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Ant-Man and the Wasp

It's been nearly two weeks since I've seen this film and I'm as ambivalent towards it as I was right after seeing it. It's not terrible, just mostly inconsequential. I say mostly because there's an angle that slots into the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe that'll become integral to the resolution of the whole Thanos business. No more to be said on that.

Anyway, Ant-Man and the Wasp brings Paul Rudd's ant back to the margins of the MCU. This time he's joined by Evangeline Lilly's wasp in a story that focuses on personal themes of closure and never losing hope (or Janet, in this case). The 'ant'agonist (eh, eh?) is a multi-phasic herring really, probably one of the most innocuous baddies in these films. Ghost, played by Hanna John-Kamen, is basically just an obstacle to the mission of retrieiving Michelle Pfieffer's (original) Wasp, Janet van Dyne, from the quantum realm.

Well, it all sounds like a lot of old rope, doesn't it? It's not that bad. There are some odd little asides; 'Everyday is Like Sunday' by Morrissey as a ringtone ('First of the Gang to Die' is also in there), Ant-man watching Donald Sutherland in Animal House on TV, and the introduction of Laurence Fishburne as Goliath, another famously big Marvel hero. Actually, for a film called Ant-Man, I preferred the scenes where he went GI-ant, but this could be a comparative thing. The San Francisco car chase is probably the best action sequence in the film, helped no end by the options of shrinkage and enlargement for the main characters.

So to sum up; distracting fun but when the best thing in the film is the mid-credit sting, you may be better served elsewhere.

See also:

I've got nothing on the ant theme so have a crack at Robert Zemeckis's Romancing the Stone (1984) with a young-ish Michael Douglas ('actual' young not 'fake' young like in the above film) and Richard Donner's Ladyhawke (1985), which places Michelle Pfeiffer alongside Matthew Broderick and Rutger Hauer! How many films can boast Ferris Bueller AND Roy Batty? Not bloody many, I'd wager.

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