Ant-Man & the Wasp: Grade, Review, Discuss Please Code Spoilers

Ant-Man and the Wasp marks the 20th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Coming off the heels of both Black Panther and Avengers Infinity War earlier this year. The films setting is sometime post Captain America Civil War(2016) and pre Infinity War. So one will not have to have seen Infinity War to follow this entry.

Ant-Man - summary of 1st film at Wiki to refresh or introduce to anyone interested in this one.

RottenTomatoes Critics score on day of Preview night showings: 88%

 

It was good and fun, I could have done without the french villain, but other than that, a good way to spend an evening.

 

Spoilers, obviously.

Good fun, just as this movie should be. It was refreshing to have a villain that didn't have an evil plan to dominate the world or some such, but was rather simply desperate to save herself from a horrible fate.

Spoiler: Ant-man and the Wasp

Although Bill Foster was working with Ghost, I'm glad that he never took that dive into villainy and remained a hero.

in fact, pretty much everybody got to be a hero in this movie. Aside from the title characters, we got to see Hank and Jan have their moments of heroism. Even Luis and the rest of that crew had their moments to shine.

Regarding the end credit scene. Anyone who follows Marvel movies saw one half of that twist ending coming, but the other half of the twist was enough to not make it simply seem like a rehash of the Avengers end credit scene. There were appropriate gasps from the audience.

 

I vave it a solid B+

Not the bestest Marvel movie ever...but a lot of fun.

I too liked the smaller non-universe-threatening stakes here.

And the above spoiler comment..I agree. Worked out well... Kinda reminded me of a Raimi Spiderman movie

Definitely fun for my family

 

We saw it Friday at a 2:40 matinee after renting the first one Thursday night. Probably about 20 people in the theater, a little surprising, but I don't like crowds anyway.

I enjoyed it quite a bit. Good laugh moments, and the effects looked good to me.

Spoiler: Spoiler

The de-aging on Michael Douglas looked a little underdone--like it was rushed or something. The dialog looked like it was a tad out of sync, but still pretty convincing. This is all relatively new tech, so I'm not complaining.

I haven't seen a Marvel movie yet that was less than an A for me. What can I say, I'm a fan.

 

I gave it an "A". In fact, I may have enjoyed it a bit more than I did the first Ant-Man movie. I thought it handled the humor a lot better than "Thor: Ragnarok". In other words, I didn't find it misplaced. It had some great emotional moments in the last act. And I found the impact of Thanos' "snap" in the first post-credit scene a lot stronger for me than in "Infinity War". I really enjoyed it.

I have one or two quibbles and it involves the Sokovia Accords. Considering that Scott never signed the Sokovia Accords, why was he being held in house arrest for? Do the MCU writers even know the difference between a law and an accord? And how did the authorities found out about his connection to Hank Pym and Hope Van Dyne, considering that he managed to keep his suit out of Federal hands?

 

That stupid soccer thing has delayed the film here by a month. By the time I see it, it'll be old news.

 

Solid, but not much more. I appreciated the lack of world-ending consequences, but Ghost's story was decidedly lacking and the generic evil gangsters never felt like a serious threat.

 

Saw it yesterday and loved it. It was just pure fun. The world wasn't in jeopardy so in the end, if they lost only a few people are affected. but i felt invested in it and wanted them to succeed.

The movie was great and really funny. Probablt my second favorite of the marvel movies so far.

The only thing that doesn't work, but can easily be overlooked for the sake of the plot is that they can pick up things like buildings and cars that have been shrunk down.

 

I just saw the movie. It was a fun movie and i must say Paul Rudd is a national treasure.

The bad guys and girl were the weakest point in the story.

 

I agree. I had no sympathy to the Ghost character

 

I think this what the one Marvel movie most targeted at children. A lot of the things just don't make any sense on any level (moving builds, "quantum entanglement", super cheesy incompetent FBI agent). It's hard for me to think of this as being in the same universe with movies such as "Winter Soldier". C- for being mildly entertaining.

 

The general suggestions is that the Sokovia Accords made some – or all – of the activities by the Avengers illegal unless sanctioned as a party signatory to the accords. That was the suggestion in multiple episodes, close to a whole season really, in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Johnson even signed the accords as a get-out-of-jail-free card. The suggestion in the film was that Scott has been in house arrest since Civil War,

Spoiler: Civil War

where he broke the law by helping the Avengers who weren't signatory to the Accords and ended up in a underwater max security prison. It's not completely clear to me if that was because of the Accords, because of the generally criminality of their actions, or because of the authority Stark had because of the Accords, or all of the above. But it's all the same.

 

It's actually the 20th film.

 

@YellowSubmarine addressed the Sokovia accords question. Regarding how authorities knew about Scott's connection to Hank and Hope...

Spoiler

In Civil War, as Tony is walking by Scott in his underwater prison cell, Scott says something to the effect of Hank Pym always said you couldn't trust a Stark. That was before Tony disabled the audio monitors in the prison, so maybe investigators were clued in by that remark?

My beef, albiet a small one, with the MCU in general, is why FBI (and other agencies) assault units operate the same way against superpowered people than they would against normal humans. Certainly by now the various government agencies would have figured out that almost every enhanced person is an army unto themselves. Any tactical unit with a dozen (or even several dozen) armed offices or soldiers probably wouldn't last very long against even mortal, non-armored superheroes like Scott, Hope, Steve Rogers or Bucky. Said units would be a complete joke if going up against Thor, Hulk and Vision or those in armored suits like Stark and T'Challa.

It seems to me that in the 10 years after Ironman and 6 years after New York, the various agencies would have specialized supers response teams or at least better equipped teams that what we've seen onscreen in Ant-Man and The Wasp.

 

^^^fixed

Grade: B

I ended up seeing this twice in the span of about 18 hours, that was not the plan but I don't regret doing so. It only solidifies my feeling of giving the movie a strong B score.

Paul Rudd as Lang is fantastic and as good a casting call as they've made with other leads. I like Evangeline and she plays Hope well, who doesn't have a direct comic counterpart so grading her performance is done in a vacuum to others. I wish we could've gotten young Pym and Janet stories cause I could feel the chemistry with Douglas and Pfeiffer. Again, how can the VFX houses de-age them so great and LucasArts gave us crappy Tarkin and Leia's? How does that happen? Kudos for once again making me think I'm actually seeing a young Douglas, Pfeiffer and Fishburne.

Glad to see that they didn't make Fishburne's Foster into an out&out bad guy. A fan theory going around as they made Ghost female cause they likely were going to reveal she was his daughter. Thereby having an "opposite" situation with Pym/Hope. However, since that didn't turn out to be the case they changed Ghost's gender just cause they could. The purist in me is always annoyed by that but I guess they wanted Hope and her fighting and liked that pairing better.

The supporting cast once again delivers from Pena's Louis and the crew to ex-wife and Cassie. I tell you what I'm going to miss Abby Ryder Fortson as Cassie. Being a dad with a daughter that scene in her bedroom discussing who his partner could be got a reaction from not only me but a few folks around me. Low, discreet audible "Ahhs" could be heard. I mean I guess she could be in Ant-Man 3 but I've read the casting news in Avengers 4 so we'll see soon enough.

The things that really keep it out of the A category for me are that the thug gang led by Burch(Goggins) never feel like a serious enough threat. We also never learn who they are working for at all. Is it Hydra, A.I.M, Roxxon or even Darren Cross(Yellowjacket) somehow?
That Ghost isn't really evil or bad, her goal is self-preservation and that stress had made her a bit much to handle. This Ghost was a 'Thunderbolt' before the MCU has actually revealed that to be a thing. The last, last credit stinger is actually seen in the trailers, such a disappointment. I don't always expect that scene to be crucial(Spider-man: Homecoming) but be unseen at least.

 

NO Nick Aldis is the Natural Treasure....

 

It's a common movie trope... I mean, how many times did Godzilla and Co. attack Japan and it took a LONG time before the Japanese figured out that all their tanks and planes were no match. They finally built MechaGozilla (even though technically, in its original appearance it was extraterrestrial) and even that wasn't much of match.

 

The sheer variety is how a Shared Universe works. In real life wacky silly things happen at the same time dead serious stuff happens somewhere else. I dunno why it's still so hard for people to wrap their heads around the concept.

Doing the opposite and making it all pretentiously serious would make it the DCEU.