Ant-Man And The Wasp Review – Spoiler Free
Ant-Man And The Wasp is the latest film to be released which takes place in the Marvel cinematic universe. The film comes directed by Peyton Reed who some may know as the director of Ant-Man (2015) or Yes Man (2008). The film stars Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Peña, Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas.
When the first Ant-Man film was originally released in the cinema back in 2015 it ended up being one of the few Marvel films I for some reason missed out on seeing at the cinema, although Petey did do a great review for us back then. Eventually I watched it when it came out on Blu-Ray and although I thought it was okay, it was something I had kind of forgotten. When I started seeing the trailers recently for the second Ant-Man film, I thought the studio had gone a bit mad making a second one of these Ant-Man movies again. But having come away from the latest Avengers film really enjoying it, I was curious about what was going on in Ant-Man’s life right now.
For Marvel fans out there, it’s important to know that Ant-Man And The Wasp actually takes place a little before Infinity War. So whatever happened in that film, or if you missed out on Infinity War somehow, you don’t need to know anything about it to watch Ant-Man And The Wasp. Although it would be great to see the first film in the series, or re-watch it if you have forgotten what happened since then as it does reference the first film quite a bit.
This film is a little different to other Marvel cinematic films, although it does have its fair share of villains within it. I feel that mainly what this film does, is build on the lore of what Ant-Man is and what he does quite a bit more. I came out of the film knowing more about the world of Ant-Man, the technology and the Pym family than I ever thought I would ever know. I thought that this was quite a great thing because by the time the film ended, not only did I like Ant-Man as a character, but I came to enjoy basically everyone else in the film too. There’s quite a bit of development for characters such as Hope Van Dyne/ The Wasp and also Hank Pym. The film’s plot spends quite a bit of time on the Pym family and their past and it’s all very interesting.
As a film within the Marvel cinematic Universe, the tone for Ant-Man And The Wasp leans towards being more comedic than any of the other films from Marvel. Quite a few of the jokes or funny moments are actually things you can laugh at and they had the audience in the cinema I was in going crazy (especially the children under 12). It’s lucky that they’ve got Paul Rudd in the role because he seems to excel when it comes to comedic timing. I was also very pleased to see a lot of screen time for Michael Douglas’ character Hank Pym as I thought more could have been done with the actor and the character in the first film, but this film definitely delivered the right amount of screen time for Michael Douglas to make an impact. Evangeline Lilly also was used well in the film and had some nice moments for her character and did very well in the action sequences. Evangeline Lilly and Paul Rudd were great as partners in the film and I really enjoyed seeing the two work together again.
Being a superhero film there’s quite a bit of action in this, it wouldn’t be a superhero film without that. There’s a good mix of CGI sections with giant ants and everything that comes with that. But the better moments came when they had a bit of fun with the shrinking of things in the action sequences or the enlarging of other things. The film is a bit wacky and a little unbelievable, but somehow it does work and I think it’s because they spent quite a bit of time on the lore and the background for the characters in this one.
Overall Ant-Man And The Wasp is quite an enjoyable film and one that I’m happy to recommend. The film is a much lighter watch than something like Infinity War and the comedic moments had the kids in my theatre going crazy with laughter which is always nice to see. A major plus the film has is that it spends a bit of time developing the backgrounds for the characters and not just Ant-Man alone. I thought this was of great benefit because I do now really like the whole group of characters they have in the Ant-Man world. Although I didn’t have such high expectations with this after the first film, I was pleasantly surprised that it was actually quite a good entertainment experience. Marvel seems to be in the right place at the moment with their recent film releases, which is nice to see. Go and see it, especially if you enjoy anything from Marvel.
