Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania Review!

Alright! Today I'm reviewing the first movie of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Phase Five, the third Ant-Man movie, and the 41st entry of the Marvel Cinematic Universe overall, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Quantumania sees the titular heroes try to escape the Quantum Realm after an accident goes terribly wrong, leading Ant-Man and co. to face off against their greatest villain yet: Kang the Conqueror, a dimension-hopping warlord who seeks to purify the timeline. 

Right away there are two major issues: Once again, as with Spider-Man: No Way Home, the event that kickstarts the plot could have been resolved with a five-minute conversation where they sit down and discuss the specifics of everyone's intention, be it how many people need to remember Peter's secret identity or if sending a signal down to the Quantum Realm is a good idea. You see snippets of it in the trailer and think "Surely that's just an abbreviated version of the actual plot, there's no way it could be that stupid," only to buy a ticket and find out, yes, it was that stupid. I don't hold it against the movie - movie's gotta movie, after all - but I do find it extremely lazy writing. 

The second big issue is that, as was evident when it was marketed as "The Beginnings of a New Dynasty," this movie is first and foremost about setting up Kang the Conqueror as the main villain for Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, due in theaters in 2025. The entire movie is designed to make Kang look like the "about to hit the fan" villain that could succeed Thanos as an all-time great cinema villain, which Quantumania largely succeeds at doing thanks to Jonathan Major's superb performance. He's my favorite and least favorite thing about the movie. 

On one hand, Jonathan Majors delivers on the role. The dude is a phenomenal actor, every inflection exquisitely placed, every line made into a meal. The dude is chewing through the movie and I am here for it. His physicality is amazing as well, especially when compared to a villain like Thanos, where the intimidation is aided by CGI extending the actor an extra two feet. Majors is all-natural, built on sheer stamina and willpower. When he engages in a fistfight with Ant-Man the stakes feel insurmountable, not because the movie did a good job setting it up as such, but because Kang is so intimidating that the mere idea of winning a fight against him seems impossible. 

On the other hand, the Ant-Man movies were always commendable for their strong emotional beats and focus on family, which Quantumania apparently decided was boring and replaced with an Avengers-level threat. The entire movie feels like setup for giant setpieces where Kang can wreck the heroes, not an emotionally driven movie about family and lost time. The movie also fails its villain by being an overall lackluster film - Kang (And Ant-Man) deserved a better, more memorable movie. It does no one any good to hijack an Ant-Man movie with a great Avengers villain only to smother both of them in a layer of Quantum CGI that makes the entire experience ultimately forgettable. 

That's another aspect where the movie fails - The titular Quantum realm. Anything involving the Quantum realm, namely the first third of the movie, is so utterly bland and generic that it lends itself to inherent mediocrity (It even wastes Bill Murray!). Combined with the mixed-negative quality of the CGI at the beginning of the movie, that's doubly true. It would look good... for a Star Wars fan film they somehow booked Michelle Pfieffer for. Otherwise, it's more of what you'd expect from Marvel's overworked and underpaid CGI vendors. 

Quantumania is three movies in one - the first is one about the Quantum realm and its unspecial and vaguely annoying inhabitants, the second is a fantastic Kang origin story that they knew they couldn't mess up, and the third is a fun Ant-Man movie. None of them blend together well, and the overpowering odor of the Quantum Realm plotline infects all other parties. Particularly terrible was William Jackson Harper's Quaz, a telepath who is the living embodiment of MCU jokes that undercut emotional beats, complete with a light-up forehead and funny sound tone that signals "Please laugh." Between this and Jameela Jamil in She-Hulk, one might think Kevin Feige just hates the cast of The Good Place. 

But is it all doom and gloom? Not really. While my review isn't particularly flattering, that's because Quantumania, like so many other MCU films and series over the past two years, is actually a good movie hidden under several layers of bad ideas and execution. The end result is totally fine and very watchable, but underneath all the noise you can see the strings of an amazing movie. It's frustrating to see Marvel time and time again take 8 and 9/10 movies and turn them into 6s and 7s, that, with a few adjustments, would have been unbelievably stronger from a structural standpoint. 

For example, the members of the Ant-Family are all eschewed or diminished in ways unflattering to their previous two films of development. Cassie, who should have been the emotional core of the movie, is instead a bland do-good protagonist whose morals don't make for particularly exciting viewing and never lead to any interesting philosophical debates outside of subpar cookie-cutter talks on helping those who can't help themselves (It also didn't help 90% of her lines were "Dad!"). For a title character, Wasp is largely left in the background, Hank has a hilarious single-mindedness towards ants that reminds me of Fred Jones and traps, and I still find Michelle Pfieffer's take on Janet van Dyne too cold and stilted. 

Aside from Jonathan Majors' fantastic performance, the movie had two major saving graces - the expectedly hilarious live-action debut of MODOK, who I rather liked in the film, even if his otherwise emotional arc is underdeveloped and ends in six dick jokes. Everything involving MODOK proves that he should have been the main villain of the film, starting with Corey Stoll's beautifully campy performance and ending with his "I don't know what to be... tell me what to be" line that would have been an emotional gut punch in any other context. Alas, like everyone else in the movie, he plays second fiddle to Kang. 

The other major saving grace of the film is Paul Rudd. The dude is still Marvel's most charismatic hero and Paul Rudd continues his streak of being one of the most likable actors working today. His charismatic smarm grounds the best parts of the movie - the opening "day in the life" sequence where we see his post-Endgame operations and a fantastic quantum heist involving several Ant-Man variants. When the movie is spliced into ten Fandango clips they're the only parts of the movie I'll be liable to watch again (In addition to, of course, the MODOK thirst edits).  

The MCU has done Wasp so incredibly dirty

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is another notch in the MCU's "Fine, I guess" belt, a product that had so much potential ultimately crushed under endless MCU-isms, the weight of cinematic universes, and questionable CGI from vendors told to make sure Wakanda Forever looks Oscar-worthy. It's agreeable to a fault - if you walk in for a casual date you'll be satisfied by the turn-off-your-brain aspects of the film. But when it could have been so, so much more? Disappointing. Title characters are forgotten, the ensemble is shrunken, and the end result is a movie that doesn't even acknowledge the fact that Scott Lang, a character whose defining character trait is wanting to be a good father, loses out on his daughter's childhood through custody cases, prison, house arrest, and then a five-year time jump, and is then manipulated by a man who promises to return lost time. And then they do nothing with that. 

If you're questioning Marvel's existence after Endgame, hoping that Phase Five is better than Phase Four, or are looking for a good Ant-Man threequel, Quantumania is not the movie for you. Quantumania is the epitome of, not Marvel Fatigue, but rather of Marvel Trust. People showed up to Marvel movies because they were reliably good. Now, they're still reliable... but reliably okay. They're stakeless, flippant movies that went from consistently A- to consistently B adventures, and while likable is not the opposite of great, it's not a synonym either. 

Overall, I give Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania a 5/10. "Where once the Ant-Man movies were palate cleansers after an Avengers movie, Quantumania switches it up by being a glorified prelude to an Avengers movie." 

Earth's Mightiest Heroes did it better.