Ant Man and the Wasp (2018)

Marvel is again breaking all sorts of records and providing us with wonderful entertainment.  The newest movie is a good continuation of the humor and “feels” that was introduced in the first one.  What ought we to consider with this film, besides the implications that are introduced in regard to the entire marvel universe.  The movie presented a good moral question for us to consider.  Ant Man, or Scott Lang, was placed under house arrest for all the destruction he participated in during the events of Captain America: Civil War.  He has been under house arrest for several years, wearing an ankle tracker.

That ankle tracker is a wonderful synonym for our conscience.  It may be burdensome, but really only when we are misbehaving!  To take the analogy further, notice what happens near the beginning of the film.  He was playing with his daughter, teaching her about stealing (the irony, right?) and in the midst of their game where they pretended to escape, his foot crashes through the fence and sets off the alarm.  In minutes it seems like, armed police officers burst into his house and search the premises, generally making a large mess.  Afterwards, before they leave, they warn Scott that if he breaks the barrier and leaves the house early, he will be put in prison for 20 years.  For Scott, I am sure that the thing he wants the most is his freedom.  Obviously in connection with that is the ability to spend time with his daughter.

Now let’s think about it in a different way.  Let’s imagine that we are under house arrest, and the person that we long to see when we get our freedom is God.  You can be sure that we would not play around and break the boundary intentionally for any reason, especially the closer that we got to freedom.  But, if you are honest, you know that we do that very thing.  We sin even though we are so close to freedom, and the alarms go off.  The police come running and we are given further stern warnings.

In the film, Scott is given temporary freedom when an ant takes his place and wears the ankle tracker.  The ant does everything that he was doing each time in order to escape suspicion.  Christ did that for us!  He willingly took our ankle tracker, which in this case represents our sin and guilt, and bore the punishment that was ours to the extreme.  God became like an ant for our sake.  St. Paul says it so beautifully in his letter to the Philippians, “Though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave… he humbled himself, become obedient to death, even death on a cross.”

The movie ended with a scene of Scott trapped in the quantum realm, with no apparent hope for escape, as all his allies have disintegrated.  This ending is bleak, but it is meant to inspire hope.  It was wonderful to see the words appear across the screen, “Ant Man and the Wasp will return.”  Even when the period changed into a question mark, it still inspires hope.  Hope against all odds.  As Christians, we live for hope.  We hope against all odds that we will experience the salvation that Christ offers us.