Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania Movie Review

“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” Movie Review

by Luke Bonanno

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is the thirty-first entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the line that retroactively began with the release of Iron Man in 2008. As someone who has been reviewing movies for more than fifteen years, it's been hard enough to come up with original reactions to this onslaught of entertainment. Imagine having to come up with the movies themselves, each an expensive two-to-three hour spectacle designed to appease comic book fans and casual moviegoers alike with what are essentially minor variations on costumed battles of good versus evil.

It's unenviable work until you realize that it's some of the safest and best-paying work in Hollywood. If I were to take a couple of months out of my two decades plus and counting of film criticism and write a Marvel screenplay or even just come up with some creative ideas, I would fundamentally be the same person that I am now, only I wouldn't have to worry if I'll be able to eat this month or ever earn a livable wage. The product would probably not be substantially different and no one would really notice or care beyond the handful of people who might remember my name from lower New York area schools at the turn of the millennium and the few critics devoted enough to do a deep dive into the film's credited creative personnel or read the studio's production notes.

I'm not holding my breath for a call from Kevin Feige. But it might not be a bad idea for Marvel to mix things up and think outside the box because superhero fatigue is, at long last, real.

It's always been easy to dismiss superhero movies. Their origins are in laughable old serials, Saturday morning cartoons, and colorful, camp live-action television. But along the way, they became the biggest force in entertainment. And while they have given us many inventive and entertaining escapes, the success has come at the expense of everything else -- independent fare, mid-budget cinema, movies that adhere to the laws of physics. For the price of one Quantumania, you could make about ten movies like next month's probable Best Picture Oscar winner Everything, Everywhere All at Once and while they might not all spit out comparable returns on investments, wouldn't we all feel better about cinema conveying the human experience in creative and meaningful ways?

I digress. You didn't click a link to this review to hear me wonder when exactly my life's work -- countless hours of digesting and passionately interpreting movies -- will yield an income of more than low three figures per month. You probably also didn't come here for yet another rumination on the Marvel machine and how it's defiling the sanctity of true cinema. But a mid-February threequel like Quantumania -- calculated, competent, and what I would without any hesitation declare the weakest film to date in the Marvel Cinematic Universe -- invites you to find meaning anywhere but up on the screen.

I don't think anyone regards Ant-Man as one of Marvel's flagship franchises. The series began late, launching seven years after Iron Man changed the game and after two Avengers movies had already come. The most compelling aspect about the Ant-Man saga may be the fact that the Marvel machine shunned the auteur it originally entrusted -- Edgar Wright (whose work by my average star rating ranks above every other live-action director I've ever encountered five times or more). I have no doubt that Wright's wit and innovation would have distinguished this hero and served him well. Instead, Quantumania is the third installment of three directed by Peyton Reed (Bring It On).

The titular casting of Paul Rudd, the ageless comedy icon who's been hiding in films you know and love since the mid-'90s, seemed like another reason why Ant-Man would soar to great heights. If Marvel could give a troubled, offbeat scene-stealer like Robert Downey Jr. a new lease on life, what could it do with Rudd's always appealing devil-may-care energy? Not as much as you'd think. Rudd has been just fine at the center of these breezy adventures, each one clearly less diverting than the one before it.

Quantumania doesn't have a leading cast member's death or two generations of nostalgia to give it meaning. Its existence is as simple as Marvel penciled in this opening years back and none of the other heroes in the rotation has a sequel ready to go. Captain America and Iron Man have been retired. Spider-Man needs a hiatus or reset after his multiverse casting coup broke the box office in 2021-22. And Marvel/Disney still doesn't believe a Mark Ruffalo Hulk movie will go right where Eric Bana's and Edward Norton's went wrong. So, while we wait for more Guardians of the Galaxy and Black Widow and Captain Marvel, I guess, now is the time for more Ant-Man.

If you're struggling to remember what was demanding the heroics of size-changing San Franciscan ex-con Scott Lang (Rudd) when he wasn't bending space and time with the Avengers, that's okay. This movie eases you back into Scott's world, finding him a respected local hero for the part he played in the Avengers' big saving of the world a few year back (which was actually this year by Marvel's defiant timeline). But just like Scott Calvin in The Santa Clause 2, this formerly jailed Scott's contentedness is disrupted by some wayward behavior from his teenaged offspring. In this case, Cassie (now 26-year-old Kathryn Newton, replacing Abby Ryder Fortson from the last two movies and Emma Fuhrmann in Avengers: Endgame) is doing some police protesting and has wound up in jail.

Cassie has inherited her dad's brand of size-based scientific exploration, with help from the parents (Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer) of Dad's girlfriend Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lily). The five of them all get sucked into the Quantum Realm, where Janet (Pfeiffer) has spent decades but revealed little about. Scott and Cassie get separated from Hank, Janet, and Hope, leaving us to get dual narratives, probably to distract from how hollow and low-stakes this outing feels.

Both threads eventually lead to Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), the all-powerful renegade whom Hope crossed paths with in her previous time here. Still banished here, he wants out and is prepared to issue bold ultimatums to make it happen.

Quantumania welcomes a new writer to the fray in the form of Jeff Loveness, a seasoned scribe of awards shows, "Jimmy Kimmel Live!", and "Rick and Morty." Loveness doesn't seem to have much love for the supporting characters from the first two movies, abandoning most of them for this relatively economical, almost entirely digital, and decidedly cornball family excursion.

The movie never seems to commit to just one direction. At its start, the focus is on Scott, his newly-published memoir, and his desire to make up for the time he's missed raising Cassie. Then, Janet's mysterious past seems determined to jump into the foreground, which explains why an actor as iconic as Pfeiffer fills the role. This gets a little attention, but mostly as a way to put Kang at the center.

Majors, a standout in The Last Black Man in San Francisco and Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods, probably saw major breakout potential in this juicy villain role. Unfortunately, he plays it like Shakespeare when everyone else around him feels like they're making a slightly edgy and preposterously expensive Disney Channel Original Movie. This disconnect is something to work on because as the mid-credits and post-credits scenes hint, Majors' character is intended to be a cornerstone of the MCU's Phase Six, which apparently starts next year and will include something tentatively called Avengers: The Kang Dynasty in May 2025.

I have struggled to understand why Rudd, as charismatic and likable as any Marvel lead, has never felt terribly well-utilized in this, his clearly highest-paying gig ever. In fact, Rudd's charming presence and effortless relatibility have made it easier to overlook the cookie cutter issues with Marvel's Ant-Man. He lands his wisecracks and with those, we don't mind as much that his heroics involve nothing more than shrinking or enlarging himself as needed. Rudd and Pfeiffer aren't the only ones deserving better than this material. The one and only Bill Murray shows up for one extended scene as a character named Lord Krylar who disappears without explanation. What a thankless turn for a bona fide comedy legend, who still provides a number of the sporadic chuckles that hit their marks (a number of the jokes are "remember that?" nods to past Marvel extravaganzas). Given his notoriously elusive way of responding to job offers, I have no doubt that Murray has ignored better Marvel pitches in the past.

Marvel's approval rates from critics and moviegoers have fallen quite a bit since the pandemic began. It's tempting to just attribute this to the superhero fatigue that everyone predicted about a decade ago. Even so, Marvel's output continues to outpace the competition commercially, so it's hard to foresee Feige and company throwing out the extremely lucrative playbook and suddenly taking the big creative swings that those of us who watch movies for a living would love to see. The utterly underwhelming Quantumania suggests a reckoning may be in order.

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