Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
Man, Ant-man movies don’t believe in opening credits, do they? You expect to have a title card or two of breathing time. Just a slow ease into the movie, get that fancy new Marvel Studios logo in there. Nope, BOOM, movie’s started, sit the f*** down!
So it seems everyone forgot that Scott Lang was hired by Pym to steal the suit. I also wonder what happened at the end of Winter Soldier. It is heavily hinted that Captain America broke into the Raft and broke out everyone on his team. But in Infinity War and this movie it is pointed out that Scott Lang and Hawkeye took deals so they could return to their families under house arrest.
Anywho, Scott Lang returns home and Hank and Hope both are mad at him. Hank has lost all his faith in Scott. Which is understandable. In Ant-Man, Hank had a lot of faith in Scott Lang and believed in him. However, when Scott Lang took his tech WITHOUT him hiring him to do it, Hank gets all pissy, because now he has made them fugitives in something they didn’t even participate in. Which is really odd. If War Machine went against the Accords, wouldn’t Tony Stark technically be arrested for making his suit?
So when Scott has a dream about Janet Van Dyne, he gets hauled right into the plot of the movie, because suddenly he has what Hank and Hope need to save Janet. By the way, worst kept secret that Janet Van Dyne returns, she’s on the damn poster. Hell, she has her own character poster.
So after picking up Scott, the team needs to get a special technology thing that a restaurant owner has. . .for some reason. So that one guy who keeps playing racist characters in Quinten Tarantino films and Justified plays a guy who owns a restaurant and does shady technology deals. Honestly, I don’t know where this guy fits into things outside of just being a third party that wants to hunt down Pym’s tech.
When the deal goes south and Hope goes full Wasp on their bitch asses, we are then introduced to the Ghost. She can phase in and out of reality which makes her a pain in the ass to fight against. She wants Pym’s tech so she can steal the quantum energy from Janet Van Dyne in order to fix her phasing issue, which is slowly killing her. She is getting help from the former Black Goliath(checks notes) okay, just Goliath. He was Black Goliath for years, but they took it out.
Oh and because Hank, Hope, and Scott are all fugitives, the FBI is also after them and their tech. So 4 separate groups are all after this tech. Only two of them have motivations beyond, “I want it.” All the groups are entertaining as hell, but it is damn near turning into wacky racers of everybody trying to get the tech.
After a game of hot potato with the incredible shrinking building, Paul Rudd does his best impression of a character we haven’t met yet, and then gets everyone back. Janet returns to the real world, then manages to stabilize Ghost for the time being. Then Ant-man goes deep diving in the quantum realm to get more Quantum juice. . .right when Thanos decides to snap everyone else out of existence, stranding him in the quantum realm.
I feel this is one of the better sequels. It manages to maintain the quality of the first film pretty well. It doesn’t go above and beyond like Winter Soldier did, but it doesn’t regress or reduce, like Dark World or Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2.
Now, one final film. Infinity War, where it all comes together for the first time.
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