Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Marvel has consistently struggled with “Ant-Man” as a movie property. All three of the “Ant-Man” movies fail to reach the same bar set by the rest of the MCU (with a few exceptions *cough*Eternals*cough*). “Quantumania” looks to change that by going in a drastically different direction than the previous two movies. And to a degree it works. But as the old saying goes “One step forward, two steps back”.
The plot is a lot of surface substance but not much there to back it up. There are a lot of ideas that should have had way more exposition, and a lot of ideas that should have had less. For an “Ant-Man and the Wasp” movie, somehow there wasn't nearly enough Ant-Man OR Wasp. Wasp is a complete write off aside from showing up just in time for a few fight sequences that gives her about 10 minutes of action screen time. That's it. She might as well not have been in the movie. And although Paul Rudd always shines as Ant-Man, there just isn't enough of him in this. They packed in so many new characters that he barely even gets time to be the lead.
The most screen time goes to Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Kang (Jonathan Majors). Van Dyne wastes half the runtime of the movie withholding information that would have helped everyone in the cast for seemingly no reason. Her character is so scared she can't explain what's going on? That doesn't make sense. She's ashamed of explaining the situation? That doesn't make sense either when you finally hear whats been going on. It's just a really frustrating way to move the plot along by having a character withhold vital information I would have divulged in seconds. If this was me coming back from the Quantum realm, I never would have shut up about Kang. First person I see outside of Quantum I'm sitting them down and explaining what's going on. It just makes no sense for her character to do what she does.
Kang is really good, Majors does a great job as a menacing super villain. That being said, Kang being built up as the next major villain doesn't hold nearly as much hype as Thanos did. And I hope that they change that, but Kang was never a Thanos level villain before in the comics. Mostly he was just getting his ass beat by The Fantastic Four. In the MCU it seems like they're trying to build up a “battle across time”, piggybacking on the ideas from Endgame. And I really hope they don't go that route, because that would honestly be a cheap retread on what we've already seen.
There are a lot of interesting CGI critters and environments to see in “Quantumania”, but it just becomes so much when you know you're looking at a green screen for two hours. And I felt they were heavily ripping off some of the concepts from “Thor: Ragnarok”. There is literally a creature duo of a dude with a glass head and a little gooey companion that are complete carbon copies of “Korg” and “Miek” from “Ragnarok”.
So did I like “Quantumania”? Well...sort of. I do think I enjoyed it the most of the three Ant-Man movies. And if you just kind of turn your brain off and enjoy the ride, it's ok while it lasts. But once you start thinking of things about the plot, a lot of it unfolds and pisses you off. If you're a casual Marvel fan I think it'll be a perfectly fine addition, but if you're a little more of a hardcore fan, there will be a lot to get frustrated about.
6/10
