Ant Man has (fittingly enough) never been one of the biggest Avengers characters in the MCU, and his most recent movie, the 2023 finale to his trilogy, Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, helped cement that. Being one of the few MCU films to be given a rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes, Quantumania barely managed to scrap its money back at the box office and left most audiences feeling perplexed and mediocre at best, and critics feeling extremely dissatisfied. The film that finally opened the world up to what is known as superhero fatigue, it left a lot more harm than expected on the genre. Scott Lang/Ant Man (played again by Paul Rudd) is now a beloved celebrity after publishing a book detailing his involvement with the Avengers and his family life, which is now a little more complicated due to a now teenage Cassie Lang (played now by Kathryn Newton) getting herself thrown in jail for participating in political activism. Now regretting the time lost between them due to The Blip, Scott finds out that Cassie has built a device that draws up a map of the Quantum realm. This proves disastrous as it backfires and sends the two, along with his girlfriend, Hope (played again by Evangeline Lily) and her parents, Hank, and Janet Pym (played again by Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer) into the miniature realm. Now separated, Scott and Cassie find themselves at the mercy of Kang the Conqueror (played by Jonathan Majors), a being existing out of time whose been banished to the Quantum Realm and is now trying everything to escape and continue his genocidal reign. Having confronted him previously, Janet is aware of the dangers Kang poses, but with him holding Cassie hostage and with Scott willing to do anything to save his daughter, will he help regardless? Quantumania is a mess of a film in terms of storytelling, characters, tone, and scale, failing to live up to its promise of being a bigger movie, and starting off Phase 5 in a poor fashion.

The Ant Man trilogy always suffered from being very low-stakes and often times feeling more like a slapstick comedy rather than a superhero film. For what they were, they managed to provide a change of pace and brought some fun sequences and memorable characters, but that was really all they had going for them, so the promise of upping the stakes and evolving the brand to something more impactful could be smart, but also would be tricky. It’s hard to bring a new perspective and scale to a familiar franchise when the film is still helmed by the person who directed the previous two films, Peyton Reed, and from his directing in this film, it’s clear that he isn’t capable of doing a much higher-stakes movie. With most of his filmography consisting of tv sitcoms or small cult classic comedies, he’s not the person to pick when it comes to climatic material that is along the same lines as other big Marvel movies, showcased by the fact that despite its increased presentation and attempt at consequences, the film still feels very shallow and small in scale. The film has so little strength to some of its material that the trailers had to lie to its audience in order to pretend it had more weight to its premise (the trailer gives a better idea for a plot than the movie itself), and its made even worse by a truly terrible script. Jeff Loveless was the screenwriter for this film, and the only other substantial work he’s been attached to was Rick & Morty, which gives a pretty good idea of how this story flows, feels, and sounds. The outline for this plot does have some elements that feel like could’ve been delved into and made into something actually pretty big and impactful like the concept of making up for lost time regardless of the cost, accepting mistakes of the past, and the damage that comes from being engulfed in the very nature of time, but the screenplay takes these mature ideas and waters them down around a very blanket rebellion-type story that’s been done to death in several other sci-fi stories. It barely even feels passionate in telling its story or presenting something that should lead to future films and storylines (which is what it was promising), more like it’s just content existing as another chess piece in the elaborate web that is the MCU. When it reaches its conclusion, it won’t leave you feeling angry with what you saw, but you’ll definitely feel an overwhelming sense of nothingness and confusion as to what relevance this story even has.

The familial aspect of Ant Man feels strange for the character (who in the comics is more known for his misadventures and relationship with The Wasp), but it’s something that is actually appreciated. Although the possibilities with Ant Man stories usually revolve around size-bending and reality-warping scenarios rather than familial dramas, the cast of characters they’ve created for these film are actually pretty likeable, work really nice as a family and it feels good to watch them all work together (even if that doesn’t happen until the climax). Despite this, the film does suffer from an excess of characters to the point where a majority of them feel underused and don’t contribute much to the overall plot. There’s a decent chunk of wasted actors in general, with talented people appearing in one-off roles that contribute next to nothing and feel like completely wasted time (you have Bill Murray, Katy O’Brian, and William Jackson Harper in your movie, and you don’t do anything with them). The cast is thankfully acted pretty decently, so no performer comes out looking weak or poor, but the script is so weak that a lot of them are solely relying on their own charms and talents to stay keep themselves alive and with any sense of dignity. Scott Lang has a good starting off point for an arc involving growing closer to his daughter again, but it gets kind of forgotten about as the story keeps going, The Wasp feels incredibly forced into the story, having no stakes or relevance outside of being pushed into brief action sequences and the climax, so being part of the title doesn’t lead to much more screen, and Hank Pym feels so useless now, he could’ve been written out of this movie altogether. Michelle Pfeiffer does a pretty decent job as Janet, giving the character more time to shine (as well as Pfeiffer for that matter) and her scenes with the villain are thankfully some of the better parts of the movie (to the point that it looks much more engaging than what was actually at the forefront). Kathryn Newton has proven to be a decent actress in other material, but Cassie is a bit of a pain in this movie, only existing to cause the conflict of the story and contributing very little outside of acting as a hostage later in the film. For the next big villain being set up, they also fail very hard in establishing the character of Kang. Even though the character is posited as someone who’s ‘’new and different’’ for the MCU, he has very little unique qualities going for him that set him apart from any other Marvel villain (which have repeated been pretty underwhelming outside of a hand full). Majors in the role is fine, but his lines, motivation and even plans within his movie are very generic, spoken in a manner that feels more like the actor is enjoying his performance too much at the expense of the audience, and his plan and even motivation is simultaneously too shallow to care about and too brief to follow or understand that it barely makes him stand out at all. At the opposite end of that, the character of M.O.D.O.K (played by Corey Stoll) stands out a little too much with an ugly design, pitiful character and zero purpose outside of making people weirded out by his look.

A lot of criticism was put on this movie for its awful VFX and how they’re overused to the point of becoming distracting and for the most part, they are kind of right. It feels like you couldn’t do a story like this without using a good chunk of CGI, but upon hearing about how the VFX staff were mistreated during this period of time when making the movie in order to give more focus to another film they were releasing the same year, it paints a different perspective of who’s the one at fault for some of these issues. With that said though, while some of the effects are noticeably awful (much worse than they’ve ever looked in these movies), there are some environment shots and creature designs that are actually pretty good. The Quantum Realm for the most part looks pretty imaginative, giving a Forbidden Planet kind of vibe mixed with this cellular concept for its creatures and landscapes to make for some pretty fun and inventive looking locations. When it delves into the more scientific aspects like the architecture and more typical monolithic-looking structures, it gets pretty bland and uninteresting, but the more natural areas look the best, contain a fair splash of color, and have the most promise for creating a unique environment that would’ve been neat to explore and spend a movie in. What keeps it from being a unique environment is including a civilization and a sense of resistance; it’s a story point that’s been done to death, none of the characters are worth caring about so it’s hard to want them to rebel against a ‘’dictatorial system’’, and the Quantum Realm ironically had more of a personality when it didn’t have people in it and was more just an ecosystem that had rules and a type of world structure unique to other areas in this world, so by removing that element, it just becomes a new coat of paint on a seriously overused car. Despite how poorly this film has been received and how a good chunk of Marvel humor has really worn out its welcome for people, this movie ironically doesn’t suffer that as much but that isn’t a compliment. The movie isn’t plagued with countless groaner jokes that get on your nerves like other flawed MCU titles, but this isn’t a funny movie in any regard. Its honestly kind of impressive how little is actually funny about this movie to the point that it’s almost kind of embarrassing (which in many ways could be far worse than just being annoying).

What should have been a fresh start after a very rocky fourth phase is instead another trek down the bumpy road with a movie that has ambition, but just results in lesser returns. Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania isn’t the worst that the MCU has to offer like many may believe it to be, but it was the film that finally opened people eyes up to the faults in Marvel’s system and how it needs to be given a shake-up if anything is going to be improved upon. Most newcomers aren’t going to be satisfied with the weak humor, poorly handled characters and the minimal stakes and consequences given for a project that promised to include them, and those that were a fan of the previous Ant Man films won’t be impressed with the complete change in feel, mood, and atmosphere that removes the laid-back slapstick nature that made the first two films unique (they may not have been anything groundbreaking, but they were more consistent than this). Once and a while there’s a cool visual, the acting is still solid and if the story was written and constructed better, something could’ve come from this premise, but it looks like this ant couldn’t handle the pressure of trying to join the upper ranks of a franchise 1000 times its natural capability.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,