"Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" review — Just another Marvel-ous disappointment
“I can get you home and give you more time if you help me. So, what’s it gonna be, Ant-Man?”
It’s been a while since we’ve caught up with the smallest Avenger. The last time Ant-Man made it onto the silver screen was in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, where he played an instrumental part in saving the universe from the threat of Thanos. Since then, Scott has been in a semi-retirement from his days as a costumed hero. Instead, all he wants now is a peaceful life in San Francisco with the family he has managed to build. Of course, the life of an Avenger is never quiet and before he knows it, Scott and the rest of the Ant-gang are whisked away on a terrifying new odyssey into worlds beyond human understanding.
“Beyond human understanding” is both in reference to the bizarre nature of this new universe and the totally baffling question of “how did this script ever get produced?”
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is yet another disappointment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s recent slate of brain-dead disappointments. In the post-Endgame years, Marvel has struggled with evolving its franchise, instead opting to release an ever-expanding slate of increasingly disconnected and directionless films and television series that are never fully given enough creative freedom to become their own separate franchises. In what is supposedly the start of the MCU’s fifth phase (not like phase four really felt like it concluded), Quantumania is no exception. The writing poorly balances its dramatic and comedic elements while reducing the film to a 2-hour info dump just to set up the next Avengers epic. The direction feels like a cold imitation of better work while the performances, with one expectation, tend to feel stale. The film is just more of the same in a weak, tiresome franchise that is obviously quickly losing steam.
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| Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfieffer, and Evangeline Lilly in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Image via Marvel studios. |
So, what’s the story here? Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) has been taking delight in his new celebrity status and has even taken the time to write a book about his time as an Avenger. He’s living with his partner, Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), also known as the superhero “The Wasp,” and is trying so desperately to reconnect with his now much older daughter, Cassie (Kathryn Newton), who he has been away from due to the events of Avengers: Endgame (2019). Meanwhile, Cassie and elder scientist and original Ant-Man Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), Hope’s father, have been building a device that would allow them to explore the mysterious “quantum realm,” a place where Scott and Hank’s wife, Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), had been trapped before. One day, when demonstrating the machine, something goes wrong and all five members of the Ant-family are sucked into the quantum realm. It turns out that Janet has not been entirely honest about her stay there when they soon come face to face with her old enemy, Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors).
The performances from the main cast range from bad to perfectly tolerable. Rudd gets by on his own charisma but seems to fall flat whenever the film strives more a more emotionally resonant beat. Hope is given little to no thought in terms of a tangible arc despite being a title character. Further, Lilly and Rudd have absolutely no chemistry throughout the entire film and so the few romantic moments they share do not land emotionally in any way. Newton is all too wooden with what should be wide-eyed wonder replaced with half-hearted surprise. Pfeiffer plays the role of “exposition machine” well although Douglas isn’t given much to work with which makes his appearance feel all the more phoned in. There is nothing about the way in which screenwriter Jeff Loveness handles these characters that gives me confidence in the upcoming Avengers: The Kang Dynasty (2025), which Loveness is also set to write.
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| Jonathan Majors in Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Image: Marvel Studios. |
The notable exception to the performance issue is Jonathan Majors who plays Kang the Conqueror. Majors was introduced into the MCU in the season one finale of Loki as the character He Who Remains, a version of Kang from another universe. He returns here now fully incarnate as the powerful time-travelling villain, one of the Avengers’ most notorious foes from the comics. The actual characterization of Kang is lacklustre, especially after the intriguing use of the character in Loki. Majors does his best with what he’s given, although the actual construction of his character leaves much to be desired. While you’re told that Kang is someone to be afraid of, the film does very little to demonstrate why he is worse than other antagonists. And yet, at the end of the day, one can’t help but wonder why Marvel would use the third Ant-Man film to hard launch the next franchise-wide antagonist. The inclusion of Kang is indicative of another problem that irks Quantumania: scale.
Here, director Peyton Reed sets his sights on the heavens — or, rather, the depths — but just can’t make the scale work with the characters. Where the previous two Ant-Man films felt much like “palette cleansers” in the context of the other MCU offerings, Quantumania wants to be the next big event. But it doesn’t work for Ant-Man. The language of the previous two films is entirely disregarded for what feels like a knock-off of Star Wars and dozen other sci-fi classics. The previous two entries were small-scale, rather intimate affairs, but Quantumania fights for spectacle that rivals that of any other Marvel movie. The film shows a genuine fear of intimacy, another common problem that these MCU films face. The film struggles to balance a variety of tones by undercutting serious moments with bad jokes and killing just about all attempts at genuine humour. But apart from the script, the film is also difficult to look at.
It is astounding just how bad Quantumania looks. The live-action/CGI integration might just be at a new low for a franchise that always seems to deliver the worst in VFX, especially in the last few years. The visual effects for M.O.D.O.K., one of Kang’s minions, made me physically laugh at how bad they looked. The action sequences are sloppy and unfinished and the creature designs feel like rejects from the many other movies it so shamelessly steals from.
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| Paul Rudd and Jonathan Majors. Image: Marvel Studios. |
The pacing doesn’t do much here to help the disgusting visuals. Aside from some brief moments at the beginning and end of the film, Quantumania spends almost all of its runtime in the depths of the quantum realm, which is host to so many strange sights and sounds. Except, here, none of these images seem to make an impact. Throughout most of the runtime, I was fixated upon another recent Disney-released sci-fi film, Avatar: The Way of Water, a spectacular counterpoint to almost everything Quantumania does wrong. Where Avatar takes time to slowly immerse its audience in its fantastical world, new cultures, and characters, Quantumania is too much all at once that none of the locations or emotional beats have any particular weight. Not like the performances could actually sell them either.
At the end of the day, Quantumania is symbolic of a lot of Marvel’s worst tendencies. It’s a visual sludge of poorly-executed visual ideas with a story that lacks any sort of true emotional core or pathos. The script is a total mess and the direction lacks any personality. If the recent outpouring of lifeless content from the MCU seems to appeal to you, you might enjoy the third Ant-stalment. But for me, I just cannot find any sort of love for Quantumania. More than anything, I’m just tired of these movies. Please make them stop.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is now playing in theatres.
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