Cultural Crossovers #20: Ant-Man and the Wasp

You know the drill.

• Ah, flashback. And presumably the non-flashback part is taking place pre-Thanos, or we would probably have noticed.
• A quantum tunnel. Oh, god, that’s a pun, isn’t it? Aargh.
• Aww. The father-daughter heist is adorable.
• And doing the right thing continues to suck.
• The quantum realm is a real trippy place.
• Antnapping. Nice.
• We wonder what the mpg are like for tiny cars. Or we would, if we had to fuel ours more often than once a dodecade.
• …couch ant. Ant couchant. Oookay.
• Seriously, who’s going to say no to Captain America when he needs their help?
• We always figured Hank’s new headquarters would be a dollhouse in his spare bedroom, or something.
• Are those… enlarged batteries?
• Entanglements. Heh.
• Best. Garage. Ever.
• …collapsible building. On wheels. No, that is the best thing ever, and we all want one.
• Is Earth entirely devoid of honest smugglers and procurers? This is not how gentlesophs do business.
• Wings and a sting, in fact.
• Bullet surfing. We love it.
• That’s a good question.
• Okay, that’s a neat trick, but it wouldn’t work out well for you either if you phased back in.
• We’re guessing that’s some sort of chamber that keeps you real. In a more literal sense than usual.
• Ah, prototypes. Always a pleasure to deploy for early field testing.
• Evidently interpenetration is real quiet.
• Man, you just go through life making professional enemies, don’t you?
• Presumably it’s not just your molecules that are disequilibriated.
• Of course they did. Probably because they were HYDRA, but not necessarily so.
• …nothing like a little tin of giant ants.
• No, that would be a cognitive diuretic.
• Actually, while that sounds like a cognitive diuretic, it could just be Luis being Luis. Mostly.
• Baba Yaga!
• The traditional big-ass switch of science enabling.
• Quantum possession. Nifty.
• Well, someone understands the important of building unnecessarily cool-looking displays for their science.
• …what was that ant wearing in the tub?
• Everything in that lab must be really well-secured. No loose coffee mugs.
• Yay, Cassie!
• Nicely arranged escape. And callback.
• Okay, now that’s some crazy ant-fu. Wonder which species includes homing device among its talents?
• It appears Pym effects nest very well. Which raises all sorts of interesting questions about the effects on Hank’s pod every time the van changes size…
• Best way to throw a car.
• Adorable tardigrades.
• So many potential applications, watching this size-shifting fight, not to mention the phasing. The people who’ve been beating their heads against this one since the last movie are feeling all kinds of inspired.
• Luis is having way too much fun with this.
• Yeah, we probably wouldn’t believe Giant-Man on a truck-scooter either.
• Damn seagulls.
• We do like the field-like way the Quantum Realm is pulsing. It’s doing a very good impression of a simplified visual interpretation of extremely complex phenomena.
• Of course, the audience think that Janet probably shouldn’t have aged. Time is a macroscopic phenomenon.
• So much for avoiding notice.
• Nice touch with the handle still sticking up.
• See, this is why you wait for the brilliant scientist with extensive personal experience of all things quantum before going about your dumb-assed plan.
• Here’s to CDs, and their occasional functioning as truth serum.
• Well it’s about time he got away with one of these things, dammit.
• Instant beach house. With a really clever foundation, one imagines. And utilities.
• Seems like every adventure ends with a free cryptid.
• Oh, gods, that is the worst timing ever. Beat all the odds in the worst way.

The crazy theorists, incidentally, have probably concluded that so-called Pym particles are actually some kind of Sufficiently Advanced attotechnology to pull off all the crazy stuff they do in the conveniently coherent manner that they have.

(So why particles? Well, given how determined Hank is not to let anyone else touch the tech, a bit of misdescription probably doesn’t hurt.)