Sommerleigh Pollonais, Senior Writer
Plot: Ant-Man and the Wasp find themselves exploring the Quantum Realm, interacting with strange new creatures and embarking on an adventure that pushes them beyond the limits of what they thought was possible.
Warning: Moderate Spoilers Ahead
Review: Of all the Marvel movies and television shows out there (and good lord there are a lot now) you’d be hard pressed to find someone who says the Ant-Man movies are their favourites. That’s not me trying to knock the little big man or anything, but with Thor getting a face-lift courtesy Taika Waititi, which turned him from unrelatable golden god to golden god with a sense of humour and a ton of vulnerability, the Thor movies got a big boost in quality. This left the Ant-Man movies standing squarely in the middle of the lineup of films in terms of popularity amongst most of the fanbase.
But with the introduction of the Multiverse which included a mini-verse (or as Rick and Morty fans would say, a micro-verse) Ant-Man got a chance to stand in the limelight with Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) returning to the Quantum Realm, a concept introduced in the first Ant-Man movie and briefly visited in the second. With this story set squarely in the world of microorganisms not to mention officially kicking off Phase Five of the MCU, Ant-Man’s third film has quite the load to carry (heh). So, did it have the ant-like strength to carry such lofty weight on its tiny shoulders? Let’s shrink down and take a look at Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
Like all the main characters introduced in Phase One, Paul Rudd as Ant-Man still works like gangbusters. Rudd is such an everyman type; he was and still is perfect as Scott Lang, a man who has no idea how he ended up being an Avenger and who seems happier just being a dad to his now teenaged daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) boyfriend to Hope aka The Wasp (Evangeline Lily) and like every other hero in this universe who has no secret identity (which is just so weird for me) a guy people love taking selfies with. He’s written a book on his adventures and is just enjoying his quiet life when it’s revealed his daughter Cassie has secretly been working on creating a way to map the Quantum Realm by bouncing signals back and forth between that world and ours. Before you can say “very bad idea” Cassie, Scott, Hope and her parents the OG Ant-Man Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and OG Wasp Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) are all transported to the Quantum Realm. In this realm Janet’s secrets are revealed, with the big one being that not only is this a world within our world populated with unique sentient creatures, but one of the world’s most dangerous villains has lived up to his moniker of “conqueror” by turning the Quantum Realm into his own tiny kingdom. Yes, I’m talking about the latest threat to the Marvel Universe in the form of Kang the Conqueror who was introduced to audiences in Loki Season 1 (technically a version of him called He Who Remains) and is played by none other than Jonathan Majors (Lovecraft Country, The Harder They Fall).
Now that we got all the introductions out of the way, Ant-Man 3 is overall a pretty fun movie that starts off a bit rocky with an uneven tone and a sense that studio interference and a strict set of rules on how it should look visually hampered the energy we’re accustomed to getting from the previous films. Visually there were a lot of things I enjoyed here, with characters such as houses that could move (and fight), ships that had bio-organic controls and creatures like a jelly man who was obsessed with how many holes humans had in them (that would be seven). Returning director Peyton Reed was doing his best to make the Quantum Realm stand out in unique ways from the rest of the MCU but it was also obvious this was a movie stunted by the fact it had to “fit in” with the rest of the other films. So what we got was unfortunately more of the same. It made me long for the days when Disney didn’t have such a strong hold on this franchise and directors were allowed to breathe their own levels of creativity into the stories.
I mentioned earlier the tone of the movie being problematic for me. Well to expand on that a bit what I struggled with was the darker elements at play here. While the humorous bits worked as well as you would expect in an Ant-Man film, it was the more serious dramatic moments that fell short for me but not in the way you would expect. My issues came with the fact that they seemed to pull back everytime things got darker. Maybe the misstep here was putting a villain like Kang up against someone like Ant-Man. Don’t get me wrong, Paul Rudd absolutely nails these scenes and without going into spoiler territory I would say more scenes with him versus a Kang that didn’t hold back would’ve been shocking to say the least! My issues come from the fact that they never truly let things go that far and while I understand not wanting to kill off key characters, the stakes never felt truly high the way they did when Thanos was introduced. I think if they had the nerve to kill off at least one of the main players fans would’ve felt a real sense of tension going forward.
Speaking of the big bad Kang the Conqueror, he might just be the trickiest villain for any actor to portray, which might explain why an actor as talented as Jonathan Majors seemed to be all over the place here. He’s sad, he’s angry, he’s maniacal, he seems to be both a threat and a possible saviour of the future. I’m not sure what the end game is with this character, but Majors has a tough road ahead of him as he might be a good actor but not everyone has the skills to pull off playing multiple versions of the same person (maybe he could get some pointers from She-Hulk’s Tatiana Maslany, who absolutely nails her multiple roles in Orphan Black, or Oscar Isaac aka Moon Knight). I couldn’t connect with him here which meant I didn’t find him as threatening as he should’ve been. So here’s hoping he finds a way to make this character as memorable as Thanos was instead of just this weird mishmash of personality traits.
Like most MCU films, there is so much else to say about this one that I could write ten pages if I wanted to. M.O.D.O.K. was weird but grew on me, the action set pieces were so-so but the one with Ant-Man and The Wasp trying to recover the power core was undeniably outstanding. Hope van Dyne is barely in a movie with her name in the title. The Quantum Realm looks like a mash-up between Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy. See? I could go on and on, but in my humble opinion Marvel Studios is yet to make a truly bad movie and Ant-Man Part 3 is a flawed yet fun addition to the franchise. As time goes by, I don’t see it being on anyone’s top five list, but as Ant-Man movies go it’s a step up from the last one and that at least is a step in the right direction.
Score 6.5 out of 10
So have you seen Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania? How would you rate it? And you can check out more great MCU content below:
Sommerleigh of the House Pollonais. First of Her Name. Sushi Lover, Queen of Horror Movies, Comic Books and Binge Watching Netflix. Mother of two beautiful black cats named Vader and Kylo. I think eating Popcorn at the movies should be mandatory, PS4 makes the best games ever, and I’ll be talking about movies until the zombie apocalypse comes.
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