[Analysis & Review] Ant-Man and the Wasp [Impressions & Trivia]
It’s been a while lol
First update in ages. Sorry for keeping everyone waiting.
*Warning:
Analysis and predictions ahead. Spoilers for the rest of the MCU so far as well.
Other MCU posts are here↓
https://movie-paradise-blog.com/category/marvel/
https://www.weekendnotes.com/ant-man-and-the-wasp-film-review/
Reference
Contents
Impressions & review
Massively entertaining lol lol
In an MCU where the fighting is usually for a huge number of lives, the goals this time were
1. rescue Janet van Dyne, who might be in the Quantum Realm
2. keep Scott moving without the FBI catching on
Those were the goals this time!
So packed with comedy, so much a family film, that I could hardly believe it was the follow-up to Infinity War!
And what struck me walking out was that there’s no villain! Sure, there were people shooting guns, but there was no character who was THE villain lol!
What I learned this time:
the trend right now is quantum, truth serum exists. That was it lol
In the first Ant-Man, he wasn’t on especially good terms with his ex-wife and her husband.
But saving their daughter in the last film earned him their trust, and this time, with Scott under house arrest, they seem to be helping him out around the house and bringing his daughter over often. Really lovely.
How it connects to Avengers 4
In the post-credits scene, of all things, Thanos’ snap kills Hope, Janet and Dr. Pym.
More on Infinity War here↓
[Analysis & Review] Avengers: Infinity War [Impressions & Trivia]
What I want to flag here is what Janet says just before Scott dives into the quantum tunnel: “watch out for the time vortex.”
As I wrote in the post below, the chances of Avengers 4 involving time travel are extremely high.
And on top of that, everything to do with rescuing Janet is worth watching too.
Janet, in bullet points
- Even inside the Quantum Realm, her body aged the full thirty years
- She may well have moved around over those thirty years, but the Quantum Realm doesn’t share our concept of coordinates
- Adapt to the Quantum Realm and you evolve — what the abilities actually are is unknown
Put that together with the time vortex, and imagine Avengers 4 where Scott somehow claws his way out of the Quantum Realm and pops out on Titan, where Tony Stark and Nebula are. That would be fun. And then he tells Tony about the time vortex and off they go time travelling… lol
Or Scott throws himself into the time vortex under his own steam and time travels that way…
Either way, I think Janet’s line is enormously important.
Also, there’s a chance Ghost and Bill Foster aren’t dead, so they seem likely to show up in Avengers 4 as the next generation of MCU characters.
The credits scene
Earth after half the universe is gone. San Francisco. A room in the Lang house.
The TV sitting on a no-signal screen, the air anything but normal, and the ant carrying on drumming right through it — surreal and unsettling at once.
Ant-Man and the Wasp will return
Ant-Man and the Wasp will return?
Characters
Scott Lang / Ant-Man
Him calling Captain America “Cap” and so on was funny lol
Two whole years of house arrest for his daughter. Genuinely impressive.
Although what he actually does is karaoke, drums, baths and the security job — parts of that are the daily routine of a middle schooler lol
Less back-and-forth with his ant partners this time. At the harbour, when he called for the flying ants and they got eaten one after another — bad taste, but I laughed.
https://theriver.jp/aw-possession/
The scene where Janet takes him over through quantum entanglement was the best.
First, as comedy. Stroking Dr. Pym’s cheek and the rest of it is deeply surreal, and it landed so well you could hear laughter around the cinema.
Second, Paul Rudd’s acting. Apparently the original plan was to dub Michelle Pfeiffer, who plays Janet, over him, but that would have overlapped with Luis and the truth serum, so it seems they dropped it.
Anyone who has seen it knows the result was perfect. The light in his eyes, the way he builds the expressions — extraordinary.
The first Ant-Man
The suit this time is the Mark II, and look closely and the design has changed too. Does being the Mark II make it the better performer? There was rather a lot of “room for improvement” lol
In this film the suit causes no end of trouble — going big out of nowhere, shrinking only halfway lol
Little Scott in the image above was the best lol
And the giant Ant-Man, a.k.a. Giant-Man, having the energy-drain downside spelled out in concrete terms might be fairly important lol
He ends up stranded in the Quantum Realm at the end, and what on earth happens to him now…
Really looking forward to Avengers 4!
Hope van Dyne / The Wasp
A shame she ends up a criminal because of Civil War.
She was on the run from a government that wants the technology.
Big change to the hair! Suits her better this time lol
As the title makes clear, this isn’t “Ant-Man: Enter the Wasp,” it’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” so she is the other lead.
And in the film itself she isn’t a heroine to be rescued or to fall in love, she’s a hero with a proper goal: saving her mother. Over these two years she has come to handle the Wasp suit completely. As for differences from Ant-Man, I noticed she doesn’t use ants much, and she can’t go big the way Giant-Man does.
Near the end she’s watching a film with Cassie and Scott. That’s Them!, a black-and-white picture from the fifties.
All three of them getting on so well, very much a family. Maybe she and Scott finally end up together lol
But sadly the snap killed her…
She’s certain to come back, so maybe Ant-Man 3 gives us a wedding with Scott?
Scott on comedy duty, Hope on action duty — that was the impression the film left lol
Ava Starr / Ghost
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIVypBwDzDY
In the comics Ghost started out as an Iron Man villain, and male at that.
On film it’s Hannah John-Kamen, who played the hitwoman in Ready Player One.
The setup is that her father, exiled by Dr. Pym, ran an experiment that left her molecularly unstable and gave her the ability to phase. The price for that is pain through her whole body, and death if it’s left alone.
At the end of the day she was being made to kill by S.H.I.E.L.D., so calling her a bad person doesn’t quite fit. Partway through, when she suggests taking Scott’s daughter hostage and gets told that’s too far outside the bounds of being human, she takes it and tries to settle things another way.
But watching Dr. Pym all that time — what tenacity…
Janet saves her and it looks like case closed, and then, as the post-credits scene shows, it seems she has to recharge with quantum energy on a regular basis. Which means there’s a very good chance that killing Janet in the finale and draining her energy wouldn’t have cured her either. So if she’d asked for help from the start instead of getting in Dr. Pym’s way, the problem would have been solved lol
Though if someone had wrecked my parent’s life and my own, I’d probably charge in without listening to a word either lol
Just a feeling, but I think she’ll join the fight in Avengers 4 as a hero alongside Dr. Bill. It’d be great if she became one of the next-generation heroes!
Changing the subject, but Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 4 is absurdly good. Good enough that the title itself changes lol
Dr. Bill Foster / Goliath
Dr. Bill is played, of all people, by Laurence Fishburne — a huge name, Morpheus in The Matrix and plenty more.
He’s written as Dr. Pym’s former assistant, and the way it looked to me, a genius sitting just a notch below Pym. With an actor that famous in the role, I’d love to see him keep appearing in the MCU.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2naE1MuW7xc
In the comics he’s the hero shown above! Hero name: Goliath! And in this film it sounds like he went big under the old Goliath project too (around six metres).
In the comics he was Dr. Pym’s assistant as well, apparently!
Looks like he fights by growing his body giant. How would that work in the MCU? It overlaps with Ant-Man’s fighting style, so maybe he stays in the genius slot and doesn’t join the fighting after all.
It becomes clear fairly early on that he’s actually working with Ghost, but he’s a good man through and through. Though he does seem to have looked the other way while Ghost was killing people on missions.
When Ghost said she’d drag Scott’s young daughter into it, he was properly furious. That shared sense that involving an American child in a crime is something you absolutely never do — I thought that was a good thing.
And when Dr. Pym heads into the Quantum Realm, Dr. Bill says something caring about him, which was lovely. Whatever else has happened, it seems he still worries about Dr. Pym, who is so bad with people.
Dr. Hank Pym / Ant-Man
In the source comics, Dr. Pym is a seriously alarming figure — “the man who built Ultron”, “the man who turned villain” — whereas in the MCU, while he isn’t a completely good person, he comes across as a pretty decent guy lol
Played by Michael Douglas.
A man who works across a huge range — acting, producing and more! Looked him up and was startled to find he’s in his seventies lol
He seemed angry at Scott over the Civil War business, but perhaps because he could see Scott was sorry and working hard for his daughter, the two of them were close enough for him to crack jokes at Scott. I think that was one of the reasons this film felt so bright. Telling Scott not to fantasise about his daughter and so on — there were a lot of funny scenes lol
The heart attack acting was good too.
Building the quantum tunnel and all those vehicles out of the Pym Particles, just the two of them, father and daughter — that alone makes him a remarkable man.
Janet van Dyne / The Wasp
Played by Michelle Pfeiffer!
Most recently Murder on the Orient Express. Having a great actress join the MCU is a real thrill.
From the first Ant-Man
Janet actually turns up in the first Ant-Man. The above is from the first film, that late scene where Scott shrinks down to quantum size. There’s a tardigrade in there too lol
It’s extremely hard to make out, but in the second image above you can see her silhouette.
In this film it seems her time in the Quantum Realm has evolved her beyond human lol
But sadly Thanos killed her, so finding out what that power really is looks a long way off…
Luis
Was starting to think there’d be no rambling storytelling bit this time, and then it showed up in the truth serum scene lol
Absolutely howling lol
There’s that scene where Luis says “wassup!!”
That one comes from the Budweiser commercial!
Around the twenty-second mark!
Cassie Lang
From the first Ant-Man
She’s grown so much since the first film!
She and her dad are wonderfully close here too, and it warmed me right through.
The three of them watching a film together with the Wasp at the end scores big points as well.
Would love her to become part of the team in the third one!
Jimmy Woo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5cAVBwGmyc
As the video above shows, Jimmy Woo is a character who comes out of the comics.
He seems to be an agent who was with S.H.I.E.L.D. as well, but going by this film that doesn’t look to be the case lol
Came across as fairly hapless and a good sort underneath lol
Sonny Burch
A comical villain, which is a rare thing for the MCU.
Dave and Kurt
Both back from the first film!
Kurt’s actor is also the one playing Murdoc, the assassin in the show MacGyver!
Dave singing the Baba Yaga song had me in absolute stitches lol
Stan Lee
His car gets shrunk and he says the bill for his younger days has finally come due lol
