Except That He Only Has Two Legs
Michelle Pfeiffer played Catwoman in Batman Returns in 1992. In 2018 she's the Wasp, a.k.a. Janet Van Dyne, wife of Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) in Ant-Man and the Wasp. Pfeiffer has bridged the DC and Marvel universes. Someone should make a film about how that's possible.
There's another Wasp, Janet and Hank's daughter, Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly). Paul Rudd is Ant-Man, who, like Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, is a guy in a suit. He's not a god, like Thor. He's not a mutant green anger machine, like the Hulk. He's not a kid altered by radioactive spider venom, like Spiderman. He's not an android from another planet, like Vision. He's not a time-traveling via cryosleep hero soldier, like Captain America. He's a happy go lucky dude with a small daughter and he wears a technologically advanced suit enabling him to shrink to the quantum level or expand to Statue of Liberty size.
If you can picture Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer (in a brief flashback) putting on Ant-Man/Wasp suits thirty years ago (although they look like their current ages) and making the attempt to stop a missile headed for a big city, you can accept, perhaps, the premise of the Janet version of the Wasp shrinking to micro-level and then down to atomic and quantum levels to disarm the missile, saving the Many at the expense of the tiny One.
Lost in the subatomic quantum world, Janet Van Dyne is the loved one who must be found. Dr. Pym devotes his life to getting her back. Hope, the daughter, becomes the second Wasp. Ant-Man, in trouble with the FBI from infractions committed, I assume, in the first film (I haven't seen it), can't leave his house for two years, which is better than not being able to leave a federal prison for two years. He gets to spend time with his daughter during his child timeshare set-up with his ex-wife (Judy Greer, the voice of the extraordinarily funny and bizarre secretary Cheryl Tunt on the animated show, Archer).
Pym's endeavor grabs ahold of Ant-Man, putting him again into action, leaving his ankle bracelet behind, along with one of Pym's large intelligent ants playing the part of someone being at home. The FBI want to trip up Ant-Man, they're convinced he's up to something, or about to be.
I may seem blasé about the movie, but I did mostly enjoy watching it in the theater last night. It moves along pretty smoothly, there are funny moments; Rudd, a comedian in the past, is capable of handling himself well with comical line delivery. What got to me finally was the protracted climax, a problem with most comic book characters-based movies. I find these long action sequences tedious. The second Avengers movie's bladder-hurting climax caused me to not want to see the third Avengers movie. Would it be such a bad thing to cut such climaxes by about ten or fifteen minutes? I'm not just griping about this from the position of having to take a piss during a long movie at the theater. From the standpoint of film economy, of time management, of pacing, putting thirty to forty minutes of high-adrenaline action near the end of an already long movie, unless it's very well done, can create boring cinema. Ant-Man and the Wasp is less of an abuser of this than some of the others, but I still felt distracted by my own brain after a while.
By the time Michelle Pfeiffer appears again, as I knew she would, I found it hard to believe that someone living in a quantum realm for thirty years would want to return to regular life on Earth. The Incredible Shrinking Man, from 1957, has the profound moment of the ever-diminishing human being finally accepting his condition as he realizes he's journeying into the atomic realm and beyond, a continuum connected to the macro-universal world of stars, nebulae, galaxies, space itself, by the very fact that the tiny is also the huge, as in the ancient mystical statement, "As above, so below."
Ant-Man and the Wasp lacks profundity, although Wasp Janet, once she's been rescued, for some unexplained reason has healing powers. A third installment might explain this convenient occurrence, but, since there's nothing thought-provoking behind it, I'm not concerned about the answer.
The film mixes science fiction, entomology, gigantism, miniaturization, comedy, the standard depiction of government officials behaving like morons with guns, CGI, fun fight choreography, Evangeline Lilly's face and body, ants, moss piglets, and the usual Stan Lee cameo.
Stan Lee could do a series of cameos against a green screen and in one afternoon have enough of them to insert into future Marvel movies for many years to come, even after his death. I would gladly sell that idea to Marvel.
Vic Neptune
Michelle Pfeiffer played Catwoman in Batman Returns in 1992. In 2018 she's the Wasp, a.k.a. Janet Van Dyne, wife of Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) in Ant-Man and the Wasp. Pfeiffer has bridged the DC and Marvel universes. Someone should make a film about how that's possible.
There's another Wasp, Janet and Hank's daughter, Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly). Paul Rudd is Ant-Man, who, like Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, is a guy in a suit. He's not a god, like Thor. He's not a mutant green anger machine, like the Hulk. He's not a kid altered by radioactive spider venom, like Spiderman. He's not an android from another planet, like Vision. He's not a time-traveling via cryosleep hero soldier, like Captain America. He's a happy go lucky dude with a small daughter and he wears a technologically advanced suit enabling him to shrink to the quantum level or expand to Statue of Liberty size.
If you can picture Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer (in a brief flashback) putting on Ant-Man/Wasp suits thirty years ago (although they look like their current ages) and making the attempt to stop a missile headed for a big city, you can accept, perhaps, the premise of the Janet version of the Wasp shrinking to micro-level and then down to atomic and quantum levels to disarm the missile, saving the Many at the expense of the tiny One.
Lost in the subatomic quantum world, Janet Van Dyne is the loved one who must be found. Dr. Pym devotes his life to getting her back. Hope, the daughter, becomes the second Wasp. Ant-Man, in trouble with the FBI from infractions committed, I assume, in the first film (I haven't seen it), can't leave his house for two years, which is better than not being able to leave a federal prison for two years. He gets to spend time with his daughter during his child timeshare set-up with his ex-wife (Judy Greer, the voice of the extraordinarily funny and bizarre secretary Cheryl Tunt on the animated show, Archer).
Pym's endeavor grabs ahold of Ant-Man, putting him again into action, leaving his ankle bracelet behind, along with one of Pym's large intelligent ants playing the part of someone being at home. The FBI want to trip up Ant-Man, they're convinced he's up to something, or about to be.
I may seem blasé about the movie, but I did mostly enjoy watching it in the theater last night. It moves along pretty smoothly, there are funny moments; Rudd, a comedian in the past, is capable of handling himself well with comical line delivery. What got to me finally was the protracted climax, a problem with most comic book characters-based movies. I find these long action sequences tedious. The second Avengers movie's bladder-hurting climax caused me to not want to see the third Avengers movie. Would it be such a bad thing to cut such climaxes by about ten or fifteen minutes? I'm not just griping about this from the position of having to take a piss during a long movie at the theater. From the standpoint of film economy, of time management, of pacing, putting thirty to forty minutes of high-adrenaline action near the end of an already long movie, unless it's very well done, can create boring cinema. Ant-Man and the Wasp is less of an abuser of this than some of the others, but I still felt distracted by my own brain after a while.
By the time Michelle Pfeiffer appears again, as I knew she would, I found it hard to believe that someone living in a quantum realm for thirty years would want to return to regular life on Earth. The Incredible Shrinking Man, from 1957, has the profound moment of the ever-diminishing human being finally accepting his condition as he realizes he's journeying into the atomic realm and beyond, a continuum connected to the macro-universal world of stars, nebulae, galaxies, space itself, by the very fact that the tiny is also the huge, as in the ancient mystical statement, "As above, so below."
Ant-Man and the Wasp lacks profundity, although Wasp Janet, once she's been rescued, for some unexplained reason has healing powers. A third installment might explain this convenient occurrence, but, since there's nothing thought-provoking behind it, I'm not concerned about the answer.
The film mixes science fiction, entomology, gigantism, miniaturization, comedy, the standard depiction of government officials behaving like morons with guns, CGI, fun fight choreography, Evangeline Lilly's face and body, ants, moss piglets, and the usual Stan Lee cameo.
Stan Lee could do a series of cameos against a green screen and in one afternoon have enough of them to insert into future Marvel movies for many years to come, even after his death. I would gladly sell that idea to Marvel.
Vic Neptune
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