Certificate: 12A (moderate fantasy violence, rude humour). Running Time: 125 mins. UK Distributor: Marvel Studios
WHO’S IN IT?
Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kathryn Newton, Jonathan Majors, David Dastmalchian, Randall Park, Gregg Turkington, Bill Murray, William Jackson Harper, Katy O’Brien
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Peyton Reed (director), Jeff Loveness (writer), Stephen Broussard and Kevin Feige (producers), Christophe Beck (composer), Bill Pope (cinematographer), Adam Gerstel and Laura Jennings (editors)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Rudd) enters the Quantum Realm, where he encounters powerful new foe Kang the Conqueror (Majors)…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA?
After two fun and light-hearted solo outings, and a couple of very important supporting roles in other movies, Ant-Man is ready to be taken a bit more seriously. It’s a reasonable ambition, and by this point he’s definitely earned a more mature adventure to go on, but the one that’s been picked for him in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is a strange choice, for it works well as a few many other things, except for being an actual Ant-Man movie.
The film begins with Ant-Man himself Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) living a comfortable life in San Francisco; he’s publicly adored for his role in saving the universe, his relationship with Hope van Dyne/The Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), the daughter of original Ant-Man Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), couldn’t be healthier, and he’s even written a book detailing his time as an Avenger. However, he is still struggling to connect with his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton), who grew up quite a lot during the five years he was gone, and is getting into trouble with the law due to her activism. She has also inexplicably developed a communication device to the Quantum Realm, the microscopic universe wherein Pym’s wife Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) was trapped for decades, but when it mysteriously sends back a message, all of them are sucked in to the molecular dimension, where they discover new worlds and inhabitants they didn’t know existed, as well as dangerous new enemies.
The latter comes in the form of Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), a powerful foe previously teased in the first season finale of Loki, who is formally introduced here as the next big Thanos-level threat in future Marvel instalments. It’s a strong introduction to not just this character and his many capabilities – including the power to wield all of time and space, which he uses to destroy countless timelines across the multiverse – but also Majors’ intimidating and chillingly soft-spoken performance, which the actor mightily commands in a way that immediately sets him apart from other past Marvel villains, even Thanos. Between his menacing turn here and the more over-the-top one he gave in that Loki finale, it will be interesting to see what other interpretations he can bring to life as other variants of this character over the next number of projects, leading up to the announced Avengers: The Kang Dynasty which I can only assume will be downright performance art for Majors at this rate.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania works best when it is setting up this multi-movie villain, and also when it is exploring areas of this vast and imaginative Quantum Realm. A lot of other reviewers have called out this movie for its excessive amount of CGI, which is fair to point out since there is almost enough here to match one if not all of the Star Wars prequels, but the truth is that there’s no other way to really bring these backdrops to the screen without relying heavily on computer graphics (after all, it’s not like they can just shrink the actors down and have them interact with actual beings, some of whom look oddly like broccoli), and there is such fascinating detail in a lot of these backdrops, from the colourful skies to the strange creatures who live under them, that it’s more of a necessary evil to explore this fantastical new realm. That isn’t to say that there aren’t some wildly questionable effects sprinkled throughout – there is a major supporting character whose nightmarish design comes direct from the uncanny valley, and given this particular character’s cult following it will be interesting to see how many respond to his portrayal here – but when it allows itself to bask in the intriguing worlds that the effects bring to life, the film can be quite gorgeous to look at.
All of that is fine enough, but what about Ant-Man? He and his friends are the main characters in this movie, and they’ve barely even been mentioned, if at all, so far in this review. Sadly, this does lead into the film’s biggest problem, which is that it works fine as everything else, except as an actual Ant-Man movie. These characters are merely observers here, travelling along with the audience through the Quantum Realm and taking in all these sights and meeting some of the interesting locals, but rarely is there ever anything that they themselves take away from it all, or even any major developments in their own personal journeys, if indeed there are any here. I think part of the reason for that is, at this point, there’s nowhere for any of them to really go as characters; Scott’s got the public’s respect, he’s got a good relationship with Hope, she’s thriving in her new job, Hank and Janet are reunited after years apart, and even though she’s often on the wrong side of the law Cassie doesn’t seem like too much of a problem child for anyone, least of all her father, to really worry about. They’re all characters with more or less completed arcs, and here it never feels as though you’re learning anything new about them or it’s setting anything up with them personally further down the line, even in future Avengers movies where they will inevitably face off against Kang again. They’re just kind of there, which isn’t exactly what you want out of a series that had previously done rather well by its lead characters.
While it isn’t particularly strong with its own heroes, nor does it have nearly as much entertainment factor as their previous solo outings, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania isn’t a complete waste. Again, it does offer a tour of this fascinating new universe which is gorgeous to look at, but more importantly it also establishes a pretty intense new villain who, through a combination of some sharp writing and Jonathan Majors’ intimidating turn, should be more than a handful for other Avengers in the near future. I just wish that more of that time and energy could have been put into also making this a worthwhile Ant-Man movie.
But hey, at least we’ve got Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 to look forward to next, which should surely utilise its own central characters better than this film does.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania works best as both an exploration of the vast and CG-coated Quantum Realm, and as an intimidating introduction to new Marvel supervillain Kang the Conqueror, but at the expense of being a worthwhile Ant-Man solo film.
