We first see Scott Lang, in “Ant-Man and the Wasp, ” he is crawling on all fours with his daughter Cassie through a maze of cardboard boxes in an Indiana Jones-like adventure, complete with tunnels, Silly String cobwebs, cardboard skeletons and painted string lasers in a quest for buried treasure — an old, cheap trophy. Escape means a roller-coaster finish, and with this delightful sequence achieved without the aid of computer effects, this “Ant-Man” entry stakes out its own corner of the Marvel Universe sandbox as a throwback to ’80s-style childlike adventure. Not that there aren’t plenty of impressive modern action sequences made up of X’s and O’s. In almost every way, “Ant-Man and the Wasp” outdoes its 2015 original. Hope, Scott’s love interest, actually gets to do something this time besides root from the sidelines — she’s the Wasp, and she’s excellent.
The movie begins with Dr. Hank Pym reigniting his quest to reach the Quantum Realm. Back in the ’80s, Pym was Ant-Man, and his wife, Janet, was the Wasp; they saved the world from nuclear disaster, but Janet was sucked into the Quantum Realm — where you get atomically small, and time and space are different.
Meanwhile, Scott is serving two years of house arrest in his modest San Francisco home for crimes committed while helping out in “Captain America: Civil War” ( 2016) . Home confinement has made Scott regress even more deeply into his inner child ( dovetailing neatly with Rudd’s comedic persona) — he whiles away the days singing karaoke, pounding on an electronic drum set, watching TV and spending quality time with Cassie.Scott has a dream that he is back in the Quantum Realm, which he briefly visited at the end of “Ant-Man.” This time, he is contacted by Janet, who is apparently alive after 30 years. Hope and Pym kidnap Scott to help them work on bringing Janet back.
Pym has constructed a huge, multistory laboratory ( which collapses into convenient travel size when needed — the ultimate San Francisco pop-up) , to attempt to build a tunnel to the Quantum Realm. Complications arise when their lab is targeted by a shady businessman, and Pym’s new technology is coveted by a ghostlike woman, Eva , who teams with Berkeley professor Bill Foster, a former colleague of Pym’s.
As always, Scott can count on help from his pals, led by Luis.