Written by Peta Hardiman
How far would you go to save a person that you thought you’d lost?
Ant-Man and the Wasp starts off in 1987 and we bear witness as the original Ant-Man, Hank Pym, watches the Wasp, his wife Janet van Dyne, shrink to sub-atomic levels in order to successfully defuse a nuclear missile. As a result, she remains trapped in the Quantum Realm, and Hank returns home to raise daughter Hope. Years later, during the events of the first Ant-Man movie, Scott Lang manages to enter the Quantum Realm and return safely, leading Hank and Hope to believe that Janet is both alive and able to be rescued.
Most on the movie takes place sometime after Captain America: Civil War and before Avengers: Infinity War and the first we see of Scott Lang is of him suffering the consequences of his activities in Civil War. During the last days of Scott’s house arrest, Hank and Hope manage to briefly open the Quantum Bridge they’ve designed, sending Scott some kind of vision and subsequently drawing all three of their lives back together as the trio battles frantically to save Janet—and avoid getting caught by the FBI.
Scott Lang isn’t your average Marvel Hero. He’s not a genius, he’s not wealthy, he’s not an alien, and wasn’t modified or affected by radiation or anything scientific… he’s just human, and I think that’s one of my favourite aspects of both the Ant-Man movies. Don’t get me wrong, he has plenty of redeeming characteristics; he’s strong, street smart, and incredibly resourceful, but what makes Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man such an enjoyable character to watch is that he’s funny as heck. Actually, the whole movie is and the moments like Lang confusing the FBI agent with his skills in close-up magic mixed together with the film’s more serious moments keeps you entertained and on the edge of your seat.
At this point in their tenure, people have come to expect certain qualities in a Marvel movie, and Ant-Man and the Wasp really follows through. It is an undeniably well put together film, from the cinematography to the soundtrack, and to the way the cast and characters interact with one another. Most especially our newcomers: Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins), and Ghost/Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), who moved into their roles seamlessly. Burch as the burgeoning career villain, and Starr as the unwilling victim to Pym’s past grievances.
While the plot was not overly complex, especially when compared to the recent Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp felt like a complete self-contained story. We spent the bulk of the movie wrapped up in the intricacies of a story about a daughter looking for her mother, and it was a refreshing change of pace to get the story from the perspective of the ‘secondary’ character.
My one complaint about the movie as a whole is the culmination of Ghost’s story line—it seemed a bit easy. Given that she spent the whole movie hell-bent on saving herself, once she’d gotten what she wanted, she very meekly crept away from the action. For a character that displayed such an intense desire to crush all those who stood in her way, it felt a bit anti-climactic in the end.
The real reason Ant-Man and the Wasp was such a winner for me is this: its secret is that it doesn’t try too hard. It doesn’t try to achieve too much in two hours of screen time, and it acted as a throwback to earlier Marvel movies, when you weren’t contending with ten years’ worth of back-story. As far as superhero movies go, and Marvel ones, in particular, it feels as though all the characters got what they wanted by the end. Word of warning: if you want a happy ending, don’t watch the first end credit scene.
