SPOILERS! If you haven’t seen Ant-Man and the Wasp, BEWARE! There is going to be a massive spoiler ahead.
Just another quick reminder: I’m not a professional reviewer of anything. I get carried away by my feelings and do not really cite much evidence for why a movie makes me feel the way I do that is not tied to personal experience. Keep that in mind.
Ant-Man and the Wasp came out yesterday (as of me writing this, not necessarily as of this getting published), and it was all right. I had a good time watching it, but honestly, it’s nothing new in terms of the Marvel formula. It wasn’t horrendously bad, but it wasn’t surprisingly phenomenal. I’d rate it a watch-it-once-because-it’s-a-Marvel-movie-and-you-know-you’ll-have-fun.
It’s set after the events of Captain America: Civil War. Scott has been released from that super-max super-hero prison we last saw him in, and instead, he’s on house arrest. He can’t leave his house for anything, not even to be Ant-Man (especially not for that). He also is not allowed to be in contact with Hank Pym and Hope van Dyne, both of whom are on the run after Scott used their technology to help Cap.
Of course, it’s right around when Scott’s arrest is about to end when Hank and Hope need his help to find Janet van Dyne, Hope’s mom and Hank’s wife. She’s been lost in the Quantum Realm all these years.
There are some baddies who try to get in the way of Scott, Hank, and Hope, but no one can stand against the mini-might of Ant-Man and Wasp.
A couple gripes I had with the movie:
- Bill Foster is simultaneously portrayed as both a good guy and a bad guy. Bill Foster is a former co-worker of Hank’s, who they go to for help. He eventually reveals himself to be the one helping the super-powered villain, Ghost. Despite aiding Ghost, you find out Bill has good intentions. I like misdirection as much as the next moviegoer, but it felt like messy misdirection to me. Like they were only making you think he was bad while it was convenient for him to be an antagonist.
- The rules for the Quantum Realm keep changing on me. When the Quantum Realm was first mentioned in the first movie, they made it seem like a place no one could survive in and remain sane. But in this movie, I guess you can?
All that aside, the movie is a fun adventure, full of action and laughs, but come on, it’s nothing we weren’t expecting.
What I really want to talk about is that mid-credits scene.
AGAIN…SPOILERS.
Hank, Jan, Hope, and Scott are all on the rooftop of a building by some complex machinery. They’ve built a quantum tunnel that will be able to transport someone to the Quantum Realm and then pull them back out. Hank, Jan, and Hope all want Scott to turn super tiny, like quantum tiny, with a little tube so that he can bring back some “healing energy” from the Quantum Realm. (The healing energy is presumably for Ghost, who needs it to remain stable.)
(I thought we were all agreed that the Quantum Realm is a bad, bad place. Oh well.)
So, basically, Hank and his family will press a button in the regular world, Scott will shrink to Quantum sizes, then, once he collects enough energy, they’ll press the button again and Scott will be pulled back to regular size.
I could tell that everyone in the theater was waiting for the other shoe to drop as soon as the credits started rolling. We were all (relatively) fresh from the trauma of Infinity War. We knew that there was no way Marvel was just going to ignore what happened with Thanos in this end credits scene.
We were not wrong.
Scott, teeny-tiny in the Quantum Realm, calls to be pulled back to the regular world, but there’s no answer. We cut back to the rooftop where Hank, Hope, and Jan were, and all we see are three clouds of drifting ash. There was an audible gasp from the audience.
Goddamn you, Thanos.
I hadn’t realized how much Infinity War had emotionally scarred me. Seeing those ash effects again made my stomach drop to the Earth’s core, and my heart started pounding a crazy beat of dismay for poor Scott Lang, WHO IS CURRENTLY STUCK IN THE QUANTUM REALM.
So all I can say is WHY MUST WE WAIT SO LONG FOR THE NEXT MARVEL MOVIE?
I think they’re doing this on purpose.
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