2018's "Ant-Man and the Wasp" (AMW) is directed by Peyton Reed (the guy who made the cheerfully nutty "Bring It On") and stars Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lily, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, Laurence Fishburne, and Hannah John-Kamen. The movie's main plot involves the discovery that Janet van Dyne (Pfeiffer), wife of Hank Pym (Douglas) and mother of Hope van Dyne (Lily), is still alive and trapped inside the "quantum realm," i.e., the level of reality at which quarks are found. Two subplots involve a woman named Ava who acquires the nickname "Ghost" (John-Kamen) and a shady tech dealer named Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins) who is after Hank Pym's quantum technology because Burch sees this tech as the wave of the future. I'll let you guess whether Hope, Hank, and Scott Lang (Rudd) find Janet van Dyne. I'll also let you guess whether they defeat Ghost and Burch. What you won't guess is that the movie's most important moment comes after the end credits start rolling: there's a mid-credits scene in which something horrible happens that also sets the stage for the upcoming sequel to "Avengers: Infinity War." AMW goes down easy; it's been described by critics as a lighthearted "palate-cleanser" between the two Infinity War movies, a spot of cheer after all the gloom brought on by Thanos the Mad Titan. I didn't find AMW all that memorable, and as with the first "Ant-Man," I had to check my brain at the door when puzzling over the movie's bullshit notions about quantum physics. (We're repeatedly told, for example, that time doesn't work the same way at the quantum level as it does at the anthropic level, yet Hank Pym uses a countdown clock while he's down there searching for his wife.) Weird story logic and goofy physics aside, the movie was a pleasant watch, even though some of the jokes were predictable. Douglas and Pfeiffer don't share much screen time, but when they do, they've got great chemistry, and I find myself curious to follow more of their adventures. AMW is cinematic Doritos: crunchy, punchy, and not particularly substantive. But it's not a bad way to spend two hours.
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
"Ant-Man and the Wasp": one-paragraph review
4 comments:
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Testing to see if I have fixed my computer prollem.
ReplyDeleteThese end-/mid-credits scenes are getting out of hand, I think.
ReplyDeleteCharles,
ReplyDeleteI don't know whether you've seen this particular movie, but yeah, I came away feeling the most important, MCU-relevant event in the film took place in the mid-credits scene. There's also an end-of-credits scene that has even more ominous implications for Scott Lang as a father, depending on how one interprets the scene.
I have not seen AMW, and I have no plans to see it, either, which is why I was OK with reading your review. It just sounded like they were shoving more and more important stuff in those credit scenes. And I guess it's sort of OK now since everyone knows that they do this, but it's still a little annoying. Although I guess one way to look at it would be to say that they are subverting the narrative conventions of film, which makes it sound avant garde rather than just annoying. It's not untrue, though.
ReplyDelete