Film Review: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania | This is not an Ant-Man film

An issue with a fair few of Marvel Studios’ films and shows as of late, is that they are tonally all over the place. There’s no real sense of what each of them ultimately wants to be. And this was even a problem with one of phase 4’s strongest offerings; Shang-Chi and The Legend of the 10 Rings. Quantumania is very sure of what it wants to be, but ends up not being what it should have been. An Ant-Man movie.

One of the many charms of the original Ant-Man movie was how different it felt to all of the other Marvel Cinematic Universe movies we had gotten up until that point. It was more low to the ground. Less mystical. Not as dramatic, but still with dramatic moments which punctuated the story and delivered stakes. The whole thing had a very indie movie vibe about it, which made it feel like a bit of an outlier within the MCU in the best possible way. It also didn’t overtly concern itself with being interconnected with the other films. You really didn’t really need to know any of what was happening in any of the other movies. And yet you could kinda see how Ant-Man could potentially tie into the bigger story. I mean, shit. The intro alone did that with the inclusion of S.H.I.E.L.D, Agent Carter and Howard Stark.

The first two Ant-Man movies dealt with factions and technologies that you knew could show up in other films, but nothing of them was explicitly tied to goings on in other films. The first two Ant-Man films didn’t really care about anything other than being Ant-Man films. Where-as Quantumania seems to want to be anything but an Ant-Man film, which is bizarre to say the least.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania | Marvel Studios

Quantumania is not a film about Ant-Man at all. It’s a film about the Quantum Realm and occasionally Kang. And this really hurts the film, because the Quantum Realm nor Kang are ever really explained. We’re just expected to go along with everything we’re seeing. How are there other races of people in the Quantum Realm? Why do they look how they look? How does drinking alien ooze enable you to understand all of the different languages spoken in the Quantum Realm, when there is surely more than one language spoken there? What is it about the Quantum Realm which seems to be a suitable prison for somebody like Kang specifically? And how did those who banished him there know of its existence and know that it would be able to hold him?

For a film series which has science at its core, albeit superhero science, Quantumania plays out like a fairy tale. The entire story is very Alice in Wonderland, which given the premise, makes sense - all Disney connections aside. But Quantumania loses its groundedness as a result of this, and it just becomes this clusterfuck of things. Watching Quantumania was like watching a fusion of Taika’s takes on Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars, Spy Kids and Strange Worlds. This may sound like a fun time on paper, but it completely robs Quantumania of a unique standpoint and tone, which the Ant-Man movies once had, and pretty much built its own brand on.

Everybody involved in putting this film together either lost sight of what made the Ant-Man films special, or just had no interest in making an Ant-Man film at all. And the annoying thing about it all, is that there is a half-decent film here. But it’s with the wrong set of heroes, the wrong writer and the wrong director.

Given the supposed science of it all, the inclusion of Kang, and the family dynamic at the heart of it; this really shoulda been a Fantastic Four movie.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania | Marvel Studios

Marvel Studios’ seemed to forget who and what the film is actually SUPPOSED to be about, and the story which they should be telling. Quantumania shouldn’t have been a film about the uprising of the Quantum indigenous, or a daughter who won’t listen. It should have been about both generations of Ant-Man and The Wasp trying to make up for lost time, but coming to the realisation that they can’t, and this causing rifts between them all. This would have made Kang far more relevant to the whole entire family, because he can give them all the one thing that they thought they had lost. Time. This was the whole damn hook in the trailers, yet it is not the crux of the film. And there also could have been a whole subplot with Janet wondering if she had better off staying in the Quantum Realm; because now she’s back with her family, she’s realising that she has something to lose all over again because of time and the nature of the family business. But this all goes unexplored, because we had to set up Cassie as younger superhero with a Pym tech suit. All because Marvel seem hell bent on setting up younger successors to known heroes of MCU phases 1-3, despite some of the existing ones still having stories worth telling.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania | Marvel Studios

A common theme with Marvel Studios’ films and shows these days is the focus on the what’s over the who’s. Spider-Man: No Way Home was just ‘a Spider-Menses reunion’. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was just ‘Oh, there’s a multiverse AND HERE’S WANDA AS THE VILLIAN’. Ms. Marvel got reduced to ‘Oh, she’s a mutant’. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is just ‘Oh, we’re in the Quantum Realm for an entire movie AND HERE’S KANG’. And if you’re somebody who was interested in being in the Quantum Realm for an entire movie, great! But I never once had any interest in knowing what was there, because it was always propositioned as this timeless void. But now it’s been realised as this whole other world within a world, which is crazy to me; given that Marvel Studios have chosen to open up the Multiverse at the same time. So, now we have a Quantum Realm and the Multiverse, and Marvel Studios has done a terrible job on selling either of them, or how they are connected. I mean…are they even connected!?

I’m not saying that the Quantum Realm could never be realised as a world. But Quantumania didn’t seem interested in realising it in a way which roots any of it in science or explores how time dilation works there. Kinda insane, given that time dilation is one of the main things we know about the Quantum Realm because of the role this played in Avengers: Endgame. How are you not going to root the Quantum Realm in science and physics, which not only have been a focus of the Ant-Man films, but is in the damn name of the realm, which is also in the name of the film?

Like I told y’all. This isn’t an Ant-Man movie.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania | Marvel Studios

To introduce the Quantum Realm as just a Star War was strange to me. I’m sure it made complete sense to Disney. But not to me. It was lazy. There was no real explanation for why any of what is in the Quantum Realm exists, let alone exists the ways in which they do. And the end result wound up feeling really underwhelming and unnecessary. After two Ant-Man films where the Quantum Realm played such a background, yet crucial role in the stories. And then Endgame, where the Quantum Realm was the additional member of the Avengers which helped everybody save the day. To have the third (not) Ant-Man movie just go ‘Here is Quantum Land’ in such a slapdash way, it just felt off. It felt disconnected from literally everything. As though the first two Ant-Man films and Endgame were set in this whole other universe or timeline.

Given that Marvel Studios like to be loose with things so they can change or mould them later on, it’s interesting that they chose to even go into this (shoddy) level of detail of how the Quantum Realm looks and exists. I think leaving some mystery about it, unless they were REALLY going to do the work on realising it properly, would have served them better in the long run. Marvel Studios are already showing that the Mutliversal aspect of their stories may be a case of them biting off more than they can chew. And despite Marvel Studios talking up the Multiverse, no film nor show in phases 4 or 5 thus far has really explored the Multiverse at all. There was What If…?, I guess. And Loki probably did the most and best things with it, in terms of explaining it. But even so, the Multiverse is yet to be shown or truly explored. It’s just being used as a device to bring old and dead characters back. It’s lazy. It makes sense to introduce the multiverse, but it’s lazy. Especially when a film like Everything Everywhere All at Once came along and does a better job of explaining the multiverse and the impact of it, whilst still having the film not just be about it at all really. It was everything that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness shoulda been. Marvel Studios’ loose and fast approach to storytelling and world building is really starting to fall apart.

And speaking of a Star War, Quantumania shares way too much in common with The Rise of Skywalker. The parallels were so clear, and it baffles me that nobody at any point said ‘Wait a minute…’. Because not only should Marvel Studios not want to blur lines with another Disney franchise, but I can’t see why anybody would intentionally want to recreate any element of a film which was such a piece of doo-doo. So it should come as no surprise that The Rise of Skywalker parts of Quantumnia are the worst parts. And you could take it all out of the movie, and it would have no greater impact or consequence on any other part of the story. The indigenous plotline with the white girl playing saviour was also something we saw in Frozen 2, and it was messy there too. Quantumania has no identity of it’s own, and chooses to be the worst parts of other films!?

What the fuck is going on over at Disney, for real? Bob Iger’s gotta unbutton that cardigan, roll up them sleeves and start asking some questions.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania | Marvel Studios

What made the first couple of MCU phases good was everything being about the characters first. Whereas in films such as Quantumania, the focus isn’t the characters at all. It’s purely everything else that’s happening around them. Quantumania in and of itself isn’t much of a stand alone story. It’s just a device to show Kang prior to an Avengers movie which has him in the title, and to set up season 2 of Loki. The mid and post credit scenes are the best things about Quantumania, which is insane. The mid and post credits scenes could have been released on their own and still hit and made sense, because Quantimnia doesn’t provide the context for them anyway. Season 1 of Loki does. And I get that the mid and post credit scenes of MCU movies are usually clips from future films anyway, but there is usually still some form of connection to the film they used in. But Quantumania doesn’t matter here in any context when it comes to these two sequences, which is insane given they both centre on a character who is in the damn film.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania | Marvel Studios

At its core, Quantumania does have some good stuff. But Marvel Studios prioritised it all in the wrong way. So much of Quantumania was geared towards Cassie and the Quantum Indigenous, when it really should have been about the two generations of Ant-Man and The Wasp, Kang, and the bitter relationship that everybody has with lost time. Hank losing time with his wife. Hope losing time with her mother. Janet losing time with her family. Scott losing time with his daughter. Cassie losing time with her father. And Kang quite literally losing his access to time. And the realisation that no matter how everybody tries to make up for lost time in the present, they will never be able to make up for it. Time is something they are always going to lose, which would make any prospects from Kang to regain it enticing; despite Hank and Janet knowing enough about science and physics to know that time manipulation will ALWAYS come at a price. But nope. We got whatever Quantumania was.

And if we drill this down even further, this film honestly could have purely been about Janet and Kang, as their relationship was one of the most compelling things in the movie. There was SO much to explore there in terms of them being drawn together by their circumstances and traits of their character. Both intelligent. Both independent. Both willing to make sacrifices, even if it means losing those close to them. What of this story beat exists is greatly undermined by Quantumania having Janet do the thing I cannot stand in a story, which is refuse to share information which could have avoided the entire family going through all the bullshit they do in the Quantum Realm. But, it is what it is.

It also seems strange to me that Marvel Studios would take the third film in a trilogy, which features characters who we’ve yet to fully delve into, such as Janet van Dyne, yet choose to focus on Cassie and a bunch of other characters we have never met before. I get that Cassie is Scott’s daughter, and she was a HUGE part of the first Ant-Man film and Scott’s entire motivation for wanting to be a hero. But it’s hard to have any kind of connection with a character who has now been played by 3 different actors. And the way Cassie is written in Quantumania is terrible. She holds such disdain for her father and has the audacity to shit on him because he isn’t doing enough as ‘Ant-Man the hero’, as though he didn’t help SAVE THE WORLD against Thanos. Bitch, if I were him, I would retire, write a book and make good on free Baskin and Robbins ice cream too. There is a complete disconnect between how Cassie sees her father and how the world and WE see him. And this could have been an interesting thing to have explored, with Scott making it clear why he would never want to experience Endgame ever again, and why he is terrified of Cassie wanting to be the person that he was. This could also have been made to contrast with Janet and Hope’s dynamic, where Hope can’t let go of the resentment she feels for Janet playing hero and making the choice to leave her, despite it being to save the world. The family drama alone would have made for a great story and ultimately this was always at the heart of the Ant-Man films. But that all got tossed aside. Because Star Wars: Rise of Kang.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania | Marvel Studios

Quantumania also lacks real stakes. And I don’t get how you manage to tell a story about a family in danger, a villain with intelligence to rival a family of geniuses, who can also control time, and yet there are zero stakes. There is ONE moment at the end of the film where I thought Scott might die, just for him to be saved by Hope. I rolled my eyes, because killing Scott off would have not only been bold, but cemented why Scott no longer want to do the hero shit. And Cassie would have been left feeling the weight of not just how wrong she was, but the fact that her shenanigans is what caused all the mess that got Scott killed in the first place. There was a moment when I thought ‘Oh shit, now Scott and Hope are going to be stuck in the Quantum Realm’, which would have also tied into the concept of losing time, and I kinda woulda been okay with that too. Scott finally gets used to being with his daughter. Hope get used to having her mother back. And now they both have to be without them again. It also would have made Hope realise why her mother did what she did that day, and that Janet didn’t play the hero for any reason other than love for her family. I liked this being where these characters were left. But then within seconds, a portal opens and they return home and everybody is back together again. Also, this version of Kang is apparently dead at the end of the film, and everything goes back to normal. And there are a million other Kang’s. So, Quantumania truly doesn’t matter.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania | Marvel Studios

Quantumania is fine if you treat it like a passive theme park attraction ride, but it should have been so much more. The story is coherent and it’s linear. The performances are fine. The VFX are fine. Okay, they’re not great. But if you are watching this film, then there’s a likelihood you’ve watched a bunch of Marvel Studios’ releases, so you know what you’re getting with the VFX quality, and have just accepted that this is how the MCU rolls. Some great shots. Some terrible shots. And a whole lotta inconsistency.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania | Marvel Studios

The thing which fucks this film up more than anything is that it is not an Ant-Man movie. For how much shit that Ant-Man and The Wasp got, it still felt like it had the DNA of what makes an Ant-Man movie an Ant-Man movie. But Quantumania feels like this whole other thing. If you were to watch all three Ant-Man films back to back, Quantumania would stand out in the worst of ways, because so little from the first two films carries over into it. Sometimes this can work well for a trilogy. It worked wonders for Thor: Ragnarok. Even with the complete shift we saw tonally with Ragnarok from The Dark World, it still felt connected to the first two Thor films. Quantumania barely acknowledges anything of the first two films. We see nothing of Ghost. We see nothing of Bill. We see nothing of the X-Con crew, which is crazy considering Luis’ recaps (highlights and defining moments of the first two Ant-Man films) would have served the opening of Quantumania really well. San Francisco no longer feels like a character in this film as it did before. Pym tech has no real significance in the story anymore and are just reduced to foils against Kang. And whilst we do see Darren return, him becoming M.O.D.O.K felt unnecessary and completely undermines the Darren I remember in the first Ant-Man film. M.O.D.O.K coulda been anybody. Or just a new character entirely. Or just not featured in the film at all.

Quantumania’s story focuses on all of the wrong things. And in true MCU phase 4 fashion, it throws way too many ideas and characters into the air, and doesn’t properly service any of them. Everything in this film is completely under baked. The Quantum Realm. The Quantum indigenous. The Lang van Dyne family dynamic. Kang. The concept of time and what it means to everybody. All unexplored, because somebody decided that doing an MCU take on Star Wars would be more fun than telling the story which is right in front of them. Quantumania should have written itself. And yet we ended up with this wholly inconsequential story about something entirely different.

This is not a completely terrible movie. But this is not even remotely an Ant-Man movie.