Ant-Man and the Wasp

In this day and age, it's not easy to review a movie like Ant-Man and the Wasp without giving away some major spoilers. When we last saw Paul Rudd's Ant-Man/Scott Lang, he was in a hi-level security facility rotting away for his involvement in helping a fugitive Steve Rogers in Captain America: Civil War. 

Thanks to Lang, Dr Henry Pym and his daughter Hope (Michael Douglas and Evangeline Lilly) are wanted fugitives. While on the run, the father and daughter team believe that they may have found a way of rescuing Pym's wife Janet Van Dyne, who became a victim of the Microverse decades ago during a blotched mission for SHIELD. 

The key to Janet's rescue is of course, Scott Lang. As seen in the events of the first Ant-Man film, Scott was able to enter and successfully return from the Microverse: a feat previously thought impossible by Dr. Pym. Thus, Pym must break Lang out of jail while Hope purchases components for a way to save her mother by a sketchy arms dealer played by Walter Goggins (Justified). But that plan is complicated by a mysterious player (Killjoys' Hannah John-Kamen) who can phase in and out of reality like a ghost.

There's a ton of plots floating around this film. It's almost to the point of being chaotic. It's very Marvel in that sense but I am not 100% sure that's a good thing. 

Ant-Man and the Wasp is perhaps the most like a comic book come to life of any of the Marvel films. To me, Ant-Man is quintessential Marvel in that his family of stories are both super-heroic and very scientific and that is no small feat as Hank Pym stories also have a lot of heart.  

But it felt like it took a very long time for things to finally come together. There was minutiae aplenty in this film, like seeing Dr. Pym using giant-sized ants build his lab or how Scott Lang's relationship with his daughter has had to evolve thanks to his antics in Germany with Cap. Yet, to get to the meat of the movie, you have to sit through a bunch of appetizers.

Of course if you have an Ant-Man, eventually you are going to have a Giant-Man. That is explored thanks to The Matrix Trilogy's Laurence Fishburne's appearance of Bill Foster who worked on something called Project: Goliath with Pym during his SHIELD days. But again, his direct contributions take a long time to finally come together.

One thing that this Ant-Man film does better than the first movie is be funny! Michael Pena returns as wisecracking Luis. Reformed from his days as a thief, he along with buddies Dave and Kurt are back, this time as home security consultants  for a firm called X-Con. The trio of Pena along with rapper T.I. and David Dastmalchian stole the movie with their antics. Marvel- if you are reading this, you need to make an X-Con comic book!

Ant-Man and the Wasp is roughly 118 minutes long. The most important thing about this movie isn't what happens first 110 minutes. All Marvel Cinematic fans have their eyes on Avengers 4 and only about the last 8 minutes really ties into Infinity Wars and it's sequel. 
There's a key 2-word phrase during the last 8 minutes of film that I think plenty much sums up what the Avengers must do in order to defeat Thanos. It's huge and I think it will change the Marvel movie universe forever. 

However, if you want to know what those words are, you'll have to see Ant-Man and the Wasp for yourself, playing in theaters everywhere right now. You'll get no spoilers from me on that subject. But if you figure out the phrase, give yourself a big No-Prize! You'll have earned it for sitting through this massively small entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.

The review was originally published July 7, 2018 at Outrightgeekery.com.