It’s time for the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe entry, and this time the wheel turns to the sequel to 2015’s modest hit Ant-Man, now aptly titled Ant-Man and The Wasp. Shall we dive in, or shrink down?
Two years after Civil War, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is under house arrest after siding with Captain America to fight the government, and last we saw was being broken out of a maximum security prison by Cap. (Wait, what?) Anyway, Scott is two days away from Agent Jimmy Woo setting him free, after which point he will presumably be on probation for the rest of his life anyway. He has also not spoken to Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) or Hope (Evangeline Lilly) in the intervening years since then. Though they were all friends at the end of the first film, in one of those convenient “between the scenes” feuds manufactured for drama, Hank is pissed at Scott because he stole the suit to go on the Germany mission with Cap. Whatever! Hope is pissed as well because, well, when is she ever not pissed? And so, with Scott living in a gorgeous New York brownstone apartment he can somehow afford even though he’s a convict with no job, freedom awaits- until Hank calls upon him to go rescue his thirty-years missing wife/the original Wasp, Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), from the microscopic quantum realm. Also extremely conveniently, Hank was able to wait thirty years, but decided the day to enlist Scott to go find her was when he’s one day away from having an ankle monitor taken off. What a twist!
So they venture into the quantum realm (well, they attempt to get the parts to do so, then one of them ventures forth in the last twenty minutes), and are besieged by enemies from all sides, including a Southern bumpkin gangster played by Walton Goggins; and our main antagonist, the mysterious Ghost (Hannah John Kamen), who can move through solid matter by will (I think a better name would have been “The Immaterial Girl,” because she’s just a material girl in a material world, but still). The heroes need one small part left to fix Hank’s giant time portal tube thingie prototype, but the Southern boy and Ghost want it as well. Ghost wants the whole machine for nefarious reasons; while Hank and Hope want to go into there to rescue Janet, Ghost wants to go in to kill her first, so that she can sap the existing quantum energy to become solid again. The fiend! Along with the help of Luis from the first movie, and Dr. Bill Foster (Lawrence Fishburne, in another superhero movie where he performs zero action and thus can safely remain pleasantly sedentary), the chase is on. Will they rescue Janet in time? Will Scott get back home in time before Jimmy Woo realizes he’s (gasp) dodged his house arrest?? The stakes were very low in this one, I have to admit!
It was good, I liked it. No complaints, it’s not going to win an Oscar or anything, but it was alright! What bugged me more than anything, I must admit, were the small niggling details that needlessly made no sense. Such as, why does Ghost have a posh British accent, when we see her in a flashback as a child in America WITH an American accent? Or why Janet, after being lost in the quantum realm for thirty years, mysteriously has access to makeup and the latest hairstyle fashions from 2018? (I guess they didn’t want to mess with that Michelle Pfeiffer White Gold) Or why she WASN’T played by Catherine Zeta Jones, Douglas’ real-life wife, who would’ve fit in perfectly as someone who didn’t age in the quantum realm- since she’s thirty years younger than Michael Douglas in real life anyway? I guess now I’m getting into the realm of, “Why wasn’t Scott’s wife played by Phoebe Booffay?” Perhaps their problems in reality made it too much of a risk, but still, it’s no more risk at this point than hoping Stan Lee won’t say or do anything too damaging to the Marvel brand now in his current fugue state. Poor, poor Stan.
Speaking of, his cameo disturbed me slightly- it was seemingly the first one filmed after his wife’s death when he started to become addled, and it sort of showed. Stan looks like he has no idea what he’s talking about or the context of the scene, and even the joke was a bit off-putting. Let me spoil it for you: Stan is a pedestrian opening his car door, when Scott shrinks the car to microscopic size right before the senior citizen’s eyes. Stan says very emotionlessly, “Well, the ’60s were a lot of fun, but I’m sure paying for it now.” I get the implication of the joke was that he dropped too much acid, but he IS paying for it now, badly, in the form of vultures pecking away at his legacy! Give Stan a good send-off cameo in Avengers 4: Infinity War Part 2- First Blood, and let the man enjoy his final years in peace already!
Anyway, it was all silly good fun, until, of course, the mid-credits scene. You know what I’m talking about, but if there was any question as to how this synced up with Infinity War, well, the timeline is laid out pretty clearly. I was kind of hoping they would buck convention and not have everyone but Scott disappear in Thanos’ snap (The Snappening), but yep, there goes the dust, so it can be just him teaming with The Avengers and that raccoon, and we don’t have to worry about where Hank Pym is. What about Scott’s family? Did the daughter and Judy Greer turn into dust too? I don’t think it matters, just as we probably won’t find out if Aunt May or The Vulture or Baron Mordo or any of the TV heroes did either, at least until they’re all brought back at the end of the next movie anyway. I have zero doubt, however, that they’ll tell us right way in the beginning moments of Avengers 4 whether Gwyneth Paltrow and Jon Favreau survived, because, dear God, what would we do without Happy??? I can’t be the only one who could not care less what happens to Favreau and had zero desire to ever see him again past the first Iron Man film, right?
As far as Marvel movies go, it was good, it was decent, and I dug it, but I am probably, definitely suffering from Marvel movie fatigue. I definitely am tired of seeing the Avengers/Cosmic Universe characters used over and over when the scope of Marvel is so much wider, and in particular, the darker, quirkier heroes were always the ones that most interested me. As most of you will likely recall, in 1995 Marvel split their publishing line into five groups, handled like their own imprints by separate editors. The groups were: Avengers Marvel Universe, X-Men, Spider-Man, Marvel Edge (Punisher, Daredevil, Hulk, Ghost Rider), and Special Projects, which included licensed comics like Ren & Stimpy and the prestige format titles. Of these five, the MCU only covers the first, with some of the tv shows tackling the “Edge” characters. Now, I don’t know about you, but the MU/Avengers group always interested me the least; I fell in love with Marvel due to Spidey, X-Men, Daredevil, and even Hulk and Punisher interested me far more than Hawkeye and the Vision. The only ones I really liked from the first MU group were the FF, who are of course noticeably absent thus far until the film rights revert, and are sorely missed on-screen.
So it feels really weird that this one segment of heroes has made this humongous resurgence to the point where they overtook everyone else in the stable, and the characters I mentioned are now the black sheep; Marvel themselves seemed fine to discard them, until the MCU came along. Heck, here’s an interesting fact: In August 1996, Marvel ONLY published titles that month that related to Spider-Man or X-Men, besides DD, Punisher, GR and the Silver Surfer. Really, look it up! So, I think they were doing just fine before all these Avengers legacy characters dominated everything. It is wearing on me a bit, I admit, because they’re all a bit interchangeable, with less pathos and more of that goofy Kirby Krap as window dressing. I don’t feel I’m alone in this, but it seems that through sheer osmosis, Marvel has willed the world of its 1970’s comic book line onto the big screen and gained mainstream acceptance, much to the glee of its current reader base- you know, 45-year-old Gen X geeks who grew up with this junk in the ’70s.
So everybody seems really happy, but I think the best characters are being left on the table. Spider-Man has been utterly Avengers-fied into Tony Stark’s sidekick, the X-Men are stuck in Fox purgatory, Hulk can’t appear in a solo movie, and Daredevil and Punisher, who I would argue are far more interesting than, well, Ant-Man and The Wasp, are relegated to Netflix series as also-rans. This isn’t the world I grew up with, so I grow weary with each successive MCU entry that pushes us more into that realm. So when people say gloatingly, “Who would think a Guardians of the Galaxy movie would succeed?” I say, any of these characters would succeed if given proper love by the filmmakers and the billion dollar push of Disney. So yeah, I would’ve really rather seen the Fantastic Four in that spot instead of the Guardians. At this point, I don’t care who it is, but I really hunger for a Marvel movie not connected to the greater universe, and one which has to stand and succeed based on its own merits.
To that point, part of the reason the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies remain so charming to me is because they are not tied into any kind of larger Marvel U; they exist completely in their own world where Spidey is the only superhero. Which was usually how it was in the comics before the last decade, but anyway. What made that so great was not only the fact that they had to succeed based on the richness of just Spidey’s corner of the world- which had more than enough with his cast of goofy characters and endless vllains- but it made the movies a little more personal, and the challenges a little more scary. You knew if Peter faced some insurmountable problem, he was on his OWN, with no one to back him up or even advise him. Same for most of the Marvel movies from the ’00s. You could kind of check your brain at the door a bit and become invested in whatever story was being told and accept the reality of each particular world, without wondering how it connected to the previous films in a continuing 24-film saga.
Now, contrast this with, say, Iron Man 3. It’s basically the same thing- the story is completely in Tony Stark’s world with only a passing reference to The Avengers from the year before- and yet, becuase it was set in the larger world, nearly everyone watching spent the whole movie wondering why he didn’t call in the cavalry for help. Heck, more people probably wondered where the heck SHIELD was, and why Nick Fury didn’t intervene on his own when the President himself was kidnapped! The answer, of course, was that Sam Jackson wasn’t contracted for that movie, but it made no sense IN THE CONTEXT of the larger universe narrative they set up. You can’t go back once it’s there, so the “single franchise” entries always feel like table setting for the Avengers “mythology” episodes where big things finally happen. I had my problems with the story too, like the offensive obliteration of The Mandarin into a joke; and Tony’s newest “foible” manifesting in the form of ever-convenient PTSD, the go-to diagnosis for a hero in trouble in a kid’s movie, rather than touching on anything taboo like, I don’t know, his alcoholism! But that’s a rant for another day.
Sorry that this became more of a referendum on my nit-picks with the MCU, but hey, how much can you say about Ant-Man, or The Wasp for that matter? They sure shrank, I guess. It was good, see it. Anyway, on to new business. Next week, finally, finally, The Greatest Covers of All Time (split into 4 parts that will all come out within rapid succession); and in August, the Greatest Comic Characters of All Time. Of all time! The list stands at 12 iconic characters right now and I’m having a hard time cutting any to whittle it down to a Top 10; we’ll see how it goes.