Ant-Man and the Wasp (a movie review post)

 

MCU #20

You can see my original review here. It's still completely valid, though I am going to say some other things in this one, things that may seem counter to my original review, though they really are not.

This movie is a lot of fun, whatever else may be said about it.

That said...

I think this movie is a little... sloppy. As I've said before (including my previous review of this), I love Walton Goggins, but his character, Sonny Burch, feels superfluous at best. That whole plotline seems to be there just to provide a reason for the car chase. Which is a lot of fun, but...
And there's the whole truth serum bit...
    "If it walk like duck and talk like duck... it's truth serum."
Or something to that effect.
And that scene is hilarious and I love it, but...
The whole Sonny Burch thread could have been eliminated and nothing that matters would have been lost from the movie. Unless the "boss" he referred to is going to be important, but that hardly seems to be significant enough for what feels more like filler, at this point.

Of course, they may have been going for a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World vibe with everyone after the shrunken office building, but they really needed more people after the building if that's what they were trying to do.

Things I love in the movie:

-- The truth serum joke.

-- The Hot Wheels car carrying case.
--Giant-Man
--Michael Pena

The thing is, there isn't anything I don't like about the movie. It's a lot of fun, and I enjoy it. I enjoyed it no less this time than the last time I saw it. But, looking at it from a storytelling viewpoint, the plot could have used some tightening.

Or maybe not. I mean, if it's fun and people enjoy it, what's the problem?
Yes, you could say that I have internal conflict over this stuff. 

It's a good movie, but I think it could have been better. I guess that's what I'm saying.

I guess not all of the sequels can be better than their predecessors.

Well...
Let's get it ranked.

1. Captain America: Civil War

2. The Avengers
3. Captain America: The First Avenger

4. Avengers: Infinity War

5. Spider-Man: Homecoming
6. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
7. Iron Man

8. Black Panther

9. Doctor Strange

10. Ant-Man

11. Thor: Ragnarok
12. Thor: The Dark World
13. Thor

14. Guardians of the Galaxy

15. Ant-Man and the Wasp

16. Avengers: Age of Ultron

17. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
18. Iron Man 3
19. Iron Man 2
20. Incredible Hulk (Edward Norton can't use Pym particles. It would cause a singularity and destroy the Earth.)

Ant-Man (a movie review post)

 

MCU #12

You can go back and see my original review here.

My original review of Ant-Man covered most of the points I would make here, so let me do a slight re-cap and see what else I can dig into.

Corey Stoll. Still not a fan. When it comes down to it, I think it's because he comes off as nothing more than a petulant child, and it's really difficult to take that seriously. He's like the angry five-year-old who has found a gun but doesn't really know what he's doing with it when he starts shooting rather than stomping his feet. Of course, now I'm thinking of Republicans and their constant foot stomping and waving around of guns. Well, from that perspective, maybe Stoll wasn't too far off in his presentation. It's difficult to take those people seriously, but they're causing real harm.

Still love Michael Pena. He's so great.
Still love the scene with the Falcon. If I'm choosing specific scenes from Marvel movies, this is probably one of my top three (along with the elevator scene from Winter Soldier and the Mjolnir scene from Ultron).

I remember being very annoyed with the character of Paxton when the movie came out, but I've softened on that and think the character works. Bobby Cannavale is really great.

From my current standpoint, that Hank Pym arranged for Scott Lang to break into his house has got to be one of the best plot ideas in any of the Marvel movies. Pym and his sitting in front of his bank of monitors is very spider-like, and the whole thing demonstrates how brilliant Pym is supposed to be. Not even daddy-Stark could replicate his formula, after all.

At the moment, the Ant-Man movies are a little on the outer rim of the MCU, kind of like Spider-Man. He's a character moving in and out of what's going on but, mostly, doing his own thing. So far. I think we're going to see some changes to that with the next movie, but that's just speculation on my part.

Oh, the usage of the ants is quite extraordinary. 
Also, for those who don't know, Ant-Man (and Wasp) were part of the original Avengers in the comics (Captain America was NOT). My understanding is that Ant-Man was being worked on as part of phase one of the MCU originally, but they decided to shelve him because they didn't think audiences were quite ready for it. They decided to focus on Cap, Thor, and Iron Man. I think this was a good call. I suppose it's also how we end up with Lang as Ant-Man rather than Pym. It's a good change. I like what they've done. Ant-Man is a strong movie. So let's look at the rankings.

The rankings!

1. The Avengers
2. Captain America: The First Avenger
3. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
4. Iron Man

5. Ant-Man
6. Thor: The Dark World
7. Thor

8. Guardians of the Galaxy

9. Avengers: Age of Ultron
10. Iron Man 3
11. Iron Man 2
12. Incredible Hulk (Norton caused Hulk to be beat by an ant.)

Ant-Man and the Wasp (a movie review post)

It's probably fair to say that Ant-Man is the least of the Marvel movies.
But this isn't all about size.

Seriously, though...

As far as Marvel movies go, the Ant-Man movies are a bit of lighthearted fun. Which is not to say that they don't deal with some serious topics, but humor is rather more infused in these movies than in the rest of the offerings from Marvel. Even more so than the Guardians movies.

This is not a bad thing. Really, it means that Marvel provides something for everyone.

Except a rom-com. You could probably make a case for the first Ant-Man filling the rom-com slot, but it's a heist movie and doesn't really hit all the rom-com notes. Man, now, I think Marvel needs to do a rom-com. Maybe with Dazzler once they get the X-Men back from Fox.
Yeah, I'm into this idea...
But I digress.

This movie has Boyd Crowder!!! Um, I mean, Walton Goggins! Have I mentioned before that I love Walton Goggins? Well, I do. Because Justified, the best TV show ever.
Um, where was I...?

In Marvel, actions have consequences, which is one of the best things about the MCU so far (something that Warner Brothers/DC still haven't picked up on), and we pick up with Scott Lang suffering the consequences of getting caught while helping Captain America in Civil War, which also serves as an ongoing conflict throughout the movie: When do you do something because it's the right thing to do even when it's breaking the law? A good thing to be thinking about in our current political climate, I think.

Mostly, though, the movie is a lot of good fun, full of people stealing things back and forth. While the good guys try to rescue Janet Van Dyne from the quantum realm.

The cast, as continues to be the case in all of the Marvel movies, is perfect and amazing. I love Paul Rudd and Michael Pena, and they are great together in these movies, though there's not quite as much of them together in this one as the last one. Did I mention Walton Goggins? WALTON GOGGINS! Randall Park is a lot of fun, too.

Possibly, actually, the weakest casting Marvel has had so far was Corey Stoll in the first Ant-Man movie, which has nothing to do with this one, but it's the only bit of weak casting I can think of in the whole franchise so far.

Anyway...

The movie is a lot of fun. It's probably not quite as good as the first one, but I can't say that with certainty. If you liked the first one, there's no reason you shouldn't like this one and, if you haven't seen the first one, you don't quite need to to see this one, though I would say you should anyway, just for the FUN of it. Oh, and, yes, there is a bit of lead up and crossover with Infinity War, which is not quite a spoiler, but it's something to be aware of if you're into the Avengers but dissed on Ant-Man. It's not like you'll need to see this one before the next Avengers movie, but, again, you probably should. Just for the fun of it.

Ant-Man (a movie review post)

Decades ago, Isaac Asimov asserted that science fiction wasn't so much as its own genre as it was a vehicle for other genres. As there was much dissent, he set out to write a sci-fi detective novel which became the first of his robot novels, The Caves of Steel. It seems that Marvel has set out to prove the same thing about the super hero genre. Sure, there's the pure super hero stuff like The Avengers, but we've also seen a war movie, an espionage movie, and, now, a heist movie, among others.

So, yeah, Ant-Man is structured as a heist movie, which is pretty clever. It's not a straight heist, though, there's a little, I don't know, rom-com(?) added in. You know, whatever kind of movie it is where the guy who has messed up and alienated his family has to put it back together again. At any rate, as Scott Lang says in the movie, "It's not just a heist."

Speaking of Scott Lang, Lang was one of my few worries about the movie going into it. As I've noted in previous reviews of Marvel movies (especially Iron Man 3), I do understand that the universe of the Marvel movies is not the same as the one for the comics, but I couldn't understand why they weren't having Hank Pym be Ant-Man when he was going to be in the movie. It was baffling. BUT! I think they did an excellent job of threading the Ant-Man origin story into what they did in the movie. Actually, I really like what they did with that. It adds some extra layers to the movie than just doing an "origin story."

Also speaking of Scott Lang, Paul Rudd was great. Okay, so, I already really like Paul Rudd, but he was great in this role. This is another case of Marvel finding an actor who would really own the part and make it his, because that's what Rudd did. However, it was Michael Pena as Luis who almost stole the show. He was brilliant, and the voice-over stuff they did with him was hilarious.

Michael Douglas and Evangeline Lily were both very good. Douglas probably about what you'd expect since he's always really solid. Lily was better than I expected because my main exposure to her has been in the horrible Hobbit movies, and, though those weren't her fault, her inclusion in those has been a sore point. I was also glad to see Wood Harris in the movie. His performance wasn't extraordinary or anything, but I like him as an actor, so it was good to see him in a high profile movie.

The only weak link was Corey Stoll who came off more as an over enthusiastic used car salesman trying to sell you a bad car than as a real villain. Fortunately, the movie didn't focus so much on him.

Also, the scene with the Falcon was awesome. I love Anthony Mackie in that role, so I was glad they included him. "It's really important to me that Cap never finds out about this."

Basically, this is another really solid Marvel movie and, while I would quite put it as high as Captain America or Iron Man on quality, it's close. Guardians of the Galaxy close. I would have gone right back in to watch it again if I could have.