Ant-Man and Wasp is a cute movie. The actors are cute. The dialogue is cute. The action is cute. The direction is cute. The only things that stop the movie from being completely cute is that the villain is uninteresting, and the villain’s plan is wonky. I’m still not sure what the villain’s plan was exactly. I think it was something about getting mini-world energy to use as aspirin. In between glowering and whining, the villain performs same old, same old Kung Fu moves that do not actually injure people. To be fair, at one point the villain does knock some people unconscious because the plot required it, though.

Now then, does having a bad villain wreck the movie? That’s a tough one. Ant-Man and Wasp is pretty much a children’s movie that doesn’t want to be very intense. It is neutered throughout of real threat and gets by on being cute. In that case, having a bland villain may have been a conscious choice. Was it a good choice? Not to me, but that’s just, like, my opinion, man.

Nevertheless, Ant-Man and Wasp got me thinking about villains. I watched another movie recently, Body Double, directed by Brian Di Palma, and I was struck by how differently the villain angle worked between the two movies. I’m not going to go into spoilers, so I will be sort of vague.

In Ant-Man and Wasp, the villain gets plenty of screen time. They get dialogue and action scenes. They explain their motives. They have a cool costume, etc.

Meanwhile, the villain in Body Double is not a main focus. The villain is peripheral to the main character and filmed through his point of view. The villain in Body Double doesn’t even have dialogue for a large chunk of the movie. They are mostly a physical presence.

So…the villain in Ant-Man and Wasp has all of the advantages, yet the villain in Body Double is the better villain. The Body Double villain exudes mystery and threat. The Body Double villain has a simple plan delivered in complicated way that makes complete sense. There is no mystery to the villain in Ant-Man and Wasp. The villain explains themselves early on. They are not threatening because they never hurt anyone. Their plan is also wonky and delivered in a wonky way…so much so that I can only explain it by being facetious. I guess it is supposed to be a cool plan solely because it is complicated.

From a story-telling point of view, this is a fascinating subject on how one villain works and another villain doesn’t. It’s sort of mind-boggling how the creators of Ant-Man and Wasp could drop the ball on such a fundamental thing as having a good villain. Again, unless it was a conscious choice to have a bland villain so kids didn’t have to process anything too intense.

Another part of the problem is that the villain in Ant-Man and Wasp seems to be Plot B rather than Plot A. The story is diluted by the addition of the search for Wasp’s mother at the expense of the villain.

So how could one fix the villain in Ant-Man and Wasp? Perhaps the first step would be to remove the Plot A/Plot B arrangement. I think you could still have Wasp’s mother involved, but save her as a surprise for the ending where stopping the villain also, unexpectedly (but hinted at), resulted in the reappearance of Wasp’s mother. Then the villain and their plan can take center stage. Next, get rid of the search for mini-universe aspirin as the goal of the villain. Instead of the villain wanting to cure their phasing, how about there is no cure, so their cure is to phase the entire planet so that everyone is part-ghost? The only way they can be “normal” is by making everything abnormal.

Scratch that. It’s sort of been done, I suppose (I’m thinking of Amazing Spider-Man where the lizard guy tried to make everyone lizards; not a good movie).

Okay, take two…

I’m keeping the first step. You could still have Wasp’s mother involved, but save her as a surprise for the ending where stopping the villain also, unexpectedly (but hinted at), resulted in the reappearance of Wasp’s mother. Again, the villain is not searching for mini-universe aspirin. I don’t want to go with the obvious stuff either, like unlimited energy or something. I suppose it is also easiest to work with what we have. We know the villain has a phasing power that was weaponized. How can the mini-universe benefit them in a way that corresponds to their character? How about rather than curing their phasing problem, they want to boost it, so they can be everywhere at once? They want to be everyone’s “guardian angel” so to speak and then force everyone to do their bidding. Yes, it is standard megalomania, but the wrinkle is something I have not seen before. It works for now. I’m not being paid to flesh it out…

But that would be kind of scary. Imagine a ghost of the villain always standing behind you, and everyone, waiting to punish you if you step out of line. Regardless, it is better than mini-universe aspirin…