Based upon the Marvel Comics series created by Stan Lee and Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby
Screenplay Written by Chris McKenna & Eric Sommers and Paul Rudd & Andrew Barrer & Gabriel Ferrari
Directed by Peyton Reed
** (two stars)
RATED PG 13
Well...two out of three ain't bad.
In 2018, our cineplexes have been greeted with nothing less than three new entries in the Marvel Comics Cinematic Universe, all released a few scant months apart from each other. Certainly, and of course, if you have been following my postings on this blogsite, I have long expressed my sense of superhero fatigue at the movies. Yet, with the Marvel films, I have indeed praised their overall consistency, which does indeed keep me coming back. And frankly, I think by this stage, after 10 years of films and 20 movies in total, I can now look at the films as if they are the latest actual comic book to find its way into my mailbox, like the monthly subscriptions I had when I was a pre-teen.
This year found Marvel releasing what I feel are the two best films they have made to date, Ryan Coogler's majestic "Black Panther" and Anthony & Joe Russo's game changing, cataclysmic "Avengers: Infinity War." Of course after such a set-up, essentially anything that arrives afterwards has more than enough to live up to, so it seems to be more than fitting that Marvel scaled downwards for the follow-up. Ant-Man, our especially diminutive hero, returns to save the day once more in Peyton Reed's "Ant-Man and the Wasp," the sequel to the surprisingly inventive, imaginative "Ant-Man" (2015), the one Marvel film that I was not remotely interested in but found myself enjoying it greatly as it sits near the top of my favorite Marvel entries.
And yet, like Brad Bird's "Incredibles 2," this second chapter disappointed me. Now I did not say that it was a bad film. It isn't. It is just one that felt to be a bit lackluster, as if we were watching the tired fifth installment rather than the second, which was a surprise because all of the ingredients felt to be in their proper places. As it stands, and with a lengthy eight month wait before the next Marvel feature, what we have in "Ant-Man and the Wasp" is a decent yet fairly inconsequential placeholder.
Set shortly before the devastating events in "Avengers" Infinity War," (yet with one terrific mid-end credits sequence set at the same time as those aforementioned devastating events) "Ant-Man and the Wasp" finds our hero Scott Lang (the ageless Paul Rudd) under house arrest due to his involvement in events portrayed in Anthony & Joe Russo's "Captain America: Civil War" (2016). With a mere three days remaining of his two year sentence, all Scott wishes to do is to try and coast through to the end and finally just focus upon being the best parent he is able to be to his cute little moppet Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson). .
As the house is quiet, and Scott is settling himself into a long warm bath, he is shaken by what seems to be a dream but is soon discovered to be a message from the inter-dimensional Quantum Realm, a communication from Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), the original Wasp plus beloved wife of original Ant-Man Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Mother to the new Wasp, Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), the woman who has been lost inside of the Quantum Realm for 30 years.
From here, the film becomes a race against time to rescue Janet from the Quantum Realm, no easy feat as Scott, Hope and Hank attempt to evade the clutches of FBI agent/Scott's parole officer Jimmy Woo (Randall Park), the petty criminal Sonny Burch (Walter Goggins), a black market dealer aiming to steal Hank Pym's technology and finally, the increasingly unhinged Ava Starr otherwise known as "Ghost" (Hannah John-Kamen), a woman afflicted with life threatening molecular instability and who relentlessly wishes to steal Hank Pym's technology in order to save her own life--yet potentially ending Janet van Dyne's life in the process.
With all of these elements, plus the scientific rivalry between Hank Pym and his estranged partner (and Ghost's protector) Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne) and most crucially (wink wink), the status of the new X-Con Security company as owned and operated by Scott's ex-con friends Luis (the terrific Michael Pena), Dave (Tip "T.I." Harris) and Kurt (David Dastmalchain), Peyton Reed's "Ant-Man and the Wasp" contains more than enough story to keep the two hour running time stuffed tightly.
Reed continues to ensure that his sequel is fast moving, engagingly playful and filled with visually dazzling takes on the perspectives of large and small objects never quite appearing the way in which we know them to appear. And of course, the entire cast, as led by the easy, effortless charm of Paul Rudd, are uniformly strong, with Hannah John-Kamen making quite the impression as Ghost. Her performance, plus some truly sparkling special effects, creates an antagonist (clearly not a "villain")
that houses an urgent poignancy as she is a prisoner of events not of her consequence, therefore making her mortality an especially potent ticking clock, much like the figures of the Replicants in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" (1982) and Denis Villenueve's "Blade Runner 2049" (2017).
And yet, for some reason, and even with a plot as complex as the one on display here, everything in "Ant-Man and the Wasp" just felt to be so slight. Now, some of this is indeed purposeful as Scott Lang is also part of this extended Marvel universe by essentially stumbling into it. He has no superhuman powers. He didn't even create the suit! And he has got to be the kindest hearted criminal ever witnessed on screen. He is a character of so-called less consequence than say Captain America, Iron Man or Thor. And with that, perhaps the Ant-Man films do not necessarily need to carry the same weight as the majesty of "Black Panther" and the apocalypse of "Avengers: Infinity War."
Even so, that very smallness of the first film possessed a much needed lightness and near frivolity that none of the other Marvel films housed, especially as some of them, most notably Joss Whedon's"Avengers: Age Of Ultron" (2015), were beginning to show some strain and ponderousness. What Peyton Reed established in the "Ant-Man" debut was a certain sparkle and actual surprise that made fr a film that was faster, funnier and often more ingenious than it possibly needed be or was even expected to be.
Remember the first time when we saw those sequences that played with perspective as when Scott Lang was tapped in a bathtub or racing across a vinyl record or narrowly escaping dancing feet or engaging in a life and death battle on top of a toy train set? Or how about when Scott explored the Quantum Realm for the first time? I had not laughed that hard or felt my eyes pop that much in a Marvel films for quite some time, making the film somewhat like Scott Lang's cat burglar thief character. The film almost snuck up on you.
Yet what worked in its favor the first time around seemed to work against it the second time as the level of freshness actually staled a bit and despite the overall complexity of the plot, relationships, back stories and motivations, not that much actually happens in "Ant-Man and the Wasp." Yes, there's load of running around and things get bigger and smaller and bigger and smaller and bigger and smaller over and over and over again and truthfully, terrific special effects aside, it does wear out its welcome when our heroes really only have to accomplish one task.
Additionally, there has been quite a bit being written about how "Ant-Man and the Wasp" is the first Marvel movie to feature the name of the female heroine in the title. That's great. But, I do wish that the filmmakers--especially the film's five writers-- really gave her and her portrayer Evangeline Lilly more to actually do. Yes, she has some cool fight scenes but she essentially serves the same purpose she served in the first film: making exasperated side eyes at Scott Lang, essentially being somewhat sour. The Wasp deserves much more than that, as far as I am concerned
Look, don't get me wrong. Peyton Reed's "Ant-Man and the Wasp" is nowhere near being a creative failure. It was just one that found me doing quite a bit of seat shifting as I just was not as invested as I have been in the past. Maybe I am not being fair to the film but I do not know. For me, when the powers-that-be are able to create to the top tier level of "Black Panther" and "Avengers: Infinity War," you can't go backwards in quality, regardless of the scale.
"Ant-Man and the Wasp" is fine but when that mid end credits scene is better than the entire two hours that preceded it, you do have a problem.
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