'Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania' Review: Marvel sucks all the fun out of 'Ant-Man' in this mediocre film
Minor Spoilers ahead for 'Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania'
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is filled with larger-than-life figures like Captain America, Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man, Scarlet Witch, Hulk, Thanos, and more. However, in 2015, the production giant announced the arrival of a ‘tiny’ superhero in the form of ‘Ant-Man’ and stunned the world. It gave us the impression that a superhero with extraordinary powers isn’t essential for a movie in the franchise, even the tiniest of heroes can make a superhero movie worth the watch. The first two movies in the ‘Ant-Man’ franchise were massively successful, so it doesn’t come as a shock that the production giant thought of starting Phase 5 with an ‘Ant-Man’ film, titled ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’.
Now, there were a lot of expectations from the movie because of the recent failures that Marvel endured. The universe needed something strong to start off the new phase and whenever a new look or a trailer was released we thought that Marvel has sorted things out and we are going to see a banger of a movie. Sadly, that’s not the case here and in reality, we just got an average movie that could have been one of the finest films in the MCU.
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So, the movie starts with master thief-turned-Avenger Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) living in San Francisco where he is now considered to be a celebrity and gets a lot of selfie requests from the public. In the middle of all this, some people believe that he is actually Spider-Man and Lang doesn’t disappoint them by telling the truth. He has written an autobiography which is doing pretty well and is constantly busy going to several book-signing events. However, the most important thing he has done is to reconnect with his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton). They are having a great life and Cassie is making new equipment. The entire bunch is really happy, but everything changes, when Cassie’s new invention gets them sucked into the Quantum Realm.
So, Scott, Kathryn, Hope, Hank, and Janet are now in the quantum realm and even though Janet has spent almost 30 years in that space, she knows that someone diabolical is surely to make their lives miserable. Well, no point in guessing that we are talking about Kang the Conqueror. He is ready to do anything and everything to come out of the realm because he wants to conquer the entire world. Now, the Lang bunch needs to keep Kang inside the realm and return to the real world.
'Quantumania' starts off well but then...
Let’s get one thing clear here. The movie starts off really well and in the first fifteen minutes, you’ll realize that you are going to see something special here. However, as the movie progresses, viewers see that the third ‘Ant-Man’ film removes all the best qualities that the previous two films had in order to introduce another formidable MCU villain. The best part of the first two films was the humor and how Scott, along with his friends, used to present the audience with funny one-liners and sequences. That is completely missing here. We don’t even know what happened to Scott’s friends, especially Luis (Michael Pena), who was undoubtedly one of the best aspects of the first two films. Also, it’s quite astonishing how almost 95% of the movie is shot in front of a green screen, and make no mistake, the Quantum Realm looks visually stunning, but we never get to explore the other fascinating sides of it because the entire film is busy in focusing about just one thing. Seriously, half of the time we felt like we were playing a video game where a player is constantly given a task to talk to this person or visit that building in order to move forward in this endeavor.
Apart from all this, the movie is all about the villain Kang the Conqueror who has no one to live for or any sad story attached to him. He just wants to go there and rule the world by any means possible. Kang is another larger-than-life villain that would dominate the fifth phase of MCU and ‘Ant-Man’ serves as a Launchpad for taking forward his story. But is that enough for viewers to watch the movie? Absolutely! Sadly, they would have to lower their expectation when it comes to other things.
Jonathan Majors saves the movie from being horrible
Jonathan Majors is the soul of the movie and gives an extraordinary performance as Kang. We got a glimpse of what his character can do in the season finale of ‘Loki’ and even then, Majors stole everyone’s thunder with an electrifying performance. Trust me, when I say this, he single-handedly saved the movie from being terrible. There is a stark difference between the Kang we saw in ‘Loki’ and the Kang we see in ‘Quantumania’. This version of Kang is more violent and sinister and Majors absolutely kills it. On the other hand, Paul Rudd is amazing as always. The heartfelt moments he shares with his daughter are a treat to watch and those moments are also the film’s biggest strength.
Michael Douglas and Evangeline Lily had much little to do this time around, but they are good. But Michelle Pfeiffer is given ample time to showcase her acting prowess and her performance is really powerful. Kathryn Newton is a great addition to the cast and she plays Cassie with a lot of precision. There are moments where you’ll like her and then suddenly, she’ll be annoying, but she controls her emotions perfectly and this role might turn out to be the one that gives her a lot of work in the future.
However, the biggest letdown is how the movie is written because the dialogues are so clunky. Don't know what happened there, but it is undoubtedly, one of the worst-written Marvel movies that we have seen in recent times.
All in all, ‘Quantumania’ is not a terrible movie and is entertaining enough. However, we expected a lot more from it and it never feels like a movie that completely understands what’s at stake and ends up being just mediocre. We never thought we would say this, but this is possibly the least fun we had while watching a Marvel film. Only one thing kept us going and that was Majors’ epic portrayal of Kang.
** stars for ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’.
