ANT-MAN AND THE WASP
The Diminishing Duo
Be amazed as this heroic pair shrink from the big screen to the size of your TV.
released OUT NOW! 2018 | 12 | Blu-ray/dVd/download Director Peyton reed Cast Paul rudd, evangeline lilly, Michael douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Peña, Hannah John-Kamen
If the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the closest that cinema has come to serialised storytelling, then Ant-Man And The Wasp is its filler episode. It is, after all, a relatively low-stakes story, and has little to contribute to the events of Avengers: Infinity War, which overshadowed its theatrical release earlier this year. You could even skip it if you wanted to. But taken on its own merits, divorced of Thanos’s finger-snapping context, it’s a lot of fun.
Directed by Peyton Reed – now out of the shadow of the Edgar Wright departure drama that plagued his Ant-Man debut – the sequel catches up with Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) two years after he was placed under house arrest for his role in Captain America: Civil War. These early scenes, where a housebound Lang tries to show his daughter (Abby Ryder Fortson) what it’s like to shrink by building her an elaborate cardboard set, are typical of why the film works so well. It’s driven by heart, warmth, imagination, a marriage of the ordinary and extraordinary, and a performance by Rudd that’s almost supernaturally charming. It’s also packed with gags – although perhaps too many at first, like an overcompensating host desperate to get the party started.
The tone relaxes a little once Lang is reunited with Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and the titular Wasp, Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), who are trying to rescue their respective wife/mother Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) from the depths of the quantum realm. Lilly’s Wasp – an ass-kicking heroine with wings and blasters – may share top billing with Ant-Man, but doesn’t do much for Marvel’s undeveloped women problem, with Lilly stuck playing the straight (wo)man to Rudd’s more charismatic lead. (The same goes for the scenes she shares with Michael Peña’s Luis, who is again a comic highlight.) Michelle Pfeiffer, meanwhile, is perfectly cast as the steely Janet van Dyne, but even she manages to be overshadowed by Rudd at one point: a surreal scene in which, having been taken over telepathically, he must channel the on-screen wife of Michael Douglas, loving glances and all.
As for Hannah John-Kamen’s villain Ghost, a dying woman with the ability to phase through space, her appeal lies less in character (again, undeveloped) and more in trippy visuals. The same, in a way, could be said of the film as a whole. For while the first Ant-Man introduced us to the visual language of the micro world, the sequel pushes Ant-Man’s size-shifting possibilities even further. In one scene we’re treated to the sight of Lang (whose regulator is faulty) shrunk down to the size of a child; in another he becomes enormous enough to ride a truck like a skateboard. These
It’s driven by heart, warmth and imagination
sight gags are not only funny and imaginative, but manage to flow elegantly into the action – giving sequences like a size-shifting car chase the feel of a modern-day Buster Keaton movie. And doesn’t that sound like a better time than watching everyone you love fade into dust?
Extras Squint, and you can just about make out Ant-Man And The
Wasp’s meagre selection of shrunk-down extras.
The main attraction are four mini Making Of featurettes, which average around five minutes each, and are mainly focused on the actors talking about why they love their characters and co-stars, which isn’t always hugely interesting. There’s a featurette on the visual effects and production design too, but it feels like merely a snapshot of a larger picture – one that is, thankfully, filled in better by Peyton Reed’s detailed and insightful director’s commentary.
Reed also narrates two deleted scenes, the most interesting of which shows Michael Douglas’s Hank and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Janet confront some sort of mysterious blob creature in the quantum realm – an intriguing sequence that makes the setting feel more ancient and alive than it does in the finished film.
Elsewhere is the customary gag reel (expect lots of dancing between takes) and two sets of outtakes, including a now poignant feature devoted to the late Stan Lee’s cameo appearance as a guy whose car is suddenly shrunk. He delivers ten different lines, and each is funnier than the last. Our favourite? “Oh no, my sandwich was in there!”