character, director Peyton Reed seems freer to explore the comic potential of the material this time around. After establishing the plot, the movie is structured as a series of bits—some of them simple (such as Scott talking to his daughter on the phone after being captured by a bad guy, Michael Peña's Luis giving way too much truth after being injected with a truth serum, or the eager-to-please FBI agent played by Randall Park) and some of them elaborate (the action sequences, obviously).

It's quite funny at times, as Reed and the screenwriters constantly downplay the usual spectacle of such fare. Like its predecessor, Ant-Man and the Wasp is still, though, burdened by its own plot requirements. The movie is so busy with its various story elements (which also include the dealings of a villainous arms dealer played by Walton Goggins) that its plot and its comedy feel like separate entities vying for control, while the characters vie for movie's focus and heart.

Buy Related Products