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

Or take an example from Flash. Firestorm looks pretty cool. Ralph's powers have been hit and miss and he's only a secondary character. Both sets of powers are seen in limited fashion. A show where two of the principle leads have similar powers, and that requires a realistic portrayal of Ben Grimm is still a few years away--but I agree that a Fantastic Four series would be awesome.

 

I've been pretty impressed with what Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and AoS have done on a weekly basis.
As for The Thing, they could always just go back to a costume/makeup like they did for the Tim Story movies. I thought they pulled it off pretty well there, and a similar design would probably be pretty easy to do on a TV budget.

 

I got to see this today finally.

It was a very funny movie and I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I do have to say it felt to me like the first marvel movie that was just a straight comedy with no real dramatic/emotional core. There were some nice character moments, absolutely, but none of them really came together in the end to give the story any meaning. It was basically just a little window into a random adventure with funny jokes. As such, I strongly fear for the rewatchability of this one, and even though it fixed almost every problem I had with the original, I think ultimately I have to say the first one with its very strong father/daughter theme is the better movie.

I do think, for what it is, it is very well done. I laughed a lot and the action was fun. I had no significant issues at all in pacing, acting or any technical aspects, so for now at least, I still put it at a B+, just above Thor Ragnarok.

Sadly, I missed the second credits scene. Can anyone describe it?

 

The second credits sequence, at the very end, was annoying to me since they actually showed it in the trailer. I'm ok with new non-productive story wise credit sequences(Thor Dark World, S-M:H) just don't put it in the trailer. Drummer Ant.

 

It wasn’t just the drumming ant.
It was a sweep around Scott’s empty and silent house.
No sound but the drums and the test signal from a tv because the channel seized broadcasting.
It was a subtle, eerie way to show that the world is in disarray.

 

It's almost worse than the IW Post-credit scene, there we saw the city falling to chaos with people disappearing...but the San Fran scene shows everything so calm that the implication is that the ENTIRE city was wiped out by the Snap. No one left to crash cars and planes and helicopters...they're all dead.

 

As someone who only really knows the characters from the first film, but really enjoyed it, I voted A-. Coming after the epic scope of Infinity War, Ragnarok and Black Panther, it was low-key and almost intimate but no worse for that.

The cast were uniformly great, though I’d like to have seen a little more of the always excellent Bobby Canavale and of course Michelle Pfieffer. However, given the size of the cast and the slightly overlong running time, it was understandable that his and Judy Greer’s roles were reduced. Walton Goggins did his best with a slightly thankless role.

Spoiler: Spoilers for Ant-Man and the Wasp

The flashback scene started seamlessly, with Pfeiffer looking like her beautiful 1980s/90s self (not that she isn’t beautiful now) but I thought flashback Douglas looked plastic and wasn’t as well done as in the previous film.

I would never have suspected that young Bill Foster wasn’t played by Lawrence Fishburne. I simply assumed that they’d de-aged LF in the now-customary manner (apart from the scenes in Black Panther, which were re-casts). Uncanny, even for a father and son.

I was sure the Ghost would have a connection to Janet, if not actually be her. The film could actually have done without her and Bill and still worked but I liked how she was an essentially sympathetic and wronged character (not unlike Bucky in TWS) plus it was good to see a female antagonist (ANT-agonist?)!as well as title character. I was also pleased that she and Foster did the right thing at the end - the former-friend-who-becomes-foe is rather overdone in the MCU.

As expected, the comedy was great but so was the action. SF is so suited to car chases. Some of the scenes reminded me of the quite-good chase in the otherwise poor Dirty Harry effort The Dead Pool, where Harry’s car is pursued by a remote controlled toy car with a bomb on board. But much better-done obviously.

I was sure Janet would return bitter and warped from the Quantum Realm essentially a villain. Was expecting her to kill Ghost. I was happy to be proven wrong and for the family to get an essentially happy ending. Post-credits scene notwithstanding.

On that note, while I hadn’t read spoilers for those scenes, I’d guessed that the end of IW would feature. But I assumed that it would set it up for either Scott or Hope to appear in IW’s sequel. But she’s ash and he’s stuck in the quantum realm. So is he going to sit that one out? Or will Luis or someone else rescue him?

Oh yeah, we need a spin-off comedy show about Luis, Dave and Kurt. Maybe with Jimmy Woo as a recurring antagonist. Or an ANT - oh wait, I’ve already done that joke.

 

Spoiler

Janet mentioned that the Quantum Realm had time vortexes in there, it's possible that after Scott finds a way our they'll use the Quantum Realm to do the time traveling to fix the past

 

I wonder if this is the first Marvel film to under perform since "Captain America: The First Avenger".

 

Define "underperform" as you think it applies here to the sequel.
Ant-Man 1 did $180m US domestic and $519 all total World Wide
Ant-Man 2 thus far as done $198m+ and $429 World Wide with some foreign markets still to open, delayed due to World Cup.

AM&TW is headed for a $210-215 Domestic finish and likely higher WW as well.

 

Hmmm. Interesting how it was broad daylight in both Wakanda and San Francisco when Thanos snapped his fingers. Must have something to do with the Time Stone.

 

$210-215 million?

 

That’s the only reason Janet said that. As set-up for later.

Should be a 10 hour difference. It’s not out of the question that both areas would have sun light.
It could be early evening in Wakanda and in the morning in SF.

 

$210-215 (no million) is about the average for most Nicholas Cage films these days.

 

You mean people actually go see them?

 

If they make National Treasure 3 I'll go see that.

 

Well, it's not uncommon for MCU sequels to significantly improve on their originals, so by Marvel Studios standards, I guess "slight domestic improvement" counts as a flop?

 

I personally enjoyed "Iron Man 2", "Thor: the Dark World" and "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" more than the original films. But I cannot say the same about the second Guardians of the Galaxy film or the second Avengers film. And the third Iron Man, Captain America and Thor films have proved to be disappointing to me. Overall, I think it's a mixed bag when it comes to MCU sequel films.

I thought the film had a very strong emotional/dramatic core, especially in regard to the Pym-Van Dyne family drama, Ava Starr's story arc and how Thanos' snap affected everyone in the post-credit scene.

 

It was hilarious. i enjoyed the hell out of it.

At first I thought I’d be lost because I’ve never seen any of the other MCU films (except for the first Iron Man) but I’m glad to say this was not the case.

And...IT’S NOT TRUTH SERUM

 

I don't get why people can't just sit back and enjoy the ride. Some of the Marvel movies are great, some are good, some are ok. None have been bad. Grading by box office, to me, is letting the numbers decide how much I should enjoy a movie.

Yeah, no. I like what I like. And I liked this one.