I’m going to preface this review by saying, in spite of what may follow, I did in fact enjoy this movie. It is pretty much a requirement to have watched the majority of the Marvel movies (at least the Avengers and the previous two Ant-Man movies). The storyline can stand on its own, but there’ll be a lot of confusion if you haven’t seen the other movies.
So, this movie wasn’t what I was expecting at all. It was incredibly interesting to see more of the quantum realm, but it didn’t feel like there was a true threat to the world that Scott and co. were from. And honestly, a lot of the bad things that happened could have been dealt with if there’d been proper communication and information shared.
I did feel there was a lot of ‘one-trick pony’ in this movie. Hank, Janet, Scott, Hope and Cassie all have the same abilities, to access Pym particles and grow and shrink themselves. While it was good to see more of the quantum realm, I felt it was really unnecessary to have all five of them enter it. A more interesting storyline would have been to have at least one of them left on the outside, frantically trying to make communication with the rest of the family.
It was really good to see more of Cassie in this movie. While there were issues with the change of the actress playing the character, I did think Kathryn Newton did a good job portraying the character. I did, however, feel that there was very little of the conflict expanded upon between Cassie and Scott. It felt like the movie started off with all of these great ideas for personal conflicts…but those were all dropped in favour of pushing the story along.
One of my brothers mentioned that Hank had been relegated to ‘crazy old man’ (might not have been the exact words he used, but you get the idea) and I have to say that I agree. This is the man who created the Pym particles and the technology behind Ant-Man! He was the original Ant-Man! He should have had more to do than just be the old guy who talks to and loves his ants.
I was initially really interested to see a different version of Kang to the one I saw in Loki and I thought the movie would be showing another villain who didn’t truly believe he was a villain. However, much like the conflicts that went nowhere, the intricacies in Kang’s character were sadly lacking.
I did really like the characters of Jentorra and Quaz. There was quite an amusing exchange between Quaz and Scott, where Scott’s faced with a mind reader who asks him not to think about certain things…and, of course, trying not to think about something just makes you think about it even more. And I had to agree with Cassie when she talked about how cool Jentorra was.
I felt this movie was far more light-hearted than it should have been and it made it hard to take everything seriously. The previous two Ant-Man movies found the right balance between humour and seriousness, helped along by having the character of Luis who was a pretty awesome way of telling other characters (and the audience) needed information in a fun and interactive way. His lack was felt keenly throughout this movie. After all, could you imagine how interesting things would have been if Luis had ended up in the quantum realm instead of one of the others?
On the whole, there were some fun moments in this movie, but the stakes really didn’t feel that high and I was disappointed not to see more in the way of personal conflicts. Again, in agreement with my aforementioned brother, I just don’t think Ant-Man is enough to carry a movie on his own.
If you go and see this movie, there are two end credits scenes that do set up for future storylines. At the moment, though, for me, this movie only acts as a bridge to what will happen next. I truly hope the next Marvel movie will take itself a bit more seriously…and that future!Kang does not just feel like the villain of the week each time he appears.
Ink of Blood 