Ant-Man and the Wasp: Superheroes that are neither dark nor brooding

When our movie opens, Ant-Man (née Scott Lang played by Paul Rudd) is under house arrest for using his powers in Germany without permission.

His daughter comes to visit and he tries to make that as fun as he can. Meanwhile, his former cell-mate turned business partner Luis (Michael Peña) is trying to save their security firm by landing a major client.

Across San Francisco, Hope van Dyne (who is also now The Wasp and is still played by Lost’s Evangeline Lilly) and her father Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) are working on a tunnel that will use quantum technology to shrink one of them small enough to go into the quantum zone to save Hope’s mother, who has been trapped for decades.

Hope and Hank drug Scott and, using his ankle tracker and a gigantic ant, trick the feds into thinking Scott hasn’t moved. They need the information Scott brought back with him from the quantum zone to guide them.

The problem is, their lab has to stay hidden, or when you have the ability to shrink and grow things at will, it has to stay mobile.

You know what? This is a lot of recap that really isn’t even making sense to me at this point, and I’ve seen the damn thing. So let’s skip with the major recap and just let me tell you that there is no major bad guy in this.

Ant-Man and The Wasp deals with two semi-big-bads.

The first is Walton Goggins from Vice Principles playing the same role Walton Goggins always plays. This time the character is named Sonny Burch, but as always he is southern, rich and connected to some very bad people.

The other bad guy is Ghost, played by Hannah John-Kamen, who you may have seen earlier this year in Ready Player One. Ghost is a being stuck between worlds. Sometimes she is physical being. Other times she can move through barriers and objects can move through her. Both are after Pym’s mobile laboratory.

Just like the original Ant-Man, this one is perfectly entertaining. I am just not sure that it fits in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The company kind of got on this annoying run with characters like Ant-Man and Dr. Strange and others whose names guys like me had never heard before. No matter who the actor is in this role, they are essentially playing Starlord from Guardians of the Galaxy.

The company has made every single one of these characters equal parts smarmy and charming. They all ooze with confidence, but don’t take themselves too seriously. It’s a fine formula for a few laughs, but I don’t really need more of this when Pratt does it so well.

To reiterate, that does not mean I did not like Ant-Man and the Wasp. I thought it was fun and filled with some very clever visual jokes. For instance, there is a fish tank in Scott’s security company’s office. Fish tanks in offices are usually filled with beautiful tropical fish that cost $40 or $50 a piece. To illustrate that this company is struggling though, Scott’s tank is filled with goldfish.

There are also a few pop culture references, which is unfortunately becoming standard fare for Marvel movies now. Fortunately in the case of Ant-Man and the Wasp, they aren’t the break-the-fourth-wall and pound-you-over-the-head type of references in, say, Deadpool. They are a little more along the lines of “this joke is funny and if you catch the reference, it will be even funnier to you,” like one of Scott’s co-workers making a great John Wick reference.

Another thing that is becoming Marvel far is an amazing action sequence that happens in a public space, but no one sees it, because they are all looking at their phones. What are we going to do with those millennials, huh?

There is way more good than bad in Ant-Man and the Wasp, and that was a pleasant surprise to me. I liked Ant-Man enough, but I think it is by far the most forgettable of all the MCU movies. In the sequel, even stuff that drove me nuts was spun into gold at least once, including a great twist on Luis’s insanely annoying cadence.

Something else that is great about Ant-Man and the Wasp is that it is a very family-friendly pallet cleanser for the MCU. Black Panther may have been a little too violent for kids, and Infinity War was a little emotionally heavy for some.

Ant-Man and the Wasp is very much the kind of superhero film that I don’t have to think twice about taking my son to see.