As The Avengers: Endgame approaches, Team Midnight has committed to watch all the Marvel Cinematic Universe films released to date in chronological (story) order: 22 films in 8 weeks. Follow along with us.
In Ant-Man and The Wasp, we catch up with Scott, Hope and Hank two years after the events of Civil War, in which Scott borrowed the Ant-Man suit to join the Captain America team. Potentially overlapping somewhat with Thor: Ragnarok, Ant-Man and The Wasp takes place just before Infinity War.
Heroes: Scott Lang / Ant-Man
“Do you guys just put the word ‘quantum’ in front of everything?”
Since the big Ant-Man suit reveal in Civil War, the feds have been using the Sokovia accords to crack down on the people-shrinking experts. Scott has been on house arrest for the last two years while Hope and Hank have been on the run.
Other heroes:
- Hope Van Dyne / The Wasp
- Dr. Hank Pym
- Luis, Kurt and Dave
- Janet van Dyne
Villain: ?
Interesting question. Kind of hard to say. Could be one of a few different people – or maybe all of them:
- Sonny Burch, shady black market technology dealer
- Ava / Ghost, a lady who can walk through walls, though apparently it hurts a lot
- The FBI
“Nothing can prepare you for what’s coming.” – Ava
Did we ever figure out what’s coming? Clearly I wasn’t prepared.
Villain Complexity Rating: 1/5
If you’re hungry for complex storytelling with deep, multilayered characters and compelling antagonists, this is not the movie for you. Watch Black Panther. The various villainous factions in AMATW are functional, but one-dimensional – not much to see here.
Now, if you like giant pez containers and seeing Paul Rudd the size of a 1st grader in an oversized sweatshirt (and who doesn’t!), then this is your movie.
I feel like I’ve answered this question.
“What’s at Stake” Rating: 0.1/5
If Sonny Burch gets the lab and the Pym family quantum tunnel generator, he plans to sell it – probably to someone shady – for a bunch of money. If Ghost gets control of the lab, she plans to suck out Janet Van Dyne’s life force to heal herself. If the FBI busts Scott, he goes to prison for 20 years. None of this is good – but in a universe in which we’re usually up against intergalactic obliteration – or at the very least, brutal planetary fascism, stakes that only affect a couple people’s lives barely register.
What did our hero(es) learn?
Janet learned how to use their quantum entanglement to make Scott her puppet, Hope learns how to forgive Scott for leaving her out of the Berlin fight, Hank learns how to go subatomic (finally), and Scott learns how to trick the FBI into thinking he’s in compliance with their house arrest protocol. Oh, and that risking your own happiness to help someone else is a good way to model classical heroic behavior to your daughter.
Heroism Rating: 2/5
Scott does ok! He takes some significant risks – initially, against his will, but later because he chooses to. He put himself in harm’s way for the Pyms, busts them out of jail, almost drowns while 100 feet tall, and fights Ghost so Hank and Janet can escape the quantum realm in their teeny tiny ship. He also, unfortunately, sneakily keeps Hank’s superhero suit and lies about it, which isn’t very good. And, he keeps putting the mission at risk to attend to his own business. But hey – it’s hard for ex-cons to find work, I get it!
Visual Aesthetic/CGI Rating: 2.5/5
AMATW is at its best when it’s having fun with teeny tiny things: like the suit in the sewing kit and the hot wheels case full of tiny real cars. The scene in which Scott is changing size sporadically uses visual gags to great effect, Ava’s phasing looks spooky, and the quantum realm is colorful and otherworldly. This movie doesn’t really have gummy cartoon body problems and the suits are cool, it just lacks a coherent sense of style. Though it borrows some of the gags from the first Ant-Man (such the long stories Michael Pena tells) and they kind of work, since the film isn’t particularly well paced or well written and doesn’t really have interesting antagonists, it needs style – or something – to make it work as a cinematic experience, rather than a movie where a bunch of stuff happens to characters you’re vaguely familiar with.
Heroic Cinema Saturation Index
Betsy Rating: 2/5
AMATW is a kids movie. I think it probably has more in common with Spy Kids or Minions than the other movies in the MCU, and that’s ok – especially/of course, if you yourself are a child. But then, you’d probably have very different criteria for what makes a good movie. And you probably aren’t spending your leisure time writing film reviews in a 66-page long google doc on the couch at 11:30 on a Friday night. Hopefully you’re sleeping. Go to bed, kids!
This movie has its moments. Paul Rudd the size of a first grader is genuinely funny (and a little uncomfortable), the running gag about close-up magic delivers again and again and Michael Pena’s story about his grandma whose restaurant jukebox only plays Morrissey because “What can I say? You know, we relate to his melancholy ballads.” is so great. And, it’s cute: Hope and Scott gazing at each other and family reunions and “I’m so proud of you, honey” and all that. It’s nice.
It’s just not interesting, at least not to grouchy, 37-year-old me. Laurence Fishburne shows up but is totally wasted with nothing to do. The dialogue is wooden and awkward. Though a bunch of stuff is happening all the time, it’s very hard to tell what is important and what isn’t. The actually interesting ideas about quantum dynamics are totally glazed over. For a character with such a rich backstory and complex motivation, Ava’s choices feels unnecessarily merciless, and Sonny seems to exist only to accelerate the plot in a vaguely menacing way. Coming off of juggernauts like Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, Civil War, Winter Soldier, and Guardians of the Galaxy (oh man!)… Ant Man and the Wasp unfortunately just feels like a goofy little blip. I am glad Ant-Man and the Pyms/Van Dynes are a part of all of this MCU stuff because without them, the internet wouldn’t have dreamed up the possibility of exploding Thanos from inside his own butthole. Which I hope happens. Because Infinity War is next.
Justin’s Rating: 1/5
Ok, confession time: I was definitely a little hard on Ant-Man a few reviews ago. Our dedicated readers will recall my slight preoccupation with Edgar Wright’s dismissal from the project prior to its completion, which resulted in what I see as a tonally bizarre film with a desperately stupid villain. While I do not withdraw my assertion that the film suffered from this, I must amend the severity of my judgement after learning the true meaning of disappointment upon revisiting Ant-Man and The Wasp. I was really hoping that I had misremembered this film as flashy and bland and… well the truth is that I didn’t remember much of it besides two suits and lots of shrinking/expanding things. I didn’t. It is flashy and bland and LOTS of things shrink and expand. I had completely spaced Ghost, the weirdly snarly “villain” on a mission to save her own life from metaphysical hell or whatever who looks like a cool hybrid of Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes and can do that cool phasing in and out of physical form thing Vision does. She sounds so cool, and I forgot her! While the memories of other MCU titles are inextricable from their villains, this one is strangely of no consequence. There’s another villain too but -just forget it.
The dialogue is rote, the actors straining to bring life to expositional summaries and implausible disclosures of motivation. This is a film well stocked with triple-A talent, and no one is looking particularly good thanks to this writing. For a film so reliant of slapstick, the physics are especially problematic – even for an MCU film. I know, I know. It’s a comic book movie. I just want a suggestion of consistency, not an explanation, but I’m not getting it.
There are a couple of bright spots. Paul Rudd and Randall Park (Agent Jimmy Woo) are a delightful pairing on screen, and Michael Pena is great as ever. There are a few funny gags in there. I dunno man, it’s a kids movie. I don’t really like kids movies.
Anyway, Ant-Man is a 3.
OVERALL: 1.5
Ant-Man and The Wasp is streaming on Netflix, or you can rent it through Vudu or the Google Play/iTunes app stores. I think you can probably guess whether/not we think you SHOULD.
Midnight Movie Train 