Ant Man and the Wasp Review

So I just watched Ant-Man and the Wasp. It was better than the trailers made it look.
I’m not going to lie. I’ve been feeling the superhero fatigue lately. With several Marvel movies a year, countless tv shows and whatever DC is up to I think I’m just tired of the whole comic book craze. So going into Ant-man I had pretty low expectations. However I was pleasantly surprised.
Ant-Man and the Wasp is a small scale movie. That’s not a pun, the movie just has much lower stakes than most Marvel movies. The universe is not at stake. The world is not at stake. Even New York City is not at stake. The stakes of the movie are trying to save one person and stop a different person from going to jail. It’s great. By making the conflict so personal it makes it much more relatable. Trying to save your mother is much easier to empathize with than trying to stop a giant sky laser.
I like all the characters. Scott Lang is a likeable lead. I want him to succeed. I want his friends to succeed. Even the villain has sympathetic goals. As it turns out creating likable characters is more important to making compelling action scenes than any amount of cgi aliens you can throw on the screen.
That being said the action scenes were well executed. Ant-Man has some of the weirder powers in the MCU. Paired with a visually interesting villain, Ant-Man and the Wasp has some of the most kinetic and fun fights in recent memory.
That’s not to say this movie’s perfect. Some of the jokes don’t land. Several bits feel rehashed from the first one. Michael Peña voiceover, the Pez dispenser, and the giant ant all feel a bit too familiar. Not to mention the deus ex machina resolution to the Ghost plot.
Ant-Man and the Wasp was not the movie I was looking for, but I’m glad I found it. As it turns out it was a very nice palate cleanser after the dour Infinity War. I give Ant-Man and the Wasp 36 out of 45 trophies.