Daniel Dern: In Marvel’s Ant-Man movie, Scott Lang, a down-on-his-luck-turned-to-petty-theft guy steals Dr. Hank Pym’s size-changing suit; mayhem, hijinks and hilarity ensue. Along comes Marvel’s CIVIL WAR movie, Ant-Man steps in political <deleted>, and, as Ant-Man and the Wasp, opens, his two years of house arrest are nearly
up.
Like Spider-Man: Homecoming (which had, IMHO, more than its share of avoidable problems and stupidity, but also had a lot of great stuff, notably the “Dad talk scene” (see #7 in the Pixel Scroll for 4/30/18), Ant-Man And the Wasp shows that comic/superhero movies don’t have to have the fate of the country/world/galaxy/universe/multi-verse at stake, sometimes smaller, more local problems and challenges make more sense.
(Which is part of what’s nice about NetFlix’s Marvel TV shows, DC’s Black Lightning, Amazon’s The Tick, etc…)
We went to see A-M&TW last night, with fellow fans (at a comfy-chair theater, as it happens), and enjoyed it a lot. They had me at the first scene (which I won’t spoil by saying anything more about it). In fact, I’m simply going to say, “we (our party of five) all liked it, and if you’re at least a casual superhero comic fan, you’ll like it to.” Fun action,
lots of size-changing-based plot gimmicks. With great power comes some big oopsies, etc.
Yes, Stan Lee does have a cameo appearance.
Note, there are two “Easter Eggs” (post-end-of-plot scenes) – one after the first short batch of credits, and then one after all the others. The first one, you do want to stay for; the second one, amusing but missable.
While this movie’s activity does take place within the larger Marvel movie-verse continuity, you don’t have to have seen or know about any of the other Marvel movies, and having seen them will only slightly enhance your enjoyment. (Versus, say, the recent Thor: Ragnarok, which made much more sense and was much more fun if you’d seen Guardians of the Galaxy, Civil War, etc.)
Recommended, two small thumbs and antennae up.
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
It doesn’t deem to be generating the bundles of money other Marvel films are taking in. Pity. It left a kind of odd cliffhanger which isn’t easily defined.
Robert Whitaker Sirignano:
It’s squeaked ahead of the first movie domestically this last weekend and it’s not out in all foreign markets yet, most notably China which made up a significant portion of the global take of the first movie. No one is quite sure when that’s going to be.
As an action movie fan I thought the fight scenes with with the shrinking/growing and a character that can phase were amazingly well done in that you could follow the action and what they were doing really well. Really enjoyed it and hope there’s another.
Of course, Ant-Man and the Wasp also suffered from being delayed by almost a month in pretty much all of Europe because of the World Cup (because obviously everybody watched football all the time and can’t even find time to go to the movies during a rest day or a match they don’t care for). It only opened here a few days ago, in the middle of a massive heatwave, which probably hurts box office takings worse than the World Cup would have.
I liked it quite a bit, especially after the seriousness of Black Panther and Infinity War.
And Stan’s cameo might be my favorite of the lot. Though it has serious competition from “Tony Stank.”