Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania **1/2

 

One Liner Review:

A decent enough Marvel movie, there’s some fun to be had here, but ultimately this one isn’t anything special or gripping, and falls right in line with most Marvel Phase Four movies, which means it’s kind of forgettable.

Brief Review:

Review:

Marvel movies have really fallen short over the past few years. There’s no secret about that. From the Eternals to Doctor Strange 2 to Thor Love and Thunder it’s been one generic movie after the next. They try to be different in terms of tone, but each of these films ends up  feeling inconsequential, as if they are making the same basic movie, just in a different setting. And they also feel unconnected. Where is the focus on one big, cohesive story that Marvel did so well with phases one through three? With Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, for the first time in years (since Thanos and Avengers Endgame,) we have some kind of connection to what is to come, with the villain Kang being the new big bad that will  be featured in this phase. And yet it still doesn’t feel like it’s part of a bigger picture.

 

Remember when Iron Man ended with Nick Fury? And Hulk ended with Robert Downey Jr showing up? The Marvel universe felt so small back then. Of course, there were only two movies at the time, but Marvel found a way to keep it going. Both Iron Man 2 and Captain America, the Winter Soldier (the second Captain America movie,) featured Nick Fury and Black Widow. This was masterful storytelling. But Marvel doesn’t do that anymore. Quantumania is the movie that’s supposed to pave the way, and it still doesn’t do that.

 

Let’s go back to the original Ant Man for a moment. The first Paul Rudd outing as the character. That movie gave us a full scene in the middle of the movie where Ant Man goes to the Avengers complex and has a fight against the Falcon. In other words, even this series used to do it right. And yet Marvel just cannot seem to find their way back to that. The closest they have come is bringing Wong (Benedict Wong,) and Trevor (Ben Kingsley,) into Shang Chi for a number of scenes, and guess what? That movie was by far the best movie of Marvel’s Phase four (not counting Spider Man No Way Home, which is more of a Sony movie and also had the nostalgia of past Spidermen to it, which is very  different when compared to something like Shang Chi, a new character making his debut.)

 

So Marvel has lost sight of the bigger picture. And that has to do with the Disney Plus shows as much as it does with the movies (just look at how their show Moon Knight has no connection to anything, for example.) It should have been a rule that every Marvel property had some clear connection – some character cameo or crossover- to something else.) But what does all of this have to do with AMWQ? Well, it makes AMWQ feel like it is its own movie and not really existing in the bigger Marvel universe. Which some may look at as a good thing. Only it doesn’t take chances the way a movie that was its own one-and-done, kind of thing might do. It does explore a new world, in a Journey to the Center of the Earth meets Star Wars kind of way, but it doesn’t feel all that unique.

 

This new world is the quantum realm. Nearly the entire movie takes place there. We just get a handful of scenes of Scott Lang (Paul Rudd,) in his regular life at the start of the film, and then we are on our way. It’s so quick, in fact, that characters who have become a staple of these Ant Man movies are nowhere to be found. No Judy Greer or Bobby Cannavale as Lang’s daughter, Cassie’s, parents. Even more egregious is no Luis (Michael Pena,) Lang’s best friend. Which means no monologue of Luis’ voice coming out of other people’s mouths as he tells a story (another trademark of the first two Ant Msn movies.) This new movie rushes into the quantum realm so fast that it can’t find a place for these characters to even make an appearance. Not to worry though, because since it’s a movie about time travel, even if they don’t pop up in the present, they should be making an appearance in the past, right? Like in flashbacks.

 

Nope. Wrong. Wrong on all accounts. Not only do none of these characters make an appearance, but there is also no time travel or flashbacks. We’ll get to all that later. First let’s dive into some of the good. The quantum realm itself is pretty cool. They really take the time to make it seem like another planet or world. There are fantastic alien creatures (broccoli head, lantern head, a jello guy obsessed with holes, another guy who reads thoughts,) and cool set pieces. To say this feels like Star Wars, and specifically the cantina sequence in A New Hope, is an understatement. and it’s fun. Everything in the first half hour or so about this strange new world is a lot of fun.

 

And then we start to meet our villains. Kang (played by Jonathan Majors,) is the main villain, but then there’s also MODOK, as Kang’s henchman. The villains are both pretty cool. They look fantastic, and I love that there are two different ways of looking at each one of them. With Kang, he’s got the blue visor which makes his entire face look blue. And then sometimes he removes that to reveal his human-like face and black skin. It just makes him look more human and therefore more realistic. Similarly, MODOK has two different looks, both involving his face. The first look is a gold metal face shield with the image of a face built into it like armor. But that face shield is all for show. The mouth doesn’t move, for example. To see his real face, MODOK lifts the face shield and Darren Cross’ giant head is revealed, blown up so that it barely fits into the glass containing it.
It’s intentionally comical, but MODOK was always a ridiculous looking character, and I’m glad the MCU found a way to bring him in, that made sense for the story (an alien world filled with comically strange looking characters makes this the perfect fit.)

 

The problem with the villains is specifically with Kang. Jonathan Majors is a fantastic actor and he continues the line of somewhat sympathetic villains that we got with Killmonger in Black Panther, and then Thanos. But the problem is this movie keeps telling us things about him and doesn’t really show us anything.  It tells us about the worlds Kang has destroyed and the “timelines,” he has wiped out. There’s a lot of talk about time, but we never actually see any time travel, or past or future memories in any way. Maybe it’s because the Avengers Endgame did this sort of thing a few years ago, bringing us back into past experiences with the Avengers, but if  this villain’s power is all about time, then they need to actually see some of that.

 

And this is where Judy Greer, Bobby Cannavale, and Luis could have come in. How about some flashbacks in time travel to Cassie’s mom, explaining to Cassie where her father was, when Lang was sent away to prison. Or to Lang doing his first job with Luis and getting busted. When Kang threatens Lang by  saying he will kill Cassie over and over again and make Scott watch, it sounds pretty scary. But you know what’s even more scary? Actually seeing something like that. Like they did in Doctor Strange, when we saw the hero die over and over again brutally at the hands of Dormomu. This Ant Man movie doesn’t take risks like that.   It’s fun and goofy (Scott and Cassie arriving in the quantum realm, falling through things, with Scott constantly changing into Giant Man is cool,) but it’s not very memorable.

 

At the end of the day, this movie is fine and adequate, but it doesn’t take the great leaps and chances that one might have hoped for. The beginning is about the world exploration, and that’s where the movie is the most fun. The middle is about the villains, Kang and MODOK. I like that both of them are multidimensional, and have both good and bad sides. I like that we hear about both of them long before meeting them, allowing the stories, rumors, and our own anticipation of them to really build up (for a while, MODOK is referred to by everyone as only “the Hunter.”) And then the end is about an uprising and fight. This is where the movie starts to feel the most generic, and kind of loses the audience. There are lots of fun moments in this movie, like the multiple Scott’s scene and how they all help each other climb up a big pile of themselves. But the movie does feel pretty basic and uneventful compared to what it could have been. Fun, but inconsequential.