Skip to main content

A Small Dose of Superhero Relief


I had a moment of clarity a few days before seeing it that I was anticipating going to a movie called Ant-Man and the Wasp. Twenty years ago that would’ve been the title of a 50s B-movie being riffed on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. It says a lot about the dedication, power, and impact of Marvel that the twentieth film of their Cinematic Universe is the sequel to the movie about the shrinking superhero. It’s gotten to the point where they can make a concept work, regardless of how cheesy it sounds, not once, but twice.
Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) has been under house arrest ever since joining Captain America’s team in Civil War, an action that has also made his former friends Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) fugitives. They reach out to him though when it becomes apparent he holds the key to rescuing Pym’s wife Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) from the subatomic quantum realm. As a tortured stealth agent (Hannah John-Kamen) tries to steal Pym’s technology, Lang and van Dyne team up as Ant-Man and the Wasp to subdue her and protect the security of their mission.
Director Peyton Reed really knows how to work with Marvel’s distinct operating system of crossover and intertextuality. Rather than seeing the use of Ant-Man in Civil War as something to work around, he and the screenwriters use it as a jumping off point, essentially providing the catalyst for where a lot of the characters and their relationships are in this movie. This allows the film to feel both organic within the universe and self-sustaining enough to be divorced from the greater action elsewhere in that universe -though to less of a degree than Ant-Man. The plot itself, which involves a number of parties trying to acquire a portable building housing most of Pym’s technology, isn’t very interesting; and either of the two subplots concerned with a black market gang led by a hammy Walton Goggins and the FBI searching for the trio, could have easily been dropped. But if not justified, they’re atoned for by the charm of the performances and the inventiveness of the visual effects.
Despite the equal billing of the two lead characters, Ant-Man is still the protagonist more than The Wasp. He has more screen-time, more of a character arc, and the film just seems more drawn to Paul Rudd’s charisma and sense of humour. But Evangeline Lilly certainly isn’t lacking for presence or performance. Her character is expanded on, her capabilities and intelligence is shown off a number of times, and she’s the more engaging superhero in the action sequences. The two also have serviceable chemistry, but they need Douglas’ grumpy genius to really complete the team. He too is more active in this film, and has a lot more emotional weight tied into their endeavour, though I do wish the movie had explored more the responsibility he had in the creation of this movies’ villain. That villain however had the greatest character arc. Though not quite as compelling and certainly not as threatening as either of her immediate Marvel predecessors, Hannah John-Kamen’s Ghost is an incredibly refreshing kind of antagonist: genuinely sympathetic, desperate, and a victim in a way we haven’t seen from a Marvel movie in a while. And how she’s ultimately dealt with is equally different and gratifying. Laurence Fishburne is great, as is Michelle Pfeiffer for her limited appearance. And Randall Park, despite having to work through some awkwardly oriented exposition early on, is pretty funny as Lang’s FBI watcher. Additionally, Michael Pena, Tip “T.I.” Harris, and David Dastmalchian reprise their roles as Lang’s friends; as do Judy Greer and Bobby Cannavale as his ex-wife and her husband, and Abby Ryder-Fortson as his daughter Cassie.
Just like the first movie, Ant-Man and the Wasp somehow is able to consistently surprise with how much it gets out of the gimmick of size-shifting for the purposes of action or comedy. It still comes up with clever and creative ways to experiment, also utilizing the “giant man” revealed in Civil War to fun lengths. While there’s plenty of good humour in the script (credited to five writers including Rudd and Chris McKenna), the physical comedy that takes advantage of the effects is the more memorable stuff, such as the extendible handle on a shrunken office building and one hilarious sequence in an elementary school. But the visuals are also ambitious when it comes to travelling to the quantum realm, a subatomic world beyond microorganisms and identifiable matter, and Ghost’s “quantum phasing” ability, which she describes as the result of her cells constantly separating and re-assembling. They’re impressive, imaginative visuals that more than make up for a few still not quite convincing de-aging effects.
Compensating naturally weaker elements with humour, great visuals, and even a good message relating to how it approaches its antagonist, Ant-Man and the Wasp maintains the charm and affability of the first movie, while including some new elements that make it entertaining and fulfilling. It doesn’t mark any major changes in the greater MCU, but that’s really preferable coming off such a grand and devastating behemoth as Infinity War. After which, it’s by no means an “important” Marvel movie, but it is a necessary one.

 Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Strange History of the American Spoof Movie

Parody movies have been around for a lot longer than we tend to think of them. Even from the earliest days of Hollywood there were movies meant to satirize a particular subject or genre. In the silent era, Buster Keaton was responsible for a few. And in the early sound era, almost as soon as the monster pictures took off did you see comic versions of them -Abbott and Costello hosting a few. But parody movies tended to be subtle for most of cinema history, or parody came in conjunction with another goal of the comedy. It really wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that it took off and became popularly understood. And there is perhaps a line to be drawn to the counterculture comedy explosion that began in the 1970s through avenues like  Saturday Night Live , which frequently parodied from even its earliest years popular movies and cultural properties of the time. But that is still a way’s back. To my generation though, ‘parody movie’ is perhaps a less known term than the more blunt ‘s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes on the Title Cards of The Lord of the Rings

It might be sacrilege for one who both considers The Lord of the Rings  trilogy to be one of the greatest triumphs of cinema and has been an avid lover of the films since adolescence, to declare that the original theatrical cuts of the films are better than the much beloved extended editions. Easily it’s my most controversial opinion regarding these movies. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the extended editions quite a lot, especially as someone who just enjoys spending time in that universe. They flesh it out more, add extra flavour, and in increasing the length by about an hour really emphasize the epic quality of these films. But I find that the original cuts are generally more cleanly paced, more seamlessly edited, and much more accessible to audiences. All the stuff there is to love about The Lord of the Rings  is there in the original versions, the plethora of new and extended scenes merely add to that for fans. And of those, they fall into three camps for me: 1....
1 comment
Read more

Back to the Feature: New York, New York (1977)

New York, New York  is a two hour forty minute musical movie largely about a toxic relationship and I understand why it was Martin Scorsese’s first big flop. Some have blamed its poor reception on the kind of movie it was, of a style and tone Scorsese wasn’t known for, but I find that hard to believe. Even after only five films, he’d proven himself an extremely versatile director, and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore  found an audience. Sure this jazz musical love letter to New York City was following up Taxi Driver and its’ far more cynical take on the city, but then it’s also ‘from the director of Taxi Driver ’ which itself was a big hit. Was it a matter of public appetite for musicals, or mere word of mouth and early critical reception that dissuaded viewers? Irrespective of that, I was stunned to discover this movie was the origin of the titular song, which I’d assumed was much older (it’s definitely got the sound of something that might have come out of the Jazz sce...
Post a Comment
Read more