Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania Review: A Depressing Start to the MCU’s Fifth Phase

In comparison to its predecessors, Quantumania is laborious and self-serious to a fault.

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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Photo: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

For all their faults, Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp felt at the time of their respective releases like welcome reprieves from the bombastic, CGI-laden spectacles of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Next to Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America, Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang, a.k.a. Ant-Man, brings an everyman quality to the MCU that makes the typically snarky humor of the first two Ant-Man films go down that much easier.

The goofy little adventures that Ant-Man gets himself into in those films aren’t dependent on intertextuality with a dozen other films, allowing their visual playfulness—namely in regard to the shrinking and blowing up of objects—to be enjoyable for its own sake. But with Reed’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, it’s as if the suits at Marvel wondered what would happen if they not only made the film the flagship entry of yet another “phase” in the MCU, but ditched nearly everything that was remotely unique about the first two Ant-Man films.

Within minutes of the film’s opening scene, Scott (Paul), Hope (Evangeline Lilly), Hank (Michael Douglass), Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), and Scott’s daughter, Cassie (Kathryn Newton), are sucked into the Quantum Realm thanks to the unintended consequences of the latter’s new invention. Almost the entirety of Quantumania takes place in this strange, minuscule universe. As such, all the fun and amusing toying with scale that occurs throughout the first two films is pushed to the side in favor of a visually dull and murky world filled with floating flotsam and overly busy yet totally inert CGI backdrops that look more like decades-old screensavers than a meticulously designed and constructed space that we’ve never seen before.

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Indeed, the Quantum Realm feels like it was built from the spare parts of the Multiverse, Asgard, and the living planet from James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, with clear echoes of various Star Wars films thrown in for good measure. For all the wonder that the film’s characters express throughout their time there, the Quantum Realm is as lifeless and joyless as your average MCU setting. The filmmakers are clearly aiming to set a far more ominous tone with Quantumania, but the overabundance of unconvincing green screen only makes one wish that the characters would return to Earth for more fleet-footed action.

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In comparison to its breezy predecessors, Quantumania is laborious and self-serious to a fault. Sure, the filmmakers throw in what amounts to an extended cameo for Bill Murray as Lord Krylar, and Gregg Turkington’s return as Scott’s former Baskin Robbins manager is a diverting enough reminder that the Ant-Man films have featured both stars of On Cinema at the Cinema. But even these stabs at humor can’t shake the sense that Quantumania is just planting the seeds for a narrative that’s pushing toward epic consequences to come, and makes it that much more similar to so many other entries in the MCU centered around the Avengers.

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A large part of that stems from the film’s villain, Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), and his particularly formidable powers and designs on destroying entire timelines in the metaverse—something that he’d already done before being banished to the Quantum Realm. Majors is reliably magnetic whenever he’s on screen, and here he conveys an emotional depth and inner torture that far exceeds what Jeff Loveness’s script gives him to work with. All his efforts certainly make him compelling to watch, but Kang’s motivations and background are so vague that his unflappable fury and personal drive are completely unmoored, leaving him as just another generic baddie set on destroying worlds on the Avengers’ watch.

It’s clear that Quantumania is setting Kang up as the new Thanos, a uniquely powerful and evil villain who will require an expanded team of superheroes to defeat. Yet in saving his backstory and, well, endgame for future stories only serves to make this particular film ring that much more hollow—another prologue for Marvel films to come. In reimagining the quirkier, more grounded, and less narratively congested spirit of the first two Ant-Man films into another battle to save all of humanity—and in countless timelines no less—Quantumania feels less the start of a new phase of Marvel films than a tired retread of adventures we’ve already been on.

Score: 
 Cast: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors, Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Douglas, Bill Murray, Kathryn Newton, Corey Stoll, William Jackson Harper, Katy O’Brian  Director: Peyton Reed  Screenwriter: Jeff Loveness  Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures  Running Time: 123 min  Rating: PG-13  Year: 2023  Buy: Video

Derek Smith

Derek Smith's writing has appeared in Tiny Mix Tapes, Apollo Guide, and Cinematic Reflections.

4 Comments

  1. The reason the CGI is so much worse in this one, and the reason it is so dark and colorless, is because Disney used The Volume to shoot major segments of this movie. That’s the same technology that has turned Star Wars from the most visually stunning franchise on the planet into the grey-brown goop eyesore we have now on Disney+.

    The technology is one-hundred-percent NOT READY yet, and may never be due to the fact you will never get the same clarity recording a TV screen with CGI rendered on it as you will rendering the CGI directly into the image. The only reason Disney is using it is to make movies faster and cheaper. Whenever you see The Volume being used, you immediately know, “They are purposefully sacrificing the quality of this movie/series in order to save time and money. They do not care about this movie/series at all.” It is not worth paying to see any movie or series that uses The Volume. You are guaranteed an ugly, dreary and dark viewing experience. Yes, The Mandalorian uses it but that series is saved, to the extent it is saved, by other elements, as well as some nice pure CGI shots in outer space. If you actually pay attention to many of the environments and backgrounds, they are just as ugly in that series as they are in Kenobi and Wakanda Forever and the House of the Dragon shots where they used it.

    My recommendation: Do not support any movies or series that use The Volume. It is a blight on modern cinema. Send Disney a message loud and clear that we still want quality movies, with nice locations and visuals. Even nice CGI is much better than The Volume.

  2. Action films USED to understand that the genre was for ADULTS and had to be MACHO* and TESTOSTERONAL*.

    This included big-budget, epic action films.

    Nowadays, commercial action films have a tone of and seem to be made for Geeky and Nerdy adults at best, and Children at worst.

    * That’s not a comment on gender but PURELY a sexless-use-of tonality.

  3. Despite the bad CGI, something the MCU has been occasionally guilty of for years, I still liked this movie. I don’t think it was as good as the first Ant-Man movie. But I believe it was better than the second one. Unlike “Ant-Man & the Wasp”, it wasn’t marred by a weak villain and a badly written subplot regarding the Sokovia Accords, one of the MCU’s biggest mistakes.

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