Ant-Man and the Wasp

With the dust still set­tling from Thanos’ antics in Avengers: Infin­i­ty War, the third Mar­vel out­ing of 2018 promis­es some­thing slight­ly more light-heart­ed than glob­al geno­cide. Disney’s deci­sion to off­set the doom and gloom of the ​“most ambi­tious crossover event in his­to­ry” with a com­e­dy caper about a man who talks to ants is a tes­ta­ment to their relent­less movie machine, which sees at least two titles per year dom­i­nate the box office.

Set two years after the events of Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: Civ­il War, which saw Scott Lang aka Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) team up with the gov­ern­ment-dis­avowed side of the Avengers, our diminu­tive hero is cooped up on house arrest. He pass­es the time play­ing with his daugh­ter, help­ing his friend Luis (Michael Peña) with their bur­geon­ing secu­ri­ty busi­ness, and gen­er­al­ly pot­ter­ing around at home in San Francisco.

Mean­while, old pals Hank Pym (Michael Dou­glas) and his daugh­ter Hope Van Dyne (Evan­ge­line Lil­ly) have been beaver­ing away, attempt­ing to work out how they can res­cue their miss­ing fam­i­ly mem­ber Janet from the mys­te­ri­ous Quan­tum realm, where she’s been trapped for 30 years. In order to do so, they reunite with Lang, but have to con­tend with thieves out to steal their next-lev­el tech, in the form of real­i­ty-trip­ping Ghost (Han­nah John-Kamen) and das­tard­ly south­ern gent, Son­ny Burch (Wal­ton Gog­gins play­ing Wal­ton Goggins).

Con­sid­er­ing the plot was heav­i­ly hint­ed at in its pre­de­ces­sor, it’s dif­fi­cult for Ant-Man and the Wasp to real­ly keep any tricks up its sleeve. Direc­tor Pey­ton Reed has a gift for com­e­dy, and (again, much like its pre­de­ces­sor) the film excels when it’s being fun­ny – this comes down to per­haps the strongest ensem­ble cast in the MCU, with the relent­less­ly charm­ing Paul Rudd on fine form as #relat­able Scott Lang, and motor-mouthed Michael Peña deliv­er­ing anoth­er scene-steal­ing turn as Lang’s best bud­dy, Luis.

Despite the cast’s best efforts, Ant-Man and the Wasp is hard­ly grip­ping view­ing – Thor: Rag­narok, Black Pan­ther and Infin­i­ty War all run cir­cles around it. There’s a lot of tech­nob­a­b­ble which undoubt­ed­ly sets things up for Infin­i­ty War Part 2 (as does the oblig­a­tory post-cred­its scene) and the film’s stand-out is a car chase which makes good use of the shrink­ing tech on which the entire premise hinges, but none of this is enough to make up for the film’s curi­ous­ly low stakes.

This a film that’s dif­fi­cult to active­ly dis­like – Rudd and his equal­ly charm­ing co-stars take care of that – and fun in the moment, but there’s pre­cious lit­tle that lingers after the cred­its roll. The whole things feels sus­pi­cious­ly like filler mate­r­i­al intend­ed to tide audi­ences over until the arrival of Cap­tain Mar­vel next spring.