Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Note: This review contains spoilers for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

We’ve made it no secret that our enthusiasm for the Marvel Cinematic Universe has waned since the shift to more of a lifestyle brand following Avengers: Endgame. Each successive film (and one TV show) we had seen in Phase Four didn’t do much to keep us invested, with little enjoyment outside of Spider-Man: No Way Home (which still requires seeing almost 30 other movies for the full effect) and The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. As such, we had little interest in the films from Phase Five outside of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Despite this, however, we went back and watched Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (Quantumania) solely to see how they introduced the main villain of the current Saga, though we did so through Disney+ because we had no plans on actually paying money to watch it in a theater. Unfortunately, we quickly regretted the decision, as the film embodied issues that have plagued the MCU since the beginning, but were exacerbated post-Endgame and never properly addressed.

Sometime after the events of Avengers: Endgame, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is a successful memoirist and lives happily with his girlfriend, Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly). However, he has a strained relationship with his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton), now a political activist helping people displaced by the Blip. While visiting Hope’s parents, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), Cassie reveals that she’s been working on a device that can establish contact with the Quantum Realm. Janet freaks out and forcibly turns the machine off, but is too late to stop a portal from opening and sucking the five of them into the Quantum Realm, where they all end up dealing in some form or another with its ruler, a man named Kang (Jonathan Majors).

Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) has found success with a best-selling memoir.

To put it bluntly, there’s so much wrong with Quantumania that I don’t know where to begin. Perhaps I could start by expressing that it’s 124-minute runtime felt like time theft. I found myself so unengaged with the story that I constantly checked how much time had passed and nearly bailed completely at the halfway point. The only reason I didn’t was because I had already gotten in too deep by that point and had some masochistic drive to see if it could get any worse.

One of the biggest reasons for this feeling of time theft is that it hardly feels like an Ant-Man movie at all. Rather, the significantly heightened stakes make it feel more like a vehicle for introducing Kang the Conqueror as the main villain of the MCU going forward (further driven home by the mid-credits scene), at least until the end of the Multiverse Saga, as the entire multiverse is suddenly at stake (again). This results in a major tonal shift to a relatively more serious story, with fewer jokes that hardly land compared to previous Ant-Man installments. While Kang himself does feel intimidating, the feeling gradually goes away as he’s fairly easily overwhelmed by sentient ants, with a final (final) confrontation leaving much to be desired. At the very least he’s not a palette swap of the hero like Yellowjacket from the first film (who was in turn at least more memorable than Ghost from the second).

Speaking of Yellowjacket, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) makes a surprise return as M.O.D.O.K. (Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing), with his physical appearance explained by the nature of his defeat in the original Ant-Man. Although perhaps a clever way of recycling a character, it still feels like a waste of M.O.D.O.K., who could have easily appeared in another MCU property as an antagonist in his own right. The only saving grace is that at least this depiction stayed truer to the essence of the character than the depiction of Taskmaster in Black Widow.

Then there’s how this film handles the concept of the multiverse and, by extension, the Quantum Realm. Based on how the plot unfolds, it feels like this film only uses the Quantum Realm as a setting to try and explain how Janet survived for 30 years, even if it contradicts depictions in prior films. When you take into account the fact that Scott Lang spent five years inside the Quantum Realm between the events of Infinity War and Endgame and yet he treats what they see as something entirely new, as well as how they try explaining how Kang could have ended up there from somewhere other than Earth based on prior explanations of subatomic particles, the logic of that space only gets muddied if you try unraveling it. Kang’s first formal film appearance also tries explaining the concept of the multiverse in a way that draws parallels to how the Quantum Realm works, but it quickly dips into technobabble, unlike the succinct and rather entertaining spaghetti metaphor for multiple timelines in The Flash.

We're meant to believe civilizations have always existed in the Quantum Realm.

In a way, it’s surprising that they didn’t rely on the audience hearing an explanation of the multiverse in other Marvel Studios films that covered the topic (ex. Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness), considering it still takes prior knowledge of the MCU for granted. If you didn’t watch anything except the Ant-Man movies, you’d be completely lost about what “the Blip” was and enough time has passed that you’d be forgiven for not remembering that Ant-Man fought Captain America at an airport in Captain America: Civil War, which they vaguely reference. It’s fortunate that they replay footage from the original Ant-Man as a reminder of who Darren Cross is, but that’s the only reminder we get that way. There’s also a post-credits scene that features Mobius M. Mobius and the Loki (Variant L1130) from the Disney+ series Loki, both of whom have no significance if you’re like me and didn’t see Loki because you didn’t care to and had to look them up afterwards.

Issues also extend to individual characters, including our protagonists. For whatever reason, in a very frustrating choice, Janet never considers actually telling anyone about Kang before or during the events of the film until Kang establishes himself as a threat, leaving her family completely unprepared. She also has a subplot with a human-shaped being named Lord Krylar (Bill Murray) that has no real payoff, as he never appears again beyond his scenes in a bar-type establishment. The fact that Cassie is the one at fault for everyone ending up in the Quantum Realm is almost entirely glossed over outside of only one scene towards the end where her expressing that thought still gets overlooked by her father. Worst of all, Scott himself has no real personal stake in anything that’s going on outside of ensuring his daughter’s safety, which only further raises the question of why this had to specifically be an Ant-Man movie.

This film’s issues don’t stop at the story, however. There’s a glaring overreliance on CG for both the storytelling and the setting, so much so that everything feels more obviously fake, like the actors are clearly on a green screen set instead of a real believable world. It doesn’t help that the effects get dodgier as the film goes on, with M.O.D.O.K. looking rather uncanny and a “Probability Storm” coming off less impressive than it should, nor does it help that the Quantum Realm as we see it looks almost visually indistinct from a Disney Star Wars film, just with more amoebas (it even sounds like they ripped sound effects directly from Star Wars).

Really, the only good thing about this film was the acting, which was about what you would expect based on previous Ant-Man films, with everyone doing the best they can with a rather predictable script (we even correctly guessed specific lines of dialogue). Jonathan Majors is certainly a highlight as Kang, for the most part anyway, though his performance wasn’t as impressive as that of Chukwudi Iwuji as the High Evolutionary in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.

Jonathan Majors does well as Kang the Conqueror (for the most part).

It’s also worth noting that Quantumania at least has a very neat piece of tie-in merchandise where they made Scott Lang’s in-universe book, Look Out For The Little Guy!, into a real one that you can pre-order at the time of this writing. Based on how well that gets received, I may end up wanting a copy (it would be especially neat if Paul Rudd records an audiobook version like in the movie).

If you weren’t already convinced to keep watching the MCU after Avengers: Endgame, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will do little to change your mind. No matter how you feel about the MCU at this point, I’d highly recommend watching Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 instead for something that’s actually fun and engaging.