By Bethany Pham, News Editor
For those invested in Marvel films, it’s difficult not to have enormous expectations for Ant-Man and the Wasp, ironically starring infinitesimal heroes. For one, audiences haven’t seen Scott Lang, a.k.a. Ant-Man, since his appearance in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, where it was alluded that he and Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye, would be placed under house arrest for aligning with Captain America’s vigilante outlaws. And after the doom and gloom of the latest Marvel film Avengers: Infinity War, audiences were eager to see what story that Ant-Man and the Wasp would tell as well as an explanation for Ant-Man’s notable absence from the Avengers installment. That’s not to mention that the picture is also a monumental movie for the Marvel franchise, being the first to have a titular female hero. But did it hit all the marks?
Well, two out of three ain’t bad.
Peyton Reed returns to direct the sequel to 2015’s Ant-Man, shaping Ant-Man and the Wasp to bust out onto the big screen with that familiar spunk and humor that the ten-year-old Marvel Studios is beloved for. For continuity lovers like myself, this movie is beautiful. It flows pretty smoothly from the events of Captain America: Civil War—the deal Lang made with the United Nations official on the Raft (a high-security prison) to be placed under house arrest is acknowledged right off the bat in a heart-warming opening sequence illustrating the happy relationship that he maintains with his daughter.
Moreover, the post-credits scene depicts Lang in an operation with Pym/van Dyne family to make a quick trip to the Quantum Realm (where the original Wasp disappeared to, remember?) and return. Except, when the intrepid Ant-Man had gone subatomic, no one was there to extract him from the Quantum Realm because the three—that is, Janet, Hope, and Hank—had turned to dust. Cue the ensuing tears and/or giggles. #ThanksThanos
As far as story, I’m impressed by the fact that five different writers (Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Paul Rudd, Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari) were able to produce a coherent and honestly entertaining script. We’re reintroduced to the two that originally roped Lang into taking up the mantle of Ant-Man: Hank Pym, a.k.a. the OG Ant-Man, and Pym’s daughter Hope van Dyne (don’t ask about the last name), a.k.a. the second incarnation of the Wasp, both of whom are pretty peeved at Lang since his allegiance to Captain America in Civil War earned them spots on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. After their reconciliation, Lang and the gang (I’m sorry) technically face off against three entities: the evil CEO figure Sonny Burch, the obvious villain with an acquired phasing disorder Ava Starr, and Pym’s former SHIELD subordinate Bill Foster. Actually, there are four, if you want to count the FBI, which are not only hunting down Pym and Van Dyne but also Lang for breaking his house arrest (though they never prove he broke it at all). Unlike The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the movie handles its antagonists extraordinarily well; never did it feel like the team had a checklist of villains that they needed to apprehend, and taking down each of them was more or less organic. Their backgrounds, moralities, and motives were interesting and fairly well-reasoned, with the small exception of the generic corporate power Sonny Burch, an otherwise forgettable character altogether. However, I have my suspicions that Burch’s inclusion is simply setting up some dominoes to fall for future Marvel films.
What was a bit disheartening was the visible evolution—or should I say devolution—of Scott Lang’s intelligence. He’s the laughingstock of the team and suffers being the butt of most jokes. In Ant-Man, he was a clearly capable man that understood the workings of burglary equipment and heist plans. Hey, writers, I never forgot the scenes where Lang bypassed fingerprint security AND cracked open Hank Pym’s safe without too much trouble. There was no reason for Lang to be portrayed so pathetically in this sequel. It’s hard not to reflect and believe that Lang’s changes were done to try and give Van Dyne the more serious, uppity, leader-like position of the pair. And if that was the true intention of the decision, then the writers were sorely mistaken.
Hope van Dyne was already established as the grave, careful, and completely capable type of character in Ant-Man (she taught Lang how to throw a punch), and underlining those qualities in Ant-Man and the Wasp was ultimately unnecessary. Actually, I’ll say, flat-out, that the film didn’t do Van Dyne justice. Hell, Guardians of the Galaxy—as spoofy as that movie is—characterized Gamora better, and it needed to flesh out five different heroes, though you could argue that they worked their magic beyond just the fab five here. I can only imagine that proponents of female portrayal in modern film were excited for an aggressively excellent depiction of Van Dyne’s capabilities, but I was disappointed to realize that, though some fight scenes that demonstrated her martial prowess were clever and fun (one giant Pez dispenser, anyone?), there were no real moments where I felt truly dazzled by her any more than I felt dazzled by Black Widow, take that as you will. For Marvel’s first titular female character, Van Dyne lacked that je ne sais quoi to make her seem truly impactful.
Ant-Man and the Wasp is a worthy sequel that falls somewhere between Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and worthy Marvel sequels are arguably rare. Though it lacked the grand stakes that most other Marvel movies like to play around with (it seems like we always have the survival of a country, the world, or multiple realms in the balance), there’s something nice about returning to a more intimate group of heroes to add a sweet and wholesome chapter into the Marvel cinematic universe.
This marks the end of my wannabe criticism. From this point on, you’ll entertain my meandering about how Ant-Man and the Wasp affect the MCU and some personal highlights and notes. Let’s begin.
Aside from the major plotline of defeating Ava Starr, a.k.a. Ghost, there is a closely related subplot largely involving Van Dyne and Pym hoping to rescue the long-lost Janet van Dyne, a.k.a. the OG Wasp, Hank Pym’s wife, and Hope van Dyne’s mother, from the Quantum Realm. Lang’s successful entrance and escape from the Quantum Realm from Ant-Man made them believe there was a way to extract Janet. In the trippy, psychedelic sequences that show Pym in a special vehicle shrinking into the Quantum Realm, a flurry of otherworldly images flash by to indicate the rapidity of Pym’s shrinking, as if he is entering a number of realms before reaching the Quantum Realm, but one would strike MCU fans as familiar. One realm of the flurry was (doctor) strangely reminiscent of the Mirror Dimension. This doesn’t surprise me too much: Doctor Strange’s journey with magic in Doctor Strange was one that he initially tried to explain away with science, and it’s hard not to envision those yellow-orange objects and portals as the hard-light fixtures characteristic of sci-fi stories. We also can’t forget that the ex-surgeon attempted to contain Thanos in the Mirror Dimension. And it looks like we won’t be getting any answers from Scarlet Witch any time soon, so we can only wonder if there is some connection with the Quantum Realm and the MCU’s version of magic. And as the scientific genius Janet van Dyne emerges from the Quantum Realm with new knowledge, new understanding, and new abilities, she could be the MCU’s first step in truly defining magic.
Lang’s new company with his fellow ex-convicts called X-Con Security Consultants was a tongue-in-cheek joke in and of itself (who better to consult but those who are capable of breaking into your home?). As far as I know, there were no allusions or mentions of Lang and the ex-con gang (I’m really not sorry, though) starting up a security company. This is why I can only assume that this was a nod to Nick Spencer’s current run on Ant-Man/Astonishing Ant-Man, which sometimes tells the adventures that Ant-Man and the employees of Ant-Man’s Security Solutions embark on, those employees being different ex-convicts, of course. Just something I picked up on that made me smile.
Humor in Ant-Man and the Wasp was simply on point and served as the much-needed pick-me-up after the drama of Infinity War. An offbeat FBI agent determined to catch Lang breaking his house arrest (who is also hilariously obsessed with figuring out how Lang pulls off magic card tricks), Lang answering a FaceTime call from his daughter mid-evil soliloquy (“It’s a 911 call—it’s an emergency!”), and Pym’s malfunctioning suit prototype that shrinks Lang to the size of a small child (“How was school today, champ?”) are just some of the comedic highlights of the film.
Cassie’s dialogue with her father are precious, and the two share a “partners in crime”-like bond that make for some fun scenes. Her suggestion that Lang take up a partner in crimefighting wasn’t meant to refer to Van Dyne but Cassie herself, though she begrudgingly allows her father to take Van Dyne as his crimefighting partner.
Then there’s the one that caught me off-guard, and I’m glad it did: when Janet van Dyne inexplicably uses Lang’s body to finetune some of the settings to Hank Pym and Hope van Dyne’s tunnel to the Quantum Realm. Paul Rudd assumes a subtly more feminine tone and posture when Janet operates while sneaking in some loving words and gentle face caressing to her husband and daughter in Lang’s body. Meanwhile, Hank and Hope are just relishing in receiving this treatment that viewers struggle to stifle laughter at. Yet again, another hint that Janet has some understanding of the same force that allows sorcerers like Strange to make astral projections and leave their physical body, except Janet took it further by possessing another person’s body.
However, the character that squeezed the most laughs out of me was Luis, Lang’s ex-con buddy. There’s that wonderful callback to the filming technique used in illustrating Luis’s story of how he got word of a heist in Ant-Man, which continued using Luis’s voice to relay what he had heard others say but would use different scenes with the corresponding actors mouthing what Luis was quoting. This time, Luis recounts how he met Lang in prison and his relationship with Pym and Van Dyne. Honestly, just anything related to the truth serum that Burch’s lackeys utilized just about cracked me up. I’m glad that Pym and Van Dyne made him an informal part of the team towards the movie’s end—he deserved to have fun with that purple Hyundai sports car, complete with flame decals.
Will Ant-Man and the Wasp fulfill those lofty expectations that everyone has for it? No, but I sure was satisfied nonetheless.
