The Movie: Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania
The Director: Peyton Reed
The Cast: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors, Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Douglas, Kathryn Newton, David Dastmalchian, William Jackson Harper, Katy O'Brian, Bill Murray
The Story: Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne, along with Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne, explore the Quantum Realm, where they interact with strange creatures and embark on an adventure that goes beyond the limits of what they thought was possible.
The Review:
Within the last couple weeks before the movie's release, there were some quotes from the filmmakers talking about this being an Avengers level movie. Maury got the results and that was not true. The main problem I have with this movie, and it's a pretty big one, is how Marvel/Disney wanted to give Ant-Man a large, epic scale story while also maintaining the comedic vibe and sensibility that made the first two installments so endearing. That was the wrong move.
Way too much of this movie involves setting up Kang the Conqueror to be the big bad guy of the next phase, if not two phases, and yet even by the end, that doesn't really play out very well at all. A lot of what I mean here can't be expanded upon because spoilers so just trust me and we'll leave that alone moving forward. As a trilogy capper, the story also falls flat on its face as nothing really gets addressed from the previous films in any significant way, most of it ignore really, and all the family stuff is just sort of thrown in because the characters are there so they kind of have to.
All of this is becoming more and more of a problem for the MCU as a whole with the multiverse opening up endless possibilities and endless stories that all have to be made sense of. There are a ton of characters that get introduced in this movie, I had no idea who they are, what they are doing there, why they exist in this space, and who the heck thought adding a full blown revolution into the mix would be a good idea anyway. There are so many different ways this movie culd and should have been told without bringing in so much unnecessary things and stuff and beings.
What made the first two Ant-Man (and the Wasp) movies so good is that they are smaller in scale and they focus on the relationships of the primary characters in honest and meaningful ways while also taking full advantage of Paul Rudd's personality and charisma. Again, there are bits and pieces of that that shine through but most of it falls flat when played against the backdrop of an "Avengers level" attempt at creating a thing bigger than it needed to be.
Also. M.O.D.O.K. Big fail. That's all I'm going to say.
Are there big battles and crazy special effects in this mvoie? Sure, it wouldn't be a Marvel movie without all of that fun stuff and yet none of it felt real or of any consequence because there were no real stakes. Jonathan Majors was great because that's what he does, I can't imagine him not being good in anything he will ever do. He just has that presence and personality that commands attention and he was the perfect choice for this character so it's too bad to see his work wated on a story that doesn't do him or any of the other characters justice.
The Verdict:
Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania tries to maintain its bugged out sense of comic heroism but gets lost in the ever expanding multiversal freight train that is in real danger of being derailed. Thankfully, Thor: Love and Thunder will maintain its stranglehold on last place in my ranking of all MCU movies, but this is probably the closest to it at this point.
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