ANT-MAN and the WASP: July 6, 2018 (2 Viewers)

[Jake Lipson]

 

[Sam Favate]

To the surprise of no one, sounds like Ant-Man 3 will happen.

Michael Douglas says there's been some talk.

https://www.etonline.com/michael-douglas-says-theres-been-talk-about-ant-man-3-119159

 

[Malcolm R]

Yep, there's no reason this shouldn't happen. The second film improved on the gross of the first by over 20%, in both domestic and international markets.

 

[Jake Lipson]

And that's before a true Avengers bump, which should come next time due to his presence in Endgame.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Road to Endgame Revisit #19:
In a strange way, the obvious point of comparison for Ant-Man and the Wasp is Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 because they're both sequels to the quirkiest, funniest sub-franchises in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They both suffer from the same problem -- what was really fresh and exciting the first time around is a bit less fresh and exciting the second time around -- but overall I think this is the better constructed and more successful of the two.

If the first Ant-Man was structured like a heist film, this movie is structured like an Elmore Leonard caper with multiple groups of characters with their own agendas bumping up against each other. All of these agendas are on a ticking clock:

• As a result of the events of Captain America: Civil War, Scott Lang was an international fugitive. He made a deal with the authorities, and was sentenced to two years of house arrest. When the movie begins, there are three days left of his confinement.
• Scott and his prison buddies Luis, Dave, and Kurt have formed X-Con Security, a consulting firm where they use their own knowledge as criminals to design security solutions. The business of days away from going bankrupt unless they can land their deal with an important local property manager to provide security systems for his apartment buildings.
• Hank Pym and his daughter Hope are looking to retrieve Janet (Hank's wife and Hope's mother) from the quantum realm, and they have a very limited window where they'll be able to reach her.
• Sonny Burch has made a deal with some very unsavory people to sell Pym's technology, and very bad things will happen to him if he doesn't deliver.
• Do to an industrial accident as a child, Ava Starr suffers from agonizing and escalating molecular instability. If she doesn't an infusion of a very particular energy from the Quantum Realm very soon, she'll die.

The cold open, with Hank and Janet heading off on the mission that would trap her in the Quantum Realm, shows how much the de-aging technology had improved between Ant-Man movies. It's not quite perfect here, but it doesn't trigger that uncomfortable uncanny valley effect that the S.H.I.E.L.D. scene in the eighties did in the first film.

In the present, the movie won me over immediately with Scott's homemade simulation of what it's like to shrink down and wander through an anthill. As a kid, I loved making forts out of furniture cushions and the like. The tunnel system here is composed entirely of things you'd find in a house, but it has a scale and complexity a kid could never pull off but an adult experienced engineer could. It speaks volumes that even within the confines of house arrest, he's finding ways to give his daughter amazing childhood experiences.

And the prize at the end is a "World's Best Grandma" trophy that Cassie evidently gave Scott for his birthday. Paul Rudd and Abby Ryder Fortson have a wonderful dynamic together as Scott and Cassie. Cassie is three years older than the first film, and those are three years where Scott was mostly in her life. It's a sweet father-daughter dynamic, but it's not an idealized one; what makes it work is that each have a willingness to accept the flaws in the other. And while Scott is not one of those parents who seeks to be friends with his kid at the expense of his obligations as a parent, he never condescends to Cassie. When they have scenes together, he tells it to her straight. At the same time, any father who puts his ten-year-old in a position of having to lie to the FBI for him is doing something very wrong as a parent.

It's important that Scott doesn't choose to embark on this adventure. It would be hard to be in his corner if he again actively decided to jeopardize being in his daughter's life. Instead, Hank and Hope drug and kidnap him to coerce him into doing what they need him to do.

One way to look at these movies are as father-daughter stories, with Hank and Hope on one hand and Scott and Cassie on the other. The other way to look a them is the team dynamic of Hank-Scott-Hope, with all of these others spokes radiating out from the three of them. That team dynamic is energized by dissension. In the first film, it was Hank and Hope that were at odds -- because of his deception about what had happened to Janet, and because of his refusal to allow Hope to suit up. In this film, Hank and Hope are on the same page -- trying to retrieve Janet -- and Scott is the source of the tension. Hank is furious at Scott for using the Ant-Man suit in such a public way during Civil War and putting him and his daughter in the federal authorities' cross hairs. Hope feels betrayed because Scott took off and did this without telling her, and without inviting her along.

The first film introduced discs that should shrink and enlarge things without the necessity of a protective suit. This film expands that technology significantly, with Hank carrying around a Hot Wheels rally case full of getaway cars, and one of the key MacGuffins is an entire office building that shrinks down to the size of suitcase. This movie has a lot of fun with scale, in a lot different ways. It's one of the key things that differentiates these movies from the rest of the MCU, even the ones featuring Ant-Man in a supporting role.

Walton Goggins is a national treasure, and his portrayal of Sonny Burch feels like a much dumber west coast version of Boyd Crowder from "Justified". The energy of the character is very similar to Sam Rockwell's Justin Hammer from Iron Man 2. This guy really wants to be the best at what we does, but he always seems to fall short.

This was the first Marvel Studios movie with a female superhero in its title, and the Wasp makes her presence felt in a big way. Because her suit has wings and blasters, her action sequences can feature elements that Ant-Man's action sequences can't. But the most exciting and fun action sequences are when the two of them are working in coordination with one another.

Ghost is the most formidable antagonist of the film, but she's not really a villain. You could make a movie telling this story from her perspective called Ghost where Ant-Man and the Wasp are the antagonists. Unlike most bad guys in these movies, she does not kill with abandon. Her motivation is literally life and death. It's an interesting performance from Hannah John-Kamen, since she's simultaneously brutal and very, very vulnerable. Her origin story and Captain Marvel's origin story are remarkably similar: An engineering experiment involving elemental forces of nature goes horribly wrong, and their bodies are radically transformed by the discharge from the ensuing explosions. But while Captain Marvel gets the best case scenario, Ghost is more the cautionary tale scenario.

One of the other things that sets the Ant-Man movies apart is that they're multi-generational stories: You've got Hank Pym's generation, which had its headlining adventures in the sixties, seventies, and eighties; you've got Scott's generation, which is having its headlining adventures now; and you've got Cassie's generation, whose headlining adventures are still a decade or two into the future. Bill Foster is another character who helps flesh out Pym's generation. He was the first Giant Man as Hank was the first Ant-Man, and his agenda throughout the movie -- while frustrating and problematic for our heroes -- is entirely selfless and mostly heroic. The character is also a nice reminder for the audience of Hank Pym's seeming inability to play well with others. Laurence Fishburne is probably more actor than the role required, but he elevates every scene he's in. As Bill and Ava, Fishburne and John-Kamen share a real warmth and sense of shared history. Even though Ava's father died a traitor and her mother died a victim of her husband's arrogant recklessless, Bill and Ava's relationship very much reflects the father-daughter dynamic of Hank and Hope -- probably the main reason they did a gender swap for Ghost.

The sequence at Cassie's elementary school with the malfunctioning Ant-Man suit was a lot of fun. We've seen a lot with Ant-Man really tiny and we've seen a lot with Ant-Man really huge, but this is the first time the movies played with less extreme size shifts. The scene gets some decent mileage out of a three-foot-tall Scott Lang. I do think they missed an opportunity by not having Scott bump into his daughter at a moment when she'd be a foot and a half taller than him. In fact, the school as a whole was oddly empty for being in the middle of the school day.

There's a quiet scene in the Pym lab as it's looking increasingly likely that they'll get Janet back. Hope is worried that after three decades her mother won't remember her. Paul Rudd is great in this scene; Scott is able to reassure Hope, as a father who was separated from his own daughter for a lengthy period of time, that there's no way a parent forgets their child.

Michael Peña is the secret weapon of the Ant-Man movies, and the scene where Sonny and his men interrogate Luis after injecting him with truth serum is pure gold. It takes an element people loved about the first movie -- frenetic flashbacks lip-synced to Luis's less than direct storytelling -- and supercharges it. We learn about his grandmother's Morrissey only jukebox, and then we get a mix of anecdotes from before the first Ant-Man and between that movie and this one. It's an extremely entertaining but of exposition. And I love Kurt's certainty that Ghost is actually Baba Yaga; he doesn't get as much screentime this go round, but it's a moment that speaks to his character with specificity.

The scene where Janet possesses Scott manages to be awkward, funny, and oddly emotional. Whenever these movies get really out there, I tend to perk up a bit. This was definitely an example of that.

Scott breaking Hank and Hope out of the FBI custody nicely parallels the scene from the first movie where Hank broke Scott out of jail. It's also an important way to mend fences between them after the discord that has followed his choices during Civil War.

The San Francisco car chase sequence is something that could only be done in an Ant-Man movie. There are so many beats that are familiar, and then the shrinking and expanding transforms the beat into something new. And because the Ant-Man movies are the only ones set in the MCU's version of San Francisco, it's nice to actually get out of the standing sets and see San Francisco (even if the MCU's San Francisco happens to have a lot of greater Atlanta mixed into it). The whole thing, from beginning to end, is more rooted in inventiveness than the tension you normally expect from these sorts of scenes.

I really like that Scott and Hope's first kiss isn't this big romantic moment with lot of build-up and swelling music. She kisses him without thinking because she was terrified that he had died, and she was relieved to find him alive. That feels more real to me, and it's more revealing of character. As much as they've been at odds the entire movie, there's a great deal of fondness between the two of them.

I love that while all of the superhero hijinks are happening elsewhere, Scott's crew lucks into foiling Sonny's plot, and that the notoriety from that is what saves X-Con. And the payoff with the truth serum is perfect. I love the way Walton Goggins plays that scene; you get the sense that Sonny is relieved to have the opportunity to unburden himself.

The staging of Hank's retrieval of Janet from the Quantum Realm has a great retro feel, like the kind of adventure George Pal would have told had he had access to today's technology.

Simultaneously, the fight in the label with Ant-Man and the Wasp facing off against Ghost is also interesting; they have trouble landing a punch against her, since she's constantly dematerializing, but she also has trouble landing a punch against them, since they're constantly shrinking.

When Hank and Janet do return from the Quantum Realm, the scenes have real weight. The movie goes with a very specific look for 30-years-later Janet. She's still wearing the Wasp armor from thirty years ago, but she's acquired a khaki cloak that she wears over it to make her feel more like Gertrude Bell than the Janet Van Dyne of the comics. Where she got the cloak in the Quantum Realm is an open question.

Michelle Pfeiffer does a great job of conveying the fact that Janet has been changed by three decades in the Quantum Realm; she is human, but she's no longer human the way the other characters are human. She has evolved. I love that after Ghost spent the entire movie thwarting Hank and Hope's attempts to bring Janet back, Janet chooses to save Ghost, and in the kindest and most gentle way. Ava has been used and abused her entire life, and now these people she has gone after relentlessly are so good to her when they don't have to be.

With the help of a little close-up magic, Scott manages to make it home and successfully complete the term of his house arrest despite having rampaged across San Francisco. Randall Park brings some interesting colors to his role as Agent Woo. Scott outmaneuvers Woo the entire movie, Woo is smart enough to know what Scott has done, even though he can't prove it, and he very much wants to bust Scott the next time he breaks the law. At the same time, he thinks Scott is really cool, and is oddly desperate for his approval.

The final beats are fun. Hank and Janet stand on the beach of a remote tropical island, with no signs of civilization in sight. Hank opens a wooden box and takes out what appears to be tiny model of the Pym house from the first Ant-Man. One resizing disc later, and their house is full size right along the beach. If you're hiding from law enforcement, there's a lot worse ways to do it.

The movie cuts to Scott, Cassie, and Hope at the drive-in. It's a cute little scene, and a reminder of one of the things these movies do so well, which is this portrait of an unconventional blended family. Cassie has a great support system both with her mom and Paxton and with her dad and Hope. You don't see a lot of portrayals of divorce in film and television, and when you do you don't see a lot of positive outcomes. Scott has gotten to a very amicable place with his ex-wife and her new husband, and they in turn have become very supportive of his rehabilitation. All of the adults in the picture, make Cassie's needs their priority.

And then, of course, it's revealed that it's not the drive-in at all; they're all in a car shrunk down to the size of a Hot Wheels car, and the drive-in screen is the LCD screen of a laptop. One last gag involving scale.

Connections to other parts of the MCU: Ant-Man and the Wasp came out a couple months after Avengers: Infinity War and given the shocking and game-changing ending of that movie, speculation was rife about how this movie movie would deal with that event. The bulk of this film takes place somewhere between a few months and a few weeks weeks prior to the events of Infinity War, but the mid-credits scene synchronizes the timeline with the end of that film. Scot has just been sent to the Quantum Realm to harvest the particles Ava requires to be stabilized long-term when Hank, Hope, and Janet fall victim to Thano's snap. Scott finds himself trapped as they crumble to ash. The post-credits sequence jumps ahead to unspecified point in time after the Snap. On the surface, it's a gag, with the human-sized ant programmed to repeat Scott's house arrest routine playing his electronic drum set. But the tone is extremely ominous. The television is broadcasting the SMPTE color bars test pattern, suggesting that the sudden deaths of so many people have caused major parts of society to no longer function. Even the stuff with the ant is bleak, doomed as it is to repeat the same endless cycle with apparently nobody left to intervene. All of the events of this movie are driven by the fallout from Captain America: Civil War. There are other, less prominent connections: In the glimpses we get of Ghost's backstory, we learn that she was a cover asset of SHIELD, which promised her a cure in exchange for her service, and then fell during The Winter Soldier without having delivered on that promise. I got the sense that she might have been Hydra without even knowing it; another one Alexander Pierce's secret assassins. "Project Goliath" was mentioned in Iron Man 2, when Tony Stark was going through the container of old SHIELD records.

 

[Jeff Adkins]

Good review, Adam. This is one of my favorite MCU films, although it frequently ranks in the bottom half on many MCU-ranking lists I've seen. I thought it was the perfect blend of action, suspense and humor.