Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania – Review

“ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA”

Ant-Man and The Wasp finally close out their trilogy with Quantumania, a film that intends to start the next significant phase of the MCU.

Quantumania has bigger shoes to fill compared to the other Ant-Man films, which were often filler movies designed to tide us over until the next big Avengers film. But this time, it’s a bigger deal, mainly because of the planned roadmap to the MCU films going forward.

Once again, Peyton Reed returns to direct and most of the cast has reprised their role, with some exceptions. Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Michael Douglas do return for their roles.

The plot this time involves Scott Lang, Janet and Hope Van Dyne, Hank Pymm and Cassie Lang being sucked into the Quantum Realm after Cassie builds a device to communicate with it which leads to a person from Janet’s past coming back for vengeance. This then leads to Ant-Man and the various other members of the family fighting a rebellion against the Quantum Realm’s ruler, Kang the Conqueror (played by Jonathan Majors).

Kang the Conqueror’s addition is a big deal! He’s an Avengers-level threat, and he will live up to that considering that he will be a part of the next Avengers movie- which leads to some speculation on the role that he will play in this movie. His character at the moment is very similar to his comic counterpart, though in this case, I’m not sure how much of that is going to stick considering that even after the film is done there is some vagueness around his character.

The cast itself is firing on all cylinders. Everyone is pretty good, all things considered. Michelle Pfeiffer finally gets a lot to do, since the way that the plot is structured kind of makes it her movie- which is a problem that I had with the movie; Ant-Man kind of takes a back seat to Janet Van Dyne at times. It also feels to be at the expense of Evangeline Lilly, it feels like she’s just there to tag along.

Kathryn Newton (who you may recognise from Detective Pikachu and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) gets her first chance to play Cassie Lang. I actually thought that she was quite good in the role!

Paul Rudd is as funny as usual and I enjoyed Michael Douglas in his role, but the standout for me was definitely Jonathan Majors as Kang. Considering the other Marvel villains that he has to live up to, it’s saying a lot. I was concerned that they would try to outdo Thanos with his character, but it doesn’t feel like they’re really trying to do that. It seems like they’re trying to give him his own identity, and they did a good job of making him quite menacing. As a whole, he really works! I’m interested to see what the MCU plan is going forward.

One thing that I will say is that most of this film isn’t made on practical sets. You can really feel the number of green screens involved. I know that’s not anything different from most Marvel films, but this one involved so many backdrops that were clearly special effects that it kind of takes you out of it. That being said, the designs of some of these locations are amazing and they also facilitate some very good action scenes- something I’ve noticed is a strong point of the Ant-Man movies.

Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania does have some good qualities to it, great cast, and flowing storylines- but it does feel rather mid-level Marvel. It doesn’t really have the strength that some of the best Marvel properties have had, and it didn’t really matter with the previous two Ant-Man films due to how they were positioned, but the way that this one has been positioned has kind of exposed some of its weaknesses. That’s not to say that the Ant-Man movies are bad, but if they weren’t taken as a filler then they would definitely feel weaker as a result.

This is a pretty good movie. I don’t understand why it has a weaker review score, because I thought that this film was perfectly fine. Not something I’d rave about, but nothing that I’d actively dislike- it certainly doesn’t deserve to be near the level of Eternals (which at this point I think Marvel is seriously distancing themselves from in a big way).

If this is to be the closer for most of these characters, then it’s been a fun ride for them and they went out in a decent way, though the absence of Michael Pena is definitely felt.