This review will contain spoilers, so read at your own risk!!
As a big Marvel fan, I was super excited to see Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania because it was the first Marvel movie of the year and also the first project for phase 5 of the MCU. I’m not the biggest Ant-Man fan, but I think his movies are decent and he’s definitely a fun character. I was a bit shocked that they chose him as the character to kick-start the next big plot point, and that they even chose to give him a third movie at all. However, considering that the Ant-Man movies are some of the only MCU films that dive deeply into the quantum realm, it makes sense. The quantum realm and quantum physics are supposed to play a huge part in the MCU from this point on — a bigger role than they have in previous phases.
I saw the movie opening weekend, and honestly, I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know if the movie was going to lean more into the silly side, like the first two movies, or if it would be a bit more serious and detailed because of how important the subject matter would be for films going down the line. I didn’t go in thinking I’d hate it, and I also didn’t go in expecting I’d love it, either.
I ended up leaving the theatre feeling somewhere in between. The movie wasn’t good, but it also wasn’t awful.
The first scene of the movie was a quick flashback of Janet van Dyne (Wasp’s mother) stuck in the quantum realm, with Kang, who we were first introduced to in the Loki series. Now, watching Loki isn’t necessary to understand the film; I dropped the show after episode one. They still give some insight into who Kang is and what his plans are.
Then, we jump back to the present with Scott Lang (Ant-Man), doing a little narrative bit where he explains what’s happened since we last saw him, which was in Avengers: Endgame. He does it in a fun, quirky way that’s true to his character, and at the end of the story, we see him in a bookstore reading the narrative from a chapter in his autobiography. And as cute and funny as this scene was, I felt like it was a pretty clear indicator of how the rest of the film was going to go, which — unfortunately — was downhill.
The rest of the film followed the same kind of track that Thor: Love and Thunder did: cheesy jokes, underutilized characters, and underdeveloped plots. Cassie, Scott’s daughter, had the potential to be a really great character, but she ended up falling flat for me. She’s played by Kathryn Newton, who replaced the original actress, Emma Fuhrmann. Kathryn is a good actress, she did really well in the Netflix series The Society. However, I think the film’s writing was holding her back from doing as well as she could have. In fact, I think this same thing can be said for just about everyone. Every actor in the film has had amazing performances outside of this film, even the first to Ant-Man movies were pretty good, but this third movie put everyone in a position where the line deliveries just came off as awkward.
The Wasp’s character was barely there unless it was to argue with her mother or to jump in and save Scott. Hank, Wasp’s father was also given very little purpose, and her mom was there just to keep secrets about the quantum realm to herself until everyone was in danger. We were even introduced to Quaz, a character in the quantum realm who can read minds, and the film didn’t even use him to the full extent. They even used this film to introduce MODOK, an interesting character in the comics, and they used him for comedic relief, rather than for any real purpose. Everyone just felt a bit lost and didn’t really mesh well with me.
The plot in itself had a good premise, but it ended up falling flat.
Kang was banished to the quantum realm (most likely a different Kang than the one we see in Loki, since he has the power to jump timelines and destroy universes) and has been spending years trying to escape. He almost did with the help of Janet, until she found out he had ulterior motives and left him there. After Scott and his family get sucked into the quantum realm, Kang is aware of their presence and wants to use them as a means of escape. The whole movie centers around the gang trying to learn more about the quantum realm all while trying to escape at the same time. They’re also trying to discover how they can defeat Kang as well.
It should’ve been a really strong plotline; Kang is the character that’s going to be the big villain for the next Avengers movie, and he’s also going to introduce key pieces of the multiverse that we don’t know about yet. However, with the way the writers planned it out, it ended up being slow and it seemed like it dragged on. There were no huge, shocking plot twists, and the fight at the end was very anticlimactic. It felt like so much was happening and nothing was happening all at once, and in all honesty, I don’t remember much of what went on at the end at all until the last few scenes (my bad!). The movie could’ve ended a lot sooner than it did, and had some scenes omitted.
After escaping the quantum realm, we see Scott in the same position he was in at the start of the film: narrating his life story. It was a cute full circle moment, and a fun way to end the movie, but as I said earlier, it just solidified that the movie wasn’t taking itself seriously, and not in a good way.
There were two after-credit scenes; the first one featured Kang and all of his different variants from different timelines and universes getting ready to brawl. The second scene features Mobius (another character introduced in the Loki show) and Loki in the early 1900s setting watching a Kang variant on stage. The two go back and forth about how dangerous Kang is, and then the scene ends. The words “Kang will return” appear (no surprise there), and that’s it.
Overall, I gave the movie 2/5 stars. The jokes fell flat, the script was awkward, and the pacing was all over the place. I felt like characters weren’t being used to their full potential and I also hate that we didn’t get a full Kang backstory, because of his introduction in Loki, which leads me to my next point.
I’m not a huge fan of how the MCU is introducing key plots and characters into tv shows, and then implementing them into the movies, expecting us to have watched them. I’m not a fan of Loki as a character, so I wasn’t excited about his show, but I still tried (and failed) to watch it. I made it through Wandavision, so I was up to date and able to follow along when her story continued in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Even though I did enjoy the show, keeping up with new episodes every week is tiring, especially if the main characters are ones you don’t care all that much about, or if the plot isn’t the best for you. Marvel uses shows as key components for its phases rather than as something fun to watch, making consuming them a chore and not anything particularly enjoyable. There are still a few MCU shows I haven’t finished or seen at all, and honestly, it might stay that way until there’s a show with a premise that I’m super interested in.
That being said, the film did have great attributes. Jonathan Majors, the actor who played Kang, carried the movie on his back. And while everyone else’s character arcs seemed a little dull, Ant-Man was still true to the same personality he’s had for the past few movies.
I left the theatre very underwhelmed, but I’m still ready to see where the MCU goes from here. It’s not rare for the franchise to have a few bad films every once in a while, and hopefully, their next few movies don’t feel like this one.