The first Ant-Man was a pleasant surprise. I think the writers knew that audiences would react to the character with an emphatic "who the F cares about Ant-Man?" so instead of trying to pull another character from obscurity and launch them into a household name as with Iron Man 1, they decided to have some fun and not take themselves too seriously. And with Paul Rudd as Ant-Man, the formula worked.

But SJW-types just couldn't have that for the sequel. The sequel required that Paul Rudd not just share the stage with a more badass and skilled female counterpart, but give up the stage to her when it's painfully obvious she has none of the wit or charm or charisma as Rudd. Furthermore, we're given the villain that Ant-Man must face off against--some college girl in lulu lemon with extremely ambiguous powers and a backstory and motivation crammed into 5 minutes of the cringiest exposition in a marvel movie yet. But hey, her parents are an obligatory token PC interracial couple! (YAY SJW points!).

This movie, as evidenced by the poster art even on this website, suffers from "actors playing masked superheroes who are too good looking and narcissistic to wear their characters' masks syndrome". Whereas in Ant-Man, when both the hero and villain were in their suits, they were in them head to toe. But surely because we couldn't hide our female hero and female villain behind silly character helmets/masks, any character in a suit or costume is removing their helmet or mask literally every time they have dialog. Superheroes removing their mask or helmet used to mark a significant moment in these movies--either the hero showed they were willing to risk their identity by removing it, or it was so damaged it was no longer useful, or it was removed at the end of the movie for a heartwarming monologue or conversation. But in this movie, it's almost as if they can't wait to remove them, even during action sequences where it makes no sense at all.

Finally, the whole plot of the movie is very flimsy and the stakes don't seem very high. Basically Hank Pym, decades after his wife's disappearance as explained in the first movie, decides she is still alive and can be rescued. Besides that, this movie really only exists to remind the audience multiple times that Ant-Man was in Captain America Civil War, and clumsily justify his absence from Avengers Infinity War.

Overall it was a disappointing sequel to what was a sleeper hit in the MCU.