Ant-Man and the Wasp Review: Reviewing Every Marvel Movie #45/76:
A solid follow-up to the original Ant-Man that keeps its focus on the comedy, unique action, and family ties. It doesn’t do anything particularly unique, but it does everything it does extremely well. It takes the action in a unique direction while ramping up the comedy and embracing the inspirational heart of the first film by showing its heroes helping even their adversaries out of the rut that the law has stuck them all in.
Spoilers Below:
I don't think the action is quite as good in this movie as the original, partly because it's mostly characters swapping sizes in normal spaces instead of fully utilizing the ant-sized world. The ants are also almost barely used, which is disappointing considering how cool they are. There are some banger action scenes, namely Wasp's first fight in the kitchen and Ant-Man growing to giant size over the boat, but generally the fights are a downgrade from the first movie.
The comedy, though, is on point. Everybody is hilarious in this movie, both in the dialogue and just the general scenarios they find themselves in. Like, Agent Woo trying to learn Scott's card tricks is funny enough, but his subordinate barging in on him doing them is hilarious. Sonny Burch is a wise-cracking asshole, Scott is just a generally chill and funny guy as demonstrated in the excellent opening where he and Cassie do a fake heist, Luis is as unhinged as ever, and even Hank Pym gets in some good one-liners. Hope and Ava are the most serious characters, which tracks for both of their circumstances. One of my favorite bits in the movie is Luis going on one of his signature tangents while on a drug the villains swear isn’t truth serum, and revealing a boatload of sensitive yet irrelevant information, and then Luis putting the villains on the truth serum later to make them incriminate themselves and finally admit that it is in fact truth serum. It's so damn funny. Wasp throws a giant Pez dispenser as a projectile weapon. A human-sized ant plays drums. What more do you want?
Oh, you want good characters? Okay, take your pick. Scott is trying to do right by everyone around him, even as his loyalties to Cassie and the Pyms tear him in two separate directions. Cassie is fucking adorable and not only proves that Scott is actually a good dad to her, but is able to inspire him in turn to save the Pyms after she covers for him in front of the FBI. She's like 10, for context, and she already understands how to be a hero. The scene of her mom and boyfriend being horrified to see Ant-Man breaking his house arrest on TV while Cassie just grins like an idiot is one of my favorites in the movie. Speaking of Cassie’s mom and boyfriend, I love that they continue to get along with Scott after repairing their relationship in the last movie. There's no conflict there at all; everybody knows exactly where they stand in the relationship and is perfectly happy with it. It’s such a good dynamic, even if it's a small part of the movie.
Hope and Pym are pissed at Scott for sending them on the run, but they can't truly hate him once they get back in touch with him. Even if it's just to save Hope’s mom at the start, they see Scott as family too, even if he messed up big time. Hell, part of Hope's problem is that he didn't invite her to do crime in Civil War, meaning they're basically perfect for each other. We get to explore Pym being kind of a bitch in his past while still leaving it ambiguous how much was actually his fault and how much was just three brilliant men disagreeing with each other. And in the present, Hank does his best to make it up to them, even if he's focused on saving his wife first. His reunion with Janet in the Quantum Realm is so good.
I love that this movie has no real supervillain. Agent Woo is trying to arrest Scott and the Pyms because they're wanted fugitives, but he seems like a generally chill guy, even if he's a bit too eager to score an arrest. He also winds up being the one who solves the Sonny Burch problem for good after Luis' guys tase him. Sonny Burch is the only real villain, being a capitalist interested in nothing but profit. He has no morals and no higher goals, leaving him as just an asshat with guns instead of a true supervillain with a plan like Aldrich Killian or even Baron Zemo. He’s a petty representation of the system of power, which is perfect for this movie.
Ava Starr aka Ghost is the main villain for most of the movie, but really she's just a parallel to Scott from the first movie if he was even worse off. The film never draws direct comparisons between her and Scott, but it can't be a coincidence that she's a down-on-her-luck criminal just trying to survive by stealing Hank Pym's tech. She even has a quantum scientist mentor in the form of Bill Foster. She’s even more down-on-her-luck since she’s about to die due to magic quantum bullshit, so it makes sense why her crimes are more heinous than Scott’s were. Still though, because the team knows what it’s like to be in Ava’s shoes, they never lose sympathy for her. Hank still wants to save his wife before he cures Ava, but it’s that very wife who saves Ava thanks to her magic quantum bullshit powers. Hank does help her, even if not the way he intended. She can live her life now, and now that she's not dying, she can be her own person instead of the desperate weapon that SHIELD made her. It's a perfect parallel, and a happy ending for everyone except the immoral businessman.
Even Agent Woo wins by arresting Burch, and making an arrest seems to be his main goal because he's a representation of the force of nature that is The System. He wants friends too, though, because as much power as he has, he doesn't have the friends that the normal people like Scott do. The little people help the little people, taking down corrupt businessmen and surviving within the unchangeable system. Hank Pym being like a genius and former CEO does play against that, but he’s also on the run from the cops in this movie, so it still mostly works. All he has is his wits, his tech, and his daughter to support him, and his daughter has the same.
As an MCU film, it’s an interesting fit. It has to go after Infinity War due to that devastating post-credits scene, but it could really go anywhere after Civil War aside from that. Like the first Ant-Man, this film uses the MCU as a setting, taking the idea of the Sokovia Accords and making Scott and Hope navigate them and their consequences. Heroes, powers, and weird tech exist, and we can just accept that because their ramifications are explored in other movies. It’s a perfect use of the expanded universe, and that post-credits proves that it is still part of that universe.
I love this movie, genuinely. It’s not the best movie ever, and maybe not even as good as the first Ant-Man, but it’s close. The Scott/Cassie relationship is so wholesome, and exemplifies why I love these movies. They’re about powerless people doing everything in their power to make the world better for those around them, and inspiring those who will take after them. They’re not the biggest films, or the most morally complex, but they’re freaking awesome and genuinely inspirational. I can’t be Tony Stark or Thor, but I could be Scott, because everyone has a Cassie.
