Marvel Studios presents Ant-Man and The Wasp which will be released on July 6th, 2018.

Set after the events of Captain America: Civil War, Scott Lang tries to balance his home life as a father with his responsibilities as Ant-Man, when Hope van Dyne and Hank Pym present him with a new mission to bring to light secrets from their past, requiring him to team up with van Dyne as the new Wasp.

Directed by Peyton Reed

The cast includes:

Paul Rudd as Scott Lang/Ant-Man
Evangeline Lilly as Hope Van Dyne/Wasp
Michael Douglas as Hank Pym
Michelle Pfeiffer as Janet Van Dyne
Laurence Fishburne as Bill Foster/Goliath

After the surprise success of 2015’s Ant-Man, Paul Rudd and his crew are back for the highly anticipated sequel Ant-Man and The Wasp. What I immediately love about this movie, is it not only is a sequel for Ant-Man but in many ways loosely a sequel from Captain America: Civil War. Ant-Man and The Wasp takes place after the events in Captain America: Civil War but before Avengers: Infinity War, got it? So as the movie begins we pick up with Paul Rudd’s character Scott Lang serving out his house arrest sentence as punishment for siding Team Cap in the Civil War movie. Throughout the movie I love the call backs and references to Civil War, this really shows the long last consequences from everyone’s actions.

One of the major themes in this movie is the father and daughter relationship and how strong that bond is, which we see explored not only between Scott Lang and his daughter but also Hank Pym and Hope Van Dyne and some other characters but I won’t say to avoid spoilers.

Paul Rudd once again delivers a fantastic portrayal of Scott Lang, a man who seems destined at always screwing up and getting into trouble, while on the surface is an unlikely candidate to be a superhero to have rubbed shoulders with the Avengers in the previous movie, but deep down his actions are always at the cause of him trying to help someone else out, which at his core shows his superhero values. Scott’s character finds balance between funny and being serious at the appropriate times.

There’s a reason this movie is called Ant-Man and The Wasp and not Ant-Man 2. Evangeline Lilly as Hope Van Dyne aka Wasp has a much bigger role. We get to see the Wasp take the lead in many of the scenes as she shows off how badass she is in her suit plus how intelligent she is and her tremendous fighting skills.

I was also happy to see Michael Douglas aka Hank Pym have a larger role as well. In this movie we get to see more of his intelligence and science skills in action. For us comic book fans this validates Hank Pym as one of the smartest guys in the Marvel comics. In the MCU Tony Stark gets all the credit as the smartest guy, but for decades on paper Hank Pym is right there if not smarter, so it’s nice to see him get his moment to shine. Plus, we get to see more of his Pym Particles used not in suit form but how they can be applied to everything around them. As we saw in the trailers, he can make buildings, cars and other objects small and big which makes for many fun action sequences.

Speaking of action, with the success of the first Ant-Man movie, it’s obvious this film had a bigger budget to work with. With that being said there was some tremendous action sequences that really made this a fun movie. When dealing Pym Particles you want to see them in full effect, which we get to see. As I mentioned earlier we see buildings, cars, etc. go from being normal size to small to big. Also, our characters use that technique in the fighting approach which makes for some badass choreographed fighting scenes.

Hannah John-Kamen aka Ava Starr/Ghost was a very malicious yet sympathetic villain. Ghost’s powers and skill set make it an extremely tough challenge for Ant-Man and The Wasp to fight against but once we learn more of her backstory you understand her actions. Laurence Fishburne also had a bigger role then what the trailer led on to believe. His character’s relationship with Hank Pym is very interesting. If they ever did a Ant-Man prequel, which many fans have wanted, since we have seen flashback scenes in both movies now, seeing younger versions of these characters could be interesting to explore and play out on the big screen.

Once again I didn’t care much about Michael Pena’s character Luis and the rest of the X-Con Security crew. These guys are only used for comic relief. When they are some serious moments taking place these guys find a way to shoe horn themselves into the scene. The FBI Agent Jimmy Woo was also very stiff and his scenes were more awkward then funny. Walton Goggins as Sonny Burch did a solid performance as an extra threat to Ant-Man and The Wasp’s plans.

Overall, I enjoyed the comedy in this movie a lot more than the humor we have seen in both Guardians movies and Thor: Ragnarok. I felt the comedy writing was smarter and executed at appropriate times. Some scenes it felt forced but I think we are used to that by now in Marvel movies. While the first movie was a heist movie, this one was more of fugitives on the run. The third act delivers some serious emotions and was a perfect pick me up after the events in Avengers: Inifinity War a couple months ago.

I would rate the film: 8/10

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