Movie Review: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania [2023]

Yeah, there has been a huge rumbling among the fandom that the MCU has been floundering ever since Avengers: Endgame, with no real direction and so many promises at each successive entry being the 'big multiverse one, honest'... and with Spider-Man: No Way Home, Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, What If and Loki all being relatively standalone and honestly pretty small in terms of multiversal stakes, the fandom hasn't been particularly all that enthused with Kang the same way that the Thanos arc gripped them. Admittedly I do think that they didn't go hard enough with the 'alternate dimensions' or 'alternate counterparts' theme, but there's also the fact that so many of the Phase Four entries were so... standalone. Eternals posited some huge cosmic threat that was never followed up upon in any other entry, and so did Loki. And with Thor: Love and Thunder criticized for its wavering tone, everyone was waiting for the first movie of Phase Five, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, to see if this will be the equivalent to Phase Three. Properly introducing Kang the Conqueror to the 'movie-only' fans, and starting the ball rolling that the other Phase Five movies will follow. 

And... in a nutshell, I really did feel like this movie kind of swapped tones with Thor: Love and Thunder. Which, for a movie that dealt with Jane Foster dying of cancer and a villain called Gorr the God-Butcher, really could've stood to be less flippant. Meanwhile, as much as I enjoyed seeing Scott Lang and Hope Pym back on the silver screen, this movie... doesn't really feel like an Ant-Man movie. For one, they culled all of Scott's cast. Cassie's mother and stepfather, Jimmy Woo, Ghost, Bill Foster, and even Luis and the other two stooges, a source of comic relief. And while it's understandable that a majority of these guys can't really possibly make it into the Quantum Realm, it also does feel a hole that makes this movie feel a bit more like your generic MCU fare instead of an Ant-Man movie, which always had a sense of zaniness and light-hearted adventuring to it. 

(Oh, and they also forgot Janet's unexplained Quantum Realm powers that she uses to heal Ghost in Ant-Man and the Wasp, and she doesn't do much in this movie). 

And there's still jokes and fun, of course. Paul Rudd's acting as Scott Lang is always best when he shows what a good dad he is, and with this movie pushing Cassie Lang (a.k.a. Stature, a.k.a. Stinger) to the forefront as she wants to do heroics and save everybody, we do get a fair amount of great father-daughter interactions... but this also follows a formula that has been very prevalent throughout so much of recent MCU where we have a badass mentor and his/her younger child protege. Cassie (recasted into Kathryn Newton of Detective Pikachu fame) is probably the best out of all the kiddies we've gotten, but it's still an over-reliance to a gimmick that I felt is kind of outplayed at this point. 

But more to the point, the big introduction of Kang has one of the bigger problems as what I had with Loki, and honestly, to a lesser extent, time-paradox Thanos in Endgame. Sure, it's the same actor. Sure, this is a Kang. But it's not the Kang, or the Kangs, that will be menacing our heroes in future installment. Jonathan Majors delivers an amazing job as Kang, of course. The costuming department also did a great job at adapting Kang's classic green-and-purple suit and the blue face, and the action scenes are reasonably well-done. But since this is literally Kang the Exile's only real outing, it does leave a hollow taste when he gets imploded at the end of this movie. His enmity with Scott and his family never really feels particularly personal either, other than him basically forcing Scott into stealing his plot device engine core for him and taking Cassie hostage. 

There is some attempt at building Kang's history with Janet, who befriended Kang in the Quantum Realm during her years and years of solitude there. It's interesting stuff, and Janet had caused Kang's power core to blow up and strand them in the Quantum Realm in order to protect the multiverse... and as a result, Janet has been fighting against Kang the Exile's army with the rest of the denizens of the Quantum Realm, before her family picked her up in Ant-Man and the Wasp. 

We do get a semblance of the older Ant-Man movies' fun in the prologue, which shows Scott Lang as a successful author, Hope as the new head of the Pym Industries, and Cassie being a bit of a troubled teenager... though not through joyriding or whatever. She's demonstrating and attacking police cars that are trying to shut down her activism, because she wants to be a hero no matter the cost. This gets followed up a bit later on, when Cassie and Scott get into a bit of an argument over whether to prioritize saving the Quantum Realm citizens or not. And it's all... it's all decent stuff. I'm not going to pooh-pooh on the relationship between the two, but the focus on this character trait kind of gets dropped around the second act when it all turns into 'stop Kang!' Oh, and they're also hanging out with Hank and Janet... and turns out Hank has been a cool grandpa to Cassie and they've been building a little Quantum Realm observation/communication device... which causes Janet to panic, because they made contact with the living societies in the Quantum Realm that Janet had never told her family. 

And then they get sucked in and separated. And... I don't mind the funny monster designs there, like the giant sun-eyeball thing, or the weirdness of Veb the slime guy, or gags like the broccoli man... but the Quantum Realm just feels like a Star Wars ripoff setting, and while some of the sceneries are neat, it doesn't really feel that different than, say, all the alien world-building of Guardians of the Galaxy or the newer Thor movies. None of the new cast members are honestly all that memorable, and we really do spend a fair bit amount of time with these rather bland characters... a bit of a double-edged sword since we really do need to learn a bit more about them to care about whether the Quantum Realm gets liberated or not, but they're honestly just not all that interesting. Krylar (played by Bill Murray, our big-name actor cameo) is a generic sleazy crime boss, Jentorra is a generic badass rebel leader, Quaz is a snarky telepath, Veb is a slime guy with an obsession with holes and Xolum the lamp-head guy is the aggressive brute. I had to look up all of these names, because I really didn't remember any of them... even Jentorra, who has a fair amount of screentime, really fails to give much of a memorable impression. 

And we spend a fair amount of time going from place to place that could've easily been handwaved as 'Quantum Mos Eisley Cantina' and 'Quantum Tatooine', and... I know there's only so much derivation that you could make out of a sci-fi setting, but it does feel like they really could've gone a bit more different in showcasing the Quantum Realm and they didn't. Kang gets built up and the mystery about his connection with Janet is discussed a bit by Hope and Hank, but we really didn't get too much of an interesting payoff other than a couple of snide remarks? 

Kang's forces menace the separated Pym families, and Scott and Cassie in particular face off against M.O.D.O.K., the Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing... a very welcome addition to the MCU, although in this universe, M.O.D.O.K. is revealed to be... Darren Cross, a.k.a. Yellowjacket, who was shrunken down into his head when he was seemingly killed at the climax of Ant-Man. And I do enjoy Corey Stoll's hamming it up as M.O.D.O.K., and his insanity and the clear absurdity of a floating head with robotic baby limbs is always funny. It's just that... M.O.D.O.K. and Kang really do feel like they clash a fair bit tonally, and while it's not particularly too distracting, I wondered if M.O.D.O.K. would've perhaps functioned better as a standalone character solely connected to Kang?

Anyway, Kang wants to get his plot device power core back, and holds Cassie hostage, forcing Scott to go into the giant mutated crystal mass to get it. We get through a rather long trippy sequence where all the probabilities and potential futures end up creating a gigantic swarm of Ant-Men, and later we get a gigantic swarm of Wasps to help out, and it's... it's a very interesting image, and trippy for sure, but they really did drag this sequence a bit longer. (Also, you'd think that in a movie series about multiversal variants, that Scott might meet some of his actual variants?)

Kang, of course, betrays the good guys, but then we get an honestly rather predictable climax as Cassie rallies the trapped rebellion leader, and they bring together all the rest of the inhabitants of the Quantum Realm to charge Kang's castle. There are admittedly a couple of pretty fun sequences, most particularly Scott going kaiju-sized in a roaring rampage to save his daughter, and my favourite -- Hank Pym realizing that the ants that fell out of his terrarium had evolved into a society of hyper-intelligent ants thanks to time dilation, and unleashes the entire damn nest upon the city like a flood. That was actually cool. 

But a bit less cool are the villains. Kang and M.O.D.O.K. get a fair amount of cool visuals, sure, and M.O.D.O.K. gets ultimately defeated by Cassie... and after a very uninspiring 'don't be an asshole' speech, M.O.D.O.K. ends up betraying Kang at the absolute last minute. And... I don't know. I get that M.O.D.O.K. is a bit of a joke, but the random redemption felt like it came out of nowhere, and even if it did, I really felt like they should've actually made it a bit less goofy. 

Kang talks a huge, huge game, and I absolutely love his big dramatic speeches about having killed so many Avengers in the past... but his actual performance in battle is a bit lackluster? We do get a couple of fun brawls between him and Scott (and later Janet) but ultimately his body count of even secondary characters just amounts to that one lamp guy and M.O.D.O.K... though in M.O.D.O.K.'s case, it's more of his already wounded self charging in to stop Kang. 

We get a slight extension of the climax where Scott holds Kang back in the Quantum Realm to allow his family to escape, but then Hope swoops in and the two of them double-team Kang and cause him to be torn apart when the plot device ruptures. Cassie builds a new portal, and thanks to time dilation, Scott and Hope return... and we get a tongue-in-cheek epilogue where Scott strolls through his life, thinking about how Kang is 'holding back' something terrible... but oh well, right? And then the post-credit scenes basically hype up the Kang Multiversal Council stuff. 

And... and honestly, taken on its own merits, Quantumania isn't a bad movie. It's like Love and Thunder, where they had a standalone story that they wanted to tell, and they told it. It's just that from a tone perspective, and from the fact that this was supposed to be the huge debut of our brand-new overarching villain... it wasn't as impressive as it should be. Toss in several additional issues like the tone being way too serious for an Ant-Man movie, cutting out the interesting side-cast in favourof a bunch of personality-less CGI creatures, and most of all, not really having a proper arc for most of the characters we do follow (Janet and Cassie's stories kinda just peter out, and Hope, despite being billed as half of the title, has only generic 'save my family' goals).

Anyway, while I still enjoyed my time watching this movie, it's honestly not the best to come out of the MCU, and the frustrations kind of double after realizing the supposed significance of this movie in the greater picture. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Post-Credits Scene:
• An army of Kang variants gather in a certain location, led by three Kangs (Rama-Tut, Immortus and Scarlet Centurion, according to the comics), realizing that the exiled Kang is dead and now they can start a multiversal war. 
• Loki and Mobius observe Victor Timely, a variant of Kang who is giving a speech about a time-related invention in Victorian-era England. 
• Past Movies Continuity:
• Darren Cross/Yellowjacket's attack on Cassie and his subsequent apparent death is brought up by numerous characters before he resurfaces as M.O.D.O.K.
• The Baskin Robbins store that Scott got fired from in Ant-Man returns in the opening and ending of this movie. 
• Jimmy Woo, who tangled with Scott in Ant-Man and the Wasp, make a brief, non-speaking cameo going on lunch with Scott in the opening.
• Janet being trapped in the Quantum Realm is the crux of the plotline of Ant-Man and the Wasp. 
• Scott's autobiography details heavily his involvement in Avengers: Endgame. The excerpt that gets played in the car specifically details his first encounter with Rocket Raccoon. Scott also brings up his participation under Captain America in Civil War. 
• Scott brags to Cassie that he's been in jail four times -- twice in Ant-Man, and once in Captain America: Civil War. 
• Kang the Conqueror, or a variant of him, first appeared in Loki's first season. We also get Loki and Mobius returning, as well as a return of the fragmented sacred timeline as shown by Kang. 
• After Cassie goes giant-sized, she says she wants limes -- after Scott goes Giant-Man for the first time in Civil War, he had a craving for orange slices. 
• Spider-Man is mentioned by one of the civilians, and Kang briefly mistakes Scott for Thor. 
• Movie Superhero Codenames: Scott gets continually referred to as 'Ant-Man', but bizarrely I don't think Hope ever gets called 'Wasp' in the movie. Kang gets called 'Kang' and 'Conqueror' several times, M.O.D.O.K. insists on his acronym-name (though Yellowjacket is only ever called the bee-man). Cassie Lang never gets called by any of her comic-book codenames, and neither does Hank Pym or Janet van Dyne -- though the two of them are retired, so it's justifiable.
• Favourite Action Scene: Giant-sized Ant-Man slowly walking towards Kang's city, demanding his daughter back.
• Funniest Line: "...wouldn't that be M.O.D.O.F.K.?" Scott Lang, asking the question that every comic book fan secretly has when they read the acronym for big ol' head-man. 
• Wasp's new look in this movie -- with short hair and finally a primarily yellow suit -- brings to mind her most well-known modern look from the comics to the silver screen. 
• Ant-Man's new costume most iconically brings in the classic chest pattern from Hank and Scott's comic-book counterparts.
• Kang's speech to his people before launching his invasion is adapted from a speech he gives in the Avengers Forever comic run.
• Janet uses the term 'sub-atomica' when describing the Quantum Realm, which is a term used by the Fantastic Four when they visited the Microverse. 
• Krylar and Jentorra are both very minor characters from Hulk comics. While Krylar is associated with the Microverse, Jentorra is an alien in the comics.