Ant-Man and the Wasp effectively recaptures the same tone from the first Ant-Man, with plenty of laughs, yet still with a heartfelt concern for its characters. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Hope Van Dyne / The Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) enlist Scott Lang / Ant-Man’s (Paul Rudd) help to try and rescue Janet Van Dyne (that is, Hank’s wife and Hope’s mother) from the Quantum Realm.
(But what will they find there? Did Schrodinger’s Cat survive Avengers: Infinity War? No spoilers.)
Ant-Man and the Wasp also expresses a sense of what life is like: complicated, unpredictable, and full of nuanced characters. The film regularly subverts ordinary moments with quirky, goofy humour, reminding us not to take ourselves too seriously: life can be fun too.
The humour comes through particularly in the likes of Scott Lang / Ant-Man (Paul Rudd shines with his inherent likeability and natural gift for moving seamlessly from one tone to another within the same scene), and his buddies Luis (Michael Pena), Kurt (David Dastlmalchian), and Dave (Tip ‘T.I.’ Harris).
And the inventive, fresh action sequences, where things regularly turn from normal size to big or small, and back again, serve to remind us that when our heroes seem stuck, when all seems lost, things can turn around just like that. Maybe this is something to bear in mind when considering certain Marvel cliffhanger endings… To quote from The Lord of the Rings, “There is always hope.”
The interaction between big and small is also something that the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general does really well; regularly balancing moving and funny character moments with epic battles to save the world, as well as balancing individual films that entertain in their own right with the grand sweep of the vast world-building across the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Ant-Man and the Wasp also has the great Marvel traits of having empathy for its characters, and giving them redemptive character arcs.
For instance, the main antagonist, Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), is stuck between multiple planes of existence, unable to find her place. Driven by pain and the fear of death, she becomes a villain because she reacts by spreading pain to others, but the film still empathises with her pain and holds out hope for her redemption.
Various characters bear grudges against others, such as Hope Van Dyne and her father Hank Pym resenting Scott Lang for putting them on the wrong side of the Sokovia Accords in the fallout of Captain America: Civil War, and mutual resentment between Hank Pym and his former colleague Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne).
However, they try to work past these issues in order to work together, putting aside their small-mindedness for something bigger than themselves.
The film contains two end credits scenes.
Before that, though, the end credits recreate scenes from the movie with action figures frozen in place, a cool approach which, like much of the tone of the film itself, reminds us to have a playful attitude to life.
