I finally got a chance to catch Ant-Man and the Wasp in theatres this weekend, and while it has been getting absolutely ruthless reviews since it opened, I have to say that it simply doesn’t deserve the hate. This movie was fun, hilarious (at times), simple to understand, and something that the whole family can enjoy. I honestly feel like whatever Marvel movie followed Avengers: Infinity War would have been given poor reviews no matter how good it was, just because it’s impossible to top that without using another ensemble film. In many ways, this is the exact change of pace we need after Infinity War, and I would like to break down what I liked and didn’t like about Marvel’s latest addition to their franchise.
Disruptive Humor
The biggest problem I had with Ant-Man and the Wasp was the placement of certain jokes. For some reason, most of the scenes with Bill Foster were ruined by humorous sequences that just distracted from the plot, and to me I didn’t get to really understand and connect with the character because of this. When we first met Foster we heard the exchange between him and Scott of how big they’ve each been able to grow (of course leading to many penis jokes), which completely distracted me from why they were there in the first place, and the video call from Cassie when Foster and Ghost had our heroes tied up was just completely unnecessary. Of course I expected there to be a lot of humor from how funny the first film was, but in comedy timing is everything, and there just wasn’t good timing in these instances.
Why Was Ghost the Villain Again?
Ghost was supposed to be the MCU’s next big villain, yet she was completely one dimensional. She had a believable backstory that explained why she would want to kill Hank Pym, except she didn’t want to kill Hank Pym. She wanted to stop herself from fading out of existence, yet when Ant-Man and the team offered to help her, she refused. Now I know she refused their help because there would be no major conflict without her, but what I can’t figure out is if this is poor character development or poor plot writing. Either way, Sonny Burch seemed like a more menacing villain than Ghost, and that just wasn’t supposed to happen.
The Simple Plot
One aspect of the movie that is evident from the get go is the simplicity of it all, and that it was trying to be more fun than serious. However, the plot did suffer from that. The plot wasn’t strong because the director and writers weren’t focused on the plot, they were focused on how much they could make you laugh. It didn’t matter what part they needed for the quantum whatever or who stole what, it mattered how much fun the audience was having. In a way I appreciate that, I wasn’t expecting this to be an intellectual masterpiece, but I knew that everyone could do better. Ant-Man had a solid plot and was still much funnier than the sequel, so it’s not like we even got a fair tradeoff. I just felt that more thought could have been put into why these characters are doing what they’re doing, and if that takes away from some of the humor then so be it. I would rather have a mildly funny movie with a solid base than a movie packed full of jokes with no real reason as to why everything is happening.
The Wasp
The Wasp was heavily featured in this movie, and I’m happy that she was. This wasn’t another Ant-Man solo movie, this was Ant-Man and the Wasp sharing the screen together, and that’s exactly what we got. However, Ant-Man didn’t really seem like the hero. It felt to me like Scott Lang got in the way and messed things up, even though he’s half of the marque duo. It seemed like although the heroes should have been featured in the film 50/50 in terms of action sequences, heroics and screen time, it was featured 60/40 in favor of the Wasp. I’m fine with that in a way considering how she has been underused in the past, but at the same time the writers shouldn’t have to make Ant-Man look like a fool in order to build her up. My solution to this? Make a Wasp solo movie. This film could have easily been just The Wasp and still featured Ant-Man in some capacity, and it would have been the same exact movie. If this didn’t happen because a Wasp solo movie wouldn’t sell as much as Ant-Man and the Wasp did, then I think that’s more of a problem with society as opposed to the movie makers.
Janet Van Dyne
Something that I think everyone was looking forward to was finally seeing Michelle Pfeiffer portray the original Wasp, Janet Van Dyne. The only problem is we got to see that happen for like ten minutes. The amount of screen time that Pfeiffer got was absolutely criminal, so much so that I don’t know why she was in the movie at all. I would have rathered had Janet stay in the quantum realm than be featured in a movie based completely around saving her for only a few scenes. I can only hope that we see much more of her in the future, and express my extreme disappoint in how the director and writers treated her character.
The Post-Credits Scene
The stakes finally got real after the credits. It was an easy guess to predict that Thanos’s snap would somehow factor into the end of this film, but I don’t think anyone could have predicted what actually happened. So Janet, Hope and Hank are all dead, and Scott is stuck in the quantum realm with no way out, meaning that this is absolutely detrimental for the future of both the Avengers and Ant-Man himself. One positive to come out of all of this though is the time whirls (I’m not entirely sure if that was the exact wording used or not, so feel free to correct me in the comments) that Janet mentioned before she turned to dust. Why is this a positive? Because that suggests that once Scott is brought out of the quantum realm through whatever means, he will likely know how to time travel. It’s been speculated that Avengers 4 will be a time travel film, and now we know how that may be set up. No matter how you feel about losing more beloved characters, I’m going to say that this was one of the most shocking post-credits scenes since Nick Fury at the end of Iron Man, and I thoroughly enjoyed the near heart attack I suffered in the theatre.
