Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania Review (2023)
Summary: Maybe worth a watch on streaming but not on the big screen. Feels like it should have been a streaming series rather than a movie.
3
I have holes!
Things have settled down a bit for Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) since the events of the Snap and defeating Thanos. He is a published author and just wants to live a normal life even if people mistake him for Spider Man. His daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) chafes at wanting to be normal and boring and he has to get her out of jail due to doing something she shouldn’t. Later when Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) come around they get to discussing some things which leads them all to be in the same room when Cassie demonstrates sending a signal down to the quantum realm.
Grandma protests but when the signal is shut off they are all sucked into the quantum realm even the ants. It seems grandma did a lot more than she let on when she was down there and now the big bad Kang The Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) is looking for them so he can get back to the outside and destroy everything.
In short is this worth your time? Well yes, but this feels like it could have been a streaming show easily and not really a movie. I went to the toilet during a dialogue scene and came back and they were still rabbiting on. If you need to put a five minute block of exposition into the movie then you have too many words in your script.
Ant Man has always been sold as the backup for the Avengers but he is not even really the B-Team, more like the interchange bench for the C-list Avengers. Spider Man is even higher-ranked than him and he is still a teenager. The problem may be that Jack Kirby’s stuff has always been more “out there” and harder to adapt than Stan Lee’s characters. They have done all the stuff that was easier to do by now and have to start going into the back catalogue for stories.
This also suffers from something that happens with the comic books all the time in that if you have not watched previous movies and Disney plus shows you will not know who some of these people are and why Kang The Conqueror is mean to be such a big threat. “I’m the least-bad guy” is weak sauce and a cop out. The Secret Invasion show does like it would be interesting though.
Marvel now suffers from what DC have been dealing with for a lot longer, it has history and expectation as a boat anchor around its neck.
There are at least a lot of interesting looking characters in this one and sure to be about a million different spinoffs for them in comics and across the MCU.
Out of the cast Jonathan Majors did seem like he was having a lot of fun with his role and I did enjoy him in the Lovecraft Country show what I saw of it. Getting to see a live action M.O.D.O.K was fun but I don’t think Patton Oswalt was involved with this version like he was in the comics. They do the “stunt cameo” which is pretty much expected by now but that character does not really have much bearing on the plot expect to dump exposition.
For this one wait until it comes on Disney+ and then go see the new Guardians of the Galaxy and Spiderverse movies.
Film details:
Director: Peyton Reed
Created by: Jack Kirby
Screenplay: Jeff Loveness
Starring: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors, Kathryn Newton, Michelle Pfeiffer, William Jackson Harper, Katy M. O’Brian, Michael Douglas, Corey Stoll, Randall Park, David Bertucci, Mike Wood, Leonardo Taiwo, Clément Osty, Milos Bindas, Younes Rocks, Paul Fairlie, Tianyi Kiy, Sandrine Anterrion, Lee Alan Donaldson, Melanie Garcia, Tony McCarthy, Ruben Rabasa
Country: USA
Language: English
Length: 174 min
Trailer
Whoops! I mean
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