Since the release of Iron Man in 2008, there have been 31 films released in what has come to be known as the ‘Marvel Cinematic Universe’. Never before or since has a series been as expansive, expensive, or profitable as the MCU. What happens when you take a bunch of popular and nostalgic intellectual properties, add an inoffensive and dependable sense of humour, and power it with a corporate mentality so ruthless it would make George Lucas’s eyes water? You end up with a cultural juggernaut that has and continues to dominate the global box office.
You also have something that, after 15 years of consistent output, feels tired, baggy, and weighed down by its familiar formulas and unbearably complicated lore. This is the sentiment I came away with after watching Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Marvel’s latest offering.
Now, I should say that, despite my earlier fanaticism for Marvel films, I haven’t followed the steady flow of content since Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) was released. I’ve seen bits of the shows on Disney+ and was, of course, there for the mass hysteria surrounding No Way Home (2021); but ever since the main narrative of the universe was concluded in Avengers: Endgame (2019), I just haven’t had it in me to keep up with every little off-shoot in this elaborate timeline.
I had, however, seen the previous two Ant-Man films. These simpler, more comedic instalments were moments of respite from the universe-ending threats faced in between the larger crossover movies like Age of Ultron and Civil War, taking an admittedly very uncool hero, and turning him into the literal and figurative ‘little guy’ for us to root for.
What happy, innocent days those were. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, contrary to what most might think, is not the third Ant-Man film: it is technically, if you count his other crossover appearances, the fifth. Even then, its concept depends on knowledge from the Loki series: another cog in this multimedia machine with a view to establishing the next great era of the MCU in the build-up to the fifth Avengers film.
Quantumania is, to put it lightly, a mind-numbing slog of a film. It takes what it regards as the novel and exciting concept of the Quantum Realm, a sub-microscopic universe beneath our own which is home to all kinds of creatures seemingly rejected from Thor: Ragnarok, and through two hours-worth of unrelenting CGI worldbuilding, reduces it to a totally bland mass of swirling colours and Mos Eisley Cantina rejects.
The script, penned by Rick and Morty writer Jeff Loveness, is one of the series’ worst, reeking of stifled-by-committee creativity and saturated with the most irritating MCUisms: even in 2023, we’re still in the era of ‘do you have a plan? I thought you had a plan!’ dialogue. Paul Rudd (playing Ant-Man) has the best lines – which incidentally come in the prologue and epilogue set outside the dreariness of the Quantum Realm – but Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas (playing Janet van Dyne and Hank Pym respectively) are criminally underserved by the least imaginative passages of exposition I’ve heard in a long while. Evangeline Lilly, despite being the titular Wasp, might even have had the fewest lines in the film. Seeing as Marvel is now firmly in its sci-fi Gobbledygook era, it’s both fitting and a shame to see the film use the ol’ reliable line, parodied in the 1999 Doctor Who spoof The Curse of Fatal Death, ‘I’ll explain later’, to skim over awkward contrivances.
The big bad, Kang, is played by Jonathan Majors, who previously appeared as one of his variants in Loki. His performance is without a doubt the highlight of the film – well, it would have to be, seeing as they’ve pinned their hopes of the next phase of the franchise on him in anticipation of Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. He is refreshingly understated when he needs to be, and while the script affords him little in the way of subtlety, or anything beyond the usual villain speeches on power and destruction, he definitely has menace in the face of an otherwise pretty flippant affair.
But this is also a problem. This is Ant-Man, a hero whose first film ended with a final battle on a Thomas the Tank Engine train set, for crying out loud! He’s not a hero for universe-ending threats, and certainly not one to be headlining the next era of the franchise. His size-changing niche, where it previously provided fun and unique opportunities for action setpieces, is now a means to further an incredibly convoluted sci-fi aesthetic and continuity.
Beyond the point of this film failing to foster any interest from me whatsoever, it also fails on many technical fronts. Firstly, when will studios learn that, no matter how good the CGI is (and it isn’t here), it is practically impossible to create a believable and engaging world with a green screen as a canvas? The poor actors constantly have to stare at something they’ve been told will be added in later, while every shot involving any kind of extreme movement, aside from a climactic punch-up, resorts to rubberising CGI over stunt work, immediately removing any sense of heft or materiality that would otherwise make for an engaging sequence. And please, get rid of the nano-bot suits! What’s the point of a superhero’s mask or helmet if it can disappear into thin air in a second?
Then there’s the matter of editing. Following the Scooby-Doo school of splitting up the main group to stretch out the plot, it’s necessary to cut between their respective activities. But whenever we return to one group, we find they have had crucial conversations and travelled miles within a few minutes, lazily skipping over any kind of dramatic tension that, while it may seem like a bore to the screenwriter, makes a story a story, and one worth following.
Maybe Quantumania isn’t the sole offender for the crimes I’ve charged it with. Maybe I’m just tired of the same formulas that have been pushed by corporate committees for the best part of two decades. But no matter the quality of the film relative to the other Marvel movies, by this point in the franchise, something has to change. And that change can’t be simply throwing more things at the screen.
1/5