I’m once again back for the next MCU film and this time I had been looking forward to it, having liked the first film so much. This one is pretty much a standard sequel with all the same people involved except that the heist film template has been replaced with something simpler and, sadly, less interesting. The upshot is that the Wasp has now been upgraded to being a full peer and indeed director Peyton Reed has her doing all of the kickass stuff while Ant-Man is more or less her assistant.

It is revealed that for his part in the events of Civil War, Scott Lang has spent nearly the past two years under house arrest while Hank and Hope Pym are fugitives from the law. The latter two have been working on a plan to rescue Janet van Dyne, the original Wasp from the quantum realm, building a tunnel to do so. They learn that Janet is indeed still alive and her mind is entangled with that of Scott due to his brief visit to the quantum realm, which means they will need his help to pinpoint her location. However the black market technology dealer that they have been buying parts from works out what they have been building and wants that technology for himself. A villain, the Ghost, with the power to phase through solid matter also appears to want Pym’s technology and all of them end up fighting for his laboratory building which can be conveniently shrunk down to the size of a piece of luggage.

Once again, there’s no grand save the world plot here as the heroes’ purpose is only about saving Janet van Dyne. Indeed the relatively low stakes are used as fodder for jokes as Scott is also motivated by avoiding being nailed for violating the terms of his house arrest and making sure his new security consultancy business lands a big contract. My wife commented that this makes the film feel rather unexciting but I’m all for superhero films not always having to be about saving the world. It also makes for the perfect climbdown after the epic scale of Infinity War. Some parts of the humor leans too heavily on dumb visual gags and the whole bit with Scott being shrunk down to child size is best forgotten about. I did love the return of Michael Peña’s monologue as Luis and this time they even managed to work it in as part of the plot.

The film’s biggest failing is probably that it has no emotional weight whatsoever. The Ghost’s tragic backstory is glossed over by way of exposition. The ‘jellybean’ and ‘peanut’ affectations are far too contrived to be believable and sadly even the highly anticipated appearance of Michelle Pfeiffer as Janet van Dyne comes off as being something of a damp squib. I think this is due to the director striving to maintain the comedic tone at all costs and keep things PG friendly. Even the side villain played by Walton Goggins is mostly played for laughs and so his goons don’t feel threatening in the least. Also on that subject, the MCU seems to have a surfeit of villainous, black market technology / weapons brokers. They really need to come up with more original character archetypes.

Ant-Man and the Wasp is clearly not the best that the MCU has to offer but I’d argue that it’s still good enough at what it does and not every installment in the franchise needs to be an epic. It offers decent laughs and its action scenes are entertaining to watch due to the uniqueness of its size-changing gimmick. However another film that is exactly the same really would be rather tiresome.