Yesterday I finally got a chance to see Ant-Man and the Wasp, the sequel to the 2015 movie, and overall I was pretty happy with the film.
I felt the movie was a good follow-up to The Avengers: Infinity War, and I agree with what Kevin Feige had to say in that “it felt right to do a fun family buddy movie” following Infinity War.
I really have no problems with Ant-Man 2 except for one possible nitpick, which is in regards to Hank Pym searching for his wife. It seems like Pym gave up on searching for Janet and thought she was dead years ago, but then Scott saw/found her in the first movie in the Quantum Realm. Then in this movie, Pym find these plans from years ago to build a Quantum Tunnel. So why didn’t he build the tunnel years ago and search for her?? Maybe the tech wasn’t available or some such notion, but it seemed a little too convenient and sort of a lame plot device. It is “Ant-Man” we are talking about here, so it didn’t really bother me too much, but I thought I would point it out (I’ll also add all this “Quantum” talk and Lang starting a security company reminded me of Mark Gruenwald’s Quasar who gets his powers from the Quantum Zone and also started a security company).
The story was fun and different from what I expected, which is something I was happy about, and something which Marvel seems to be doing as of late — not giving away spoilers. To be fair, I stayed away from most of the interviews, trailers and spots, so things came off as pretty fresh for me. I liked how Bill Foster didn’t come off as a villain (Goliath nod was cool), and the same could actually be said for Ghost; so maybe we’ll see them again in the MCU. I’m all for that.
Stand outs for me include Evangeline Lilly as Wasp (she’s great in anything), Michael Douglas (great actor), and I am a Paul Rudd fan. Michael Peña played a terrific Luis, but I question if he could be used properly in another MCU movie or side-by-side the other characters (I suppose he would work in any Guardians of the Galaxy or Thor: Ragnarok movie). David Dastmalchian got a huge pop from the audience when he was discussing the “baba yaga” (boogeyman). The crowd also laughed a lot for other scenes.
I’ll say my two sons (ten and fourteen) found some of the scenes cringy with Scott and his daughter, but they don’t have any sisters, so that could be the reason (lol). I didn’t mind them myself.
I did expect more from Michelle Pfeiffer’s Wasp and the Quantum Realm to be honest, as she basically just appears at the end of the movie and fixes Ghost. I was actually thinking to myself that Wasp would make a cool OP villain.
Special effects were great, and I guess since some fans (for some reason?) are comparing Ant-Man 2 to Black Panther, I’ll say that the special effects for Ant-Man 2 were better. I’ll also add I liked Ant-Man and the Wasp better than Black Panther, which was really just average at best, IMO.
I was also really happy with the Ant-Man 2 post-credit scenes–both of them. Yeah, there are two, so stick around until the very end. The last one was cool with what the TV was showing, so try and take notice.
Regarding The Avengers 4 and Ant-Man, I’m wondering if somehow they use the Quantum Realm to travel in the past, like how Scott and Janet sort of switched bodies? Scott was in Janet’s body during the wardrobe hide-and-seek scene, but was he in her memory or was he actually in her body in the past? Janet ended up controlling Scott’s body in the present, so perhaps it is the latter? We then see the Avengers could use the Quantum Realm to “take over” their bodies in the past, and then possibly change things in Avengers 4?
To cap things, I find the Ant-Man movies to be just really fun, relaxing flicks that you can just sit back and watch and eat popcorn to. Nothing wrong with that. Let me know your thoughts on the movie below!
