A rare movie post:
A friend was in town so we all went off to see Ant-Man and the Wasp, which I’d been wanting to see, but kept putting off. I am constantly surprised at how much I enjoy the Ant-Man entries. It’s not just Paul Rudd, though he is more charming than he has any right to be. It’s not just that I’ve loved their casting; I adore his weirdo little daughter Cassie, and in this movie, I felt like we really got a glimmer of why Scott Lang and Maggie ever connected in the first place. Last movie, she was shoe-horned into the humorless control freak ex-wife. This movie she had a tiny spark that made me say hey, someone put a little character into this character this time around. (The “what does the FBI stand for? Forever Bothering Individuals? Followed by a little self-satisfied smirk… It was the smirk that made it. That is exactly the kind of attitude that would have married Scott.) They seem to have taken the character away from Cassie’s stepfather though. Oh well. He was pretty one-note last movie too.
I liked Ghost. I liked her anger. I liked that it was justified! The government was content to use her abilities, but didn’t care enough about her to try to cure them.
But what I really liked? This is so shallow you’ll laugh. But I loved Hope’s clothes. When we saw her in the first movie, she’s Corporate Shark Barbie, hard-edged bob, suits cut like corsets, and lips as red as blood. Don’t get me wrong; she was dressed in a completely plausible way for her role. And we did get to see her in training gear etc., but the primary impression of her was high-gloss perfection.
Then came Ant-Man & the Wasp. Two years later, her company gone, on the run with her father, trading for fancy electronic components on the black market. They could have gone the Natasha Romanoff route, and made her into a glamorous sort of hero on the run. But they went for honest to god reality.
Not for the easy sexy vigilante stuff.
No, Hope wears cropped leggings and flat heeled boots and a black tee with a coat thrown over for “business wear”. It’s not sexy. It’s not exciting. (And the proof of that is no matter how I search for an image of her in her “civvies”, the internet doesn’t provide it.) What is is, is very practical. Easy to be unseen in–tons of women wear activewear in public as their day off clothing. Easy to slip into a Wasp suit without effort. And of course, it’s all wash and wear.
Ghost is similar.
As is
SPOILER….
Janet Van Dyne. Two superheroes and one supervillain, and they all dress without Teh Sexy in mind. You can make arguments about the effects of formfitting Wasp suits on a woman as beautiful as Evangeline Lilly, but in the end, her suit really reads on screen more like a tool than a display unit.
I loved the movie. It was fun, beyond everything else. But it was nice to have some variation in the go-to-guidebook of sexy female heroes.
*aka a tall dresser thingy, though not in this usage.
lane robins 