Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania review

The Quirkiest MCU Character

With the third Ant-Man film, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania now in theatres, it’s worth remembering how quirky and unexpected the first Ant-Man film was when it crawled into theatres back in 2015. The MCU was in an interesting place at that time; Avengers had proven how successful the inter-connected series of films could be, while more recent entries like Thor: Dark World and Iron Man 3 showed that the MCU wasn’t entirely infallible.

Ant-Man fully leaned into the absurdity of the character while proving to be one of the funniest (and oddest) Marvel films to date. The film (and it’s 2018 sequel, Ant-Man and the Wasp), center on Scott Lang (the endlessly charismatic Paul Rudd) a thief-turned Avenger with the power to shrink down to the size of an insect. He also has the power to grow to Kaiju-size, and has a mental connection to ants that he can command at will. (We said it was goofy.)

Look Out for the Little Guy!

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania opens with Scott Lang on a victory run. Basking in public adoration after his role in helping destroy Thanos,Lang is now the author of a memoir (Look Out for the Little Guy!) and enjoys free coffee from a local barista who think he’s Spider-Man. Living in San Francisco with his girlfriend Hop van Dyne (A.K.A. Wasp, played by Evangeline Lilly), Lang is struggling with his teenage daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton), an activist who he has to bail out of jail.

In addition to her burgeoning political awareness, Cassie has inherited her family’s knack for science, which pleases her grandfather Hank Pym (a clearly tickled Michael Douglas) and his recently-rescued-from-the-Quantum-Realm wife Janet (Michelle Pheiffer) to no end. However, Cassie’s latest experiment, a device that sends a beacon into the Quantum Realm, proves to work a little too well; the device opens a portal to the Quantum Realm, sending the entire family into the mysterious dimension.

From there, the film takes off on a sci-fi adventure as the stranded family members struggle to make their way back home. They encounter a variety of alien creatures, spend time with a potential former Quantum Realm-lover of Janet’s played by Bill Murray (hey, 30-years away from home is a long time), and enjoy longing stares into mauve-coloured CGI vistas.

Kang Cometh

The group soon comes into contact with the film’s big bad — Kang (Jonathan Majors), the mysterious time-travelling being audiences first encountered in the Loki TV series. Played with simmering intensity by Majors, Kang has one simple request — he understandably wants to get the hell out of the Quantum Zone where he has long been trapped, and he needs Lang’s help to escape.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is the first film in the MCU’s Phase 5, the next chapter of the Marvel saga set to encompass future films and TV shows for the next few years. As such, it has a lot of setting up to do, and often feels like the first chapter in a massive saga rather than a rewarding stand-alone film. Director Peyton Reed does an admirable job trying to mesh the zany comedy of the earlier Ant-Man films with the cosmic stakes of Kang’s plans, but Quantumania unfortunately loses much of the oddball fun of the earlier films.

The Star Wars-on-LSD concepts of the Quantum Realm are often visually striking, but 2-hours is a lot of time to spend in a sub-atomic world that looks like the inside of a lava lamp. If there is a saving grace to Quantumania it’s in the performances, from Jonathan Majors’ imposing and frightening portrayal of Kang to Michael Douglas’ contagious sense of joy as he commands a CGI army of supersized intelligent ants at 80-years-old.

MCU Phase 5

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania doesn’t deliver the thrilling introduction to Phase 5 that the creators and Marvel Studios head Kevin Fiege may have hoped for, but it’s nevertheless a surprisingly heartfelt family story set amidst a realm-full of oddball curiosities (M.O.D.O.K. may be the best supporting character in the history of the MCU).

There are worse ways to spend a couple of hours in the theatre in the dead of winter, but after a few lacklustre MCU entries, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania isn’t the MCU reinvigoration that many fans have been pining for. At least we’ll always have M.O.D.O.K.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is in theatres on February 17, 2023.