The main thing that annoys me about Ant-Man and the Wasp is the potential being a bit squandered, and not being as entertaining or funny as a sequel. I didn’t think it was horrible though, in fact as far as the weaker Marvel movies go, this is one of the better ones - but it almost doesn’t feel like it needs to exist due to its aimlessness.

The film does have positives though, despite all of them being overwritten by the quality of the film as a whole. Even though the comedy may not be as consistently good as the original (in my opinion, of course) - when it tries to be funny, it usually hits. Not all the time, but a fair amount of the time. Luis is always a joy when he’s on screen, and the comebacks Scott has towards other people around are mostly extremely entertaining. It even does some newer and more subtle kinds of gags, like when Hank’s wife ‘possesses’ Scott for a minute or two, not only changing his speaking pattern, but his facial and body language. The action, whenever it actually happens, is pretty entertaining too - but again, not as consistently creative or badass when compared to the original. The car chases were pretty good, though. Acting is solid throughout, production value and setpieces are decent, yeah. Not much else to say.

Problem is though, all this great stuff is wrapped around 2.5 hours of a movie so mediocre and in some places pointless. Essentially, this film gives you 2 stories running alongside each other. In 1 story, the FBI are trying to take a shrunken down version of Hank’s lab, while the gang need the lab in order to try and find Hank’s wife. In the other story, you’ve got a new character in the form of Ava/Ghost, who is close to death, and also needs Hank’s lab/wife in order to try and save her life. This is all that’s happening. Not only are these stakes pretty pathetic compared to other Marvel movies, but it begs the question why the hell Ava and the rest of the gang don’t try to work together to the benefit of everyone. Ava is a totally sympathetic character here, in fact, I really like Ava, but there’s no attempt to even reach out to her to stop her and help - you know, the only thing that has the power to RUIN EVERYTHING. The FBI aren’t a threat at all compared to Ava’s power, yet they’re all treated as enemies for the sake of having an excuse for Ant-Man and crew to go on a giant goose chase with a few fight scenes peppered in. What if Ava was being USED and LIED TO by the FBI? Even that simple change could have kept her sympathetic plight, and actually give her a reason to use her powers to fight to heroes and cause an actual conflict, which would then all tie back to the FBI.

For me, that’s the biggest issue with Ant-Man and the Wasp. It feels totally aimless and pointless for most of it, and like most of the issues in the film could be sorted out in mere moments. By just talking, they could keep quiet, solve all the issues in the movie, and the FBI wouldn’t ever know. But no, we need 2 hours of some crazy hijinks, so just have everyone misunderstand each other or act on revenge that doesn’t make sense. I mean, we’ve got to think of SOME reason for Ava to fight the gang, because they’ve got cool powers, and she’s got cool powers and can ghost her way through solid surfaces at will! If they couldn’t think of a logical and emotional reason for this conflict to happen, they shouldn’t have bothered. There’s also a lot LESS action here than the original movie, which wouldn’t be a problem, but the talking parts here all relate to things we already know, and things that don’t add to anything because of how thinly strung the plot is as a whole. It all feels like filler, up until the post-credits scene, where the entire 2.5 hour adventure’s purpose is explained away in 5 seconds, and then ACTUAL MCU stuff happens to tie it into Endgame.

Don’t think for a second that I hate this film, because that’s far from the case. I just think it had a million cool ideas, funny jokes, great original characters with awesome abilities and nice action setpieces they wanted to film, but just didn’t know how to piece them all together. Whenever I was supposed to be stressed or on the edge of my seat, I just thought to myself what the stakes actually were, and immediately thought it was all overblown, and caused WAY more damage than ever necessary.

And for the love of god, when Hank and Janet finally get their dream house sorted out, shrink it down and grow it again to put it on an island......HOW DOES THE PLUMBING WORK