A MARVEL VILLAIN COMES INTO FOCUS IN 'ANT-MAN 3'

Peyton Reed’s “Ant-Man” films have generally served as a kind of palate cleanser to the world-ending stakes of the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang is just an ordinary dude, or so they keep telling us, who still can’t really believe that he’s part of the Avengers at all. He gets to be the wide-eyed middle-aged fanboy of the group in those films. In his own films, he’s just living a blue-sky life in San Francisco as an affable single dad and ex-con who was once fired from Baskin Robbins and who has occasional enemies to defeat.

In this third film, “ Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania,” in theaters Thursday, he’s coasting on his own post-Blip celebrity with a best-selling memoir out, lots of fans around town, and a generally sunny disposition — when he’s not breaking his teenage daughter Cassie (now played by Kathryn Newton, always an enjoyable presence) out of jail for civil disobedience.

There is a fun, light, sitcom-y touch to these early scenes in which he and his makeshift family, Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) sit around the table for takeout pizza. They use their particle technology to blow up the tiny pie.

“I just saved us $8,” Pym declares proudly.