Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

 

After helping to save the world, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), the Avenger known as Ant-Man, has settled into life as an author/speaker and a father to his teenage daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton). Inspired by her surrogate grandparents’ (Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer) adventures in the subatomic Quantum Realm, Cassie builds a device that can send a signal to it, which ends up trapping her and her family there instead. Once inside, they find themselves caught in a conflict between a motley group of rebels and Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), a despot exiled from the surface world who has a history with Janet van Dyne (Pfeiffer) that she has kept hidden, upsetting her daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly).

 

Up to this point, the Ant-Man films have been both fun and funny yet fairly disposable. They’ve boasted a likable performance from Rudd, a few laughs and exciting stunts, and precious little in the way of character depth or dramatic heft. The third entry in the series is a longer and darker affair, but much like Pfeiffer’s character, it cannot escape its past. The result is a film schizophrenically torn between trying to remain fun and trying to up the stakes, and while still quite watchable, it doesn’t really succeed at either.

 

Quantumania is, in a way, a victim of Marvel’s success and its own strengths. The Quantum Realm is a strange and colorful place, full of bright lights and bizarre-looking beings (and Bill Murray as a sleazy ex-rebel leader), which would be impressive had we not been entreated to the mind-bending visuals of the Doctor Strange films or the weird aliens of the Guardians of the Galaxy films. Majors and Pfeiffer give strong performances. The former is cold and cerebral yet still physically formidable, a man whose dominion over time has left him isolated while the latter is hellbent on not repeating past mistakes. Unfortunately, this makes the other performances seem weaker in comparison. Rudd nails affable everyman perfectly, but his angrily protective father never quite lands, and while Corey Stoll’s version of classic comic book antagonist MODOK (a giant-headed cyborg with a vast array of weapons) hits the character’s grandiosity but otherwise feels like a waste. Even the film itself seems to realize how ill-equipped it is for its ambitions. As Majors dismissively tells Rudd, “I am Kang. You talk to ants.”

 

So why watch it? Maybe Majors’s Kang is a big enough draw. Maybe Pfeiffer, Douglas, and Murray appeal to your nostalgia. Maybe you’ve enjoyed the Rudd-Lilly chemistry up to this point. Maybe you want to see what a third actress stepping into the role of Cassie can do with more screen time. Maybe you’re willing to sit through this chapter of the on-screen Marvel saga to get to the next. Or maybe, given Quantumania’s disparate nature, the half of the film that appeals to you is enough to make you overlook the half that doesn’t.