Here is what I consider to be a spoiler-free review of Ant-Man and the Wasp. I apologize for the vague language in a lot of places, but I wanted to keep from giving too much away. Enjoy!
Marvel's follow-up to Avengers: Infinity War seems to come from the 22 Jump Street school of sequel filmmaking: just do the same thing as the first time.
No, Ant-Man and the Wasp is far from a carbon-copy of the first Ant-Man movie, but there are several striking similarities. Fortunately, the familiarity of these scenes generally plays in the movie's favor and gives fans something concrete to hold on to while they enjoy a movie that, by itself, is pretty good. As an entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it probably falls somewhere near the 66th percentile.
The Three-Body Problem of Plot
Have you ever seen that show that was on CBS several years ago about an FBI agent who used his mathematics genius brother to solve crimes, Numbers? It was an okay show, the first couple seasons were interesting, but then it went off the rails.
I remember one episode in particular where David Krumholtz, best remembered as Bernie the head elf from the Santa Clause franchise and as the young man who wooed my celebrity crush Christina Ricci in Addams Family Values, as the mathematician described a chase involving three different parties: a couple running from the law, a bounty hunter chasing them, and then someone the bounty hunter was also running from.
Because it was a cat-and-mouse-and-dog chase, the pattern was different from a standard two-party chase.
Perhaps the best aspect of Ant-Man and the Wasp is this three-party chase that permeates the narrative.
So Paul Rudd's Scott Lang, who doesn't slap near enough bass in this movie, is just about a week away from ending his two-year house arrest following the events of Captain America: Civil War. Oh, and this movie takes place immediately before the events of Infinity War. That's pretty important.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Lang gets this crazy dream about a woman playing hide-and-seek with a little girl and there's some trippy lights reminiscent of the Quantum Realm. This prompts him to jeopardize everything to call Hank Pym and his daughter, the illustrious and talented Hope Van Dyne, played by Mr. Zeta-Jones and the Evangeline "We Have to Go Back" Lilly respectively.
"What!? You're telling me that the title characters work together in this movie? Come on!"
Once those three team up (sorry for the...uh...spoiler?), their problems become Scott's problems. The Pym-tridge Family has run afoul of a smuggler and black-market tech dealer named Sonny Burch, played with great ablomb by Walton Goggins' southern accent. In the process, they have also run afoul of a mysterious character named "The Ghost," portrayed by Hannah John-Kamen. I don't know her well enough to make jokes. Sorry.
If I'm being fair, it isn't even exclusive to the three main parties. The feds are also itching to get their hands on Pym and Van Dyne, led primarily by Randall Park's Jimmy Woo. One of the best surprises of this movie is the chemistry between Park and Rudd, especially since I had no idea Park was part of the cast going in.
For a lot of casual movie and TV watchers, Park is kind of a "that guy" you've seen somewhere before but you're not sure where. Hopefully he gets some name recognition from audiences at large for his role in the Ant-Man sequel, because he holds his own comedically in some choice scenes with Rudd, and one notable scene without Rudd that plays for a pretty good laugh.
To avoid a spoiler, I loved their exchange that comes in the final few minutes of the movie. It has the feel of an improv, but either way their final exchange is practically perfect and a great note to (almost) end on.
Like I said, Ant-Man and the Wasp is a true sequel in that it tries to duplicate the magic of Ant-Man, and the performances from the cast at-large (including Judy Greer, Bobby Cannavale, and Abby Ryder Fortson as Lang's sorta-family) are spot-on in that regard.
The chemistry of Lang's gang (ugh, sorry) is another selling point from the cast with the inimitable Luis (Michael Pena) leading the way. Pena ties the trio of Luis, Dave, and Kurt (Pena, T.I. Harris, and David Dastmalchian) together very well as their new boss in a business venture, but that subplot hardly matters. Honestly, it only matters insofar as it keeps those three together and we get some great scenes from this crew.
How I neglected to mention this man for so long is beyond me, but oh yeah, Laurence Fishburne is in this movie. I am an unabashed fan of all things Fishburne-ian, so getting to see him as Pym's estranged partner Dr. Bill Foster was a treat. He doesn't have the biggest or most important role in this movie, and is sadly the weakest of the new characters, but in a movie that already had such stellar performances from relative unknowns (but who isn't a relative unknown next to Fishburne?), it can be forgiven.
What It Lacks in Visuals...
With most comedies, the greatest risk you run is that all of the best lines are revealed in the trailer.
Ant-Man and the Wasp has one-liners and gags in spades, and they get thrown out like the proverbial baby that had lukewarm bathwater. It takes a cold soul to not laugh at the jokes in this movie.
However, they did tip their hand a little too much as far as the visuals go. Part of what made Ant-Man such a great film was the fun and unique visuals we got to enjoy. Shots like the giant Thomas the Tank Engine made the first run at Ant-Man a visual feast to behold.
There were a few strong images in the movie, but you've already seen them in trailers: the expanding salt shaker, the giant Scott Lang in the harbor, the re-expanding car, Ant-Man using a flatbed as a skateboard. These are all pretty cool moments in the movie, but we've seen them all. Even that amazing shot of Van Dyne's Wasp running across the blade of a knife felt played out by the time I got to it in the movie, which is disappointing because they were genuinely cool and clever shots.
I mentioned Thomas the Tank Engine a minute ago, and I want to go back to that. In true sequel fashion, there is a moment that is supposed to be reminiscent of that scene in Ant-Man and the Wasp, but it just doesn't resonate in the same way. It's still good, it's still funny, but it probably would've been best to leave it out.
I spent a good part of the movie saying to myself, "Man, I really hope they do something with an old toy like the Thomas the Tank Engine scene." Then when it came, the moment fizzled. Unfortunately, inviting comparison to what I would call an iconic moment from the original turned out to be a mistake.
Instead of Willy Wonka's dream, it looks like David Lynch's nightmares.
Even the vibrantly colorful Quantum Realm was largely uninteresting. We've seen it before. There was very little new.
At times, I felt like the Quantum Realm looked too much like something out of Dr. Strange. I half expected Dormammu to show up looking for a bargain.
There was one exciting moment with an engorged water bear, but otherwise the Quantum Realm just didn't interest me. That's a problem since much of the film hinges on that very place.
The best visual in the movie is one that, honestly, probably wasn't that hard to pull off. I doubt it took up hundreds of servers and processors to create, but it was a great laugh. Frankly, it was unnecessary, but it was fun. Lang and Van Dyne go to his daughter's school for their mission (I recognized it as a school in Atlanta, yay!) and Lang's suit malfunctions in the funniest way. If more of the visuals had been fun rather than just impressive, I think this movie would have benefitted.
Again...this guy was really cool.
Ultimately what differentiates this movie from its forbearer is the interplay between big and small. The most intriguing shots from Ant-Man were the ones where something normal size seemed enormous. Unfortunately, the sequel went largely in the opposite direction. Most of their best shots were of small things being made large.
I get that they needed to try something different, but the visual elements just weren't as impressive using this strategy.
It would be easy to say that the first film benefited heavily from the seven or so years of pre-production that Baby Driver helmer Edgar Wright did. I'm sure there is ample truth to that, if only because the sequel couldn't have had half the pre-production time of the original.
That being said, Edgar Wright is a creative marvel, so it should also be no small wonder that a sequel to a movie that is, in all reality other than name, his that was made without him would feel like a visual step down.
As much flack as I give Ant-Man and the Wasp about visuals, there's really nothing bad that I noticed. It's just not quite as good as the first.
...It Makes Up For in Moments
I read an article several years ago about the best one-word jokes in movies. After seeing Ant-Man and the Wasp, I feel like adding an entry to that list.
If you grant me a little leeway on word count, I could add two.
Two of the best scenes happen in the X-Con office, X-Con being the security consulting firm that Lang and Luis are starting up after their stints as career criminals.
In one of the scenes, Lang is explaining the Ghost to his buddies, and the vaguely Ural Kurt reacts accordingly, referring to the folk tales of his childhood in...mother...Russia? I don't know. He's from somewhere.
In another scene that occurs in that office, the trio of Luis, Kurt and Dave are all confronted with a cliche of Hollywood filmmaking, and despite being told to get past the cliche, they can't do it. And it makes for a hilarious scene.
With both of these jokes that are set up in the X-Con office, the callback later in the movie is what makes it so good. In both cases, the perfectly timed delay and delivery makes each one a perfect moment.
The running gag with the card tricks is also a a nice touch.
In their constant quest to recapture the magic of Ant-Man, Luis has a scene where he breaks down part of the story and it really does rival the scene from the original that inspired it. It might be a shade funnier.
The real talent of this movie is the comedic levity created in those special moments. The best scene in this movie is one where Lang is, well, not feeling himself, we'll say. Rudd does an amazing job in this scene of being sincere, but also funny. And the rest of the cast plays into that mood wonderfully.
It can be difficult to blend action and drama and heart with comedy so nicely, but that is the triumph of Ant-Man and the Wasp, and it only works because of these small moments of character.
Redemption for Marvel Villains
Ever since the early days of Phase 1, people have complained about two things chiefly: that Marvel villains are bland and that all Marvel conclusions are the same.
If nothing else, Ant-Man and the Wasp does a good job of avoiding both of these pitfalls.
There's no army coming out of the sky, there's no world-ending threat to thwart, there's no big battle.
Yes, there is a climax and a final effort, but, quite fittingly, it is on a much smaller scale. As I said earlier, it all comes down to three parties. Outside of those three parties, the ramifications of what happens aren't really that big.
Ant-Man and the Wasp has the unenviable task of following up one of the largest movies ever made, and they mostly succeed by not trying to follow that up.
Marvel movies have rightfully been blasted for the constant one-upsmanship that happens. This movie was big, but this one has to be bigger, this one needs more enemies, this one needs more stuff.
These go to 11.
But this movie wins by staying small stakes. Sure, the stakes mean everything to the characters in the movie, but most of the people around them, and certainly around the world or the universe at-large, will never notice. Given that half of the people on Earth won't be around much longer anyway, this was probably a smart move. (Umm...spoiler for IW?)
With those small stakes, it gives the villains a little more room to breathe. For starters, you don't automatically know that the villains will fail to destroy the world. Since their goals are pretty small, Marvel could theoretically get away with letting them win. There's a little bit more tension.
Also, the performance by Goggins as Burch is fun. If you saw him in Hateful Eight, then you know what kind of energy he can bring to an unlikable son-of-a-gun role. Goggins is the better of the two villains in this movie, I would say, and he was an enjoyable one-off. He can't rival Loki or Thanos as a villain, but he doesn't have to. He just has to be a jerk, and we love him for it.
Grand Finale
Coming out just a couple months after Infinity War, this movie had to be a Marvel fan's palate cleanser, of sorts, as we wait for Captain Marvel and the still-untitled Avengers 4 movie coming out in March and May/April of 2019.
All told, Marvel made the right choice having this movie released after Infinity War, but taking place before hand. That's not to say that we don't feel some repercussions of Infinity War. You absolutely do. Then again, I took my sister to see this movie with me, and she hadn't seen Infinity War, so she didn't feel any repercussions. You probably will.
Oh, and Lang's constant celebrity ant puns when naming his mounts is a gem.
I have dumped on this movie a lot, and part of that is because it just wasn't as good as I'd hoped or expected. I was far more excited about Ant-Man and the Wasp than I was about Solo. As such, Solo exceeded my expectations while Ant-Man and the Wasp didn't quite live up.
It was still really good, it was still really funny, and even non-fans of Marvel will probably enjoy this movie for the comedic action-adventure that it is.
Oh, and there's a scene of a giant ant playing drums, and that's really funny. That's one visual that not even the trailer could ruin for me.
Two last notes. First, all images are the property of Marvel Studios/Disney and were retrieved from their official website for the film. Second, my sister Dana and I came up on a movie set in Atlanta last September when we were doing a 5K where we got to run onto the field at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. That was the only reason I was doing a 5K, honestly. During our run, we saw a bunch of nice vans and strange looking cars, so we assumed it was a Fast and the Furious movie. But then I recognized one of the more unique vehicles from this movie as the one we saw that day, and I smiled. They did a really good job of filming around Atlanta without making Atlanta too recognizable. While I'm sad about that, I was impressed because I can usually pick out what is Atlanta and what isn't.
What did you think of Ant-Man and the Wasp? Sound off in the comments!