Here's what I remember about
Ant-Man:
-Paul Rudd is charming and funny.
-It needed more Evangeline Lilly.
-I like cranky Michael Douglas.
-Michael Pena was funny in a way that could get
annoying if overused.
-Something about going subatomic.
That's about it. Everything else I had to be
reminded of while watching the sequel. Using those things as my basis for
judgment, Ant-Man & the Wasp got things mostly right while avoiding
a lot of problematic sequel issues. Paul Rudd is still delightful. He's playing
the Paul Rudd character, and I'm fine with that. He's got an "aww shucks"
quality to him. That oversized child approach works well for the playful tone
of much of the MCU and the Ant-Man franchise in particular. As indicated
by her inclusion in the title, the Wasp (Lilly) gets plenty to do in this. I
don't know if I'd call her the co-lead, but she gets agency, a story not
dependent on Rudd, and is way more competent than him. Michael Douglas has
happily moved into "old man" roles. He's always been prickly, but now
that he has gray hair, it's somehow more endearing. They don't overuse his
prickliness though. Speaking over overuse: I'm so happy to report that they
didn't ruin Michael Pena. People responded so positively to his character in
the first movie, that I worried they'd overuse him or underwrite him in this.
That's not the case. He's a little more central to the action this time. He's
still quite funny. But he's used in new and different enough ways to remain a
highlight of the movie.
Speaking of the movie*, I should probably get to the
plot. Well, Scott is in the final days of a 2 year sentence to house arrest
mandated by the government after he went to Germany to help out Captain America
in Civil War.
He's been good and followed the rules. He's been working remotely for a
security consultant firm he started with Luis (Pena) and the rest of his crew
and has been trying to be a good dad despite his circumstances. With only a
couple days left in his sentence, Scott has a strange dream and reports it back
to Hope (Lilly) and Hank (Douglas), who he's been on the outs with for 2 years
because he didn't consult them before helping out in Civil War. They
need Scott for a plan to possibly rescue Hope's mother (Michelle Pfeiffer) from
the quantum dimension. A mysterious costumed woman they call Ghost (Hannah
John-Karmen) needs Hank and Hope's equipment for a similar purpose and is
willing to fight them for it. There are some other goons on the side led by
Walton Goggins, not the mention the FBI looking to catch Scott breaking the
rules too. Hank's old partner, Dr. Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne) is somehow
tied to all this as well.
*I need to find a new segue.
Director Peyton Reed and his five (5!) credited
writers approach the movie by adding a lot of stakes rather than bigger stakes.
It's a busy movie. A lot of characters have big personal motivations. Scott
wants to do right by his daughter. Hank and Hope want to reunite with his/her
wife/mother. Luis doesn't want his business to fail. Even the villains have
personal stakes that are understandable. Following something as significant as Infinity
War, this movie has to be smaller. The creative team embraces that and it
works. I realize that the screenplays for studio movies are often written by
committee and the names attached may only represent a fraction of the people
who worked on it. That said, couple names did stick out of the five credited.
Chris McKenna wrote some incredible episodes of Commuinity. He's good at
highlighting the absurdity of something without undercutting it, which fits the
tone the first movie set. Between this, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, The LEGO Batman Movie, and Spider-Man: Homecoming, McKenna and his writing partner,
Eric Sommers, have become hot commodities as script sweeteners lately. And I still love that Paul Rudd is credited
as a writer again. A lot of the lines in this movie are too perfectly silly to
come from anyone other than the guy who has been using the same Mac and Me clip
on Conan for nearly two decades.
I'm not crazy about Peyton Reed as an action movie
director. I just feel like there's a lot more he could've done with heroes who
shrink and grow on a whim and a villain who can pass through any surface. That
doesn't seem to be where his interest lies. The action is in service of a joke
most of the time. A lot of it relies on "this small thing is big
now", which is more funny than exciting. None of it is bad, per say. It
makes sense for a guy previously known for Bring It On and The Break-Up*. Then
again, there was nothing in the Russo brothers' filmography before The Winter Soldier that said they'd be able to pull that off.
*I love Bring It On. I only bring this up as a
contrast, not as a knock against him.
There's nothing about Ant-Man & the Wasp
that I hated. The vast majority of it I liked. I feel like I should be a lot
more excited to talk about it than I am. In some cases, a movie can be great if
everything about it is at a B+ level. In other cases, the movie needs to be
great at a few things to make up for other deficiencies. Everything in Ant-Man
& the Wasp is maybe at a B level, just short of that compounding effect
that makes something competent seem great. It does everything it sets out to
do. It give Paul Rudd a star vehicle. It elevates Evangeline Lilly. It avoids
the "more is more" fallacy of a lot of sequels. It's a refreshingly
stand-alone entry into the MCU. It's got a cool, but underused villain. It's
good, not great.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
There's only one spoiler topic I want to address.
The big question going into this movie was how the Snap would be handled. I'm
glad they didn't mix it into the main story. It was also wise to set the film
pre-Snap, since that would've dominated the movie had it already happened.
Including it in a post-credits scene was the best way to go. What they did with
it though was too cute by half. Just as Ant-Man goes subatomic, the only three
people who know how to bring him back all disappear in the Snap. That timing is
too perfect, and it just feels like a way to keep him out of the depleted Infinity
War 2 roster. What bothered me is that nothing really explains why Ant-Man
(and the Wasp) weren't in Wakanda, fighting along-side the Avengers in the
first place. The post-credits scene makes it seem like any other day. Maybe
they could've made it about Scott going subatomic to help out Ghost so they
could all go and assist the Avengers at full strength. You know, something to
show that they are tied in. If Falcon found Ant-Man for the Civil War
fight, I have to assume he had his phone number to help with Thanos. Even the
idea of Scott still being on house arrest could've soft of explained his absence, but that wasn't an issue at that point.
No comments:
Post a Comment