Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania takes its heroes to the strangest place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and leaves them there with nothing to do. Peyton Reed directed the film from a script by Jeff Loveness. It runs 125 minutes. It is the 31st MCU film and the third Ant-Man entry, following Ant-Man (2015) and Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018). It scores 4.8/10 (Metacritic 48/100).
Trailer, via Marvel Entertainment.
Scott Lang, Memoirist
The film opens on a Scott Lang who has become a celebrity. After the Avengers beat Thanos, Scott wrote an autobiographical book called Look Out for the Little Guy, which tells a different version of how he helped save the universe. Paul Rudd plays him. He lives with Hope van Dyne, played by Evangeline Lilly, who now runs the Pym van Dyne Foundation and uses Pym Particles for humanitarian work.
His teenage daughter Cassie, played by Kathryn Newton, has become an activist. She helps people displaced by the Blip, and that work has strained her relationship with her father. When the family visits Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne, played by Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer, Cassie reveals a device she built that can establish contact with the Quantum Realm. Janet forcefully shuts off the device. The message gets through anyway.
A portal opens and pulls all five of them, plus a number of Hank’s lab ants, into the Quantum Realm. That is the setup. What follows is a long stay in a place the film never makes worth the trip.
Kang the Conqueror and the Quantum Realm
The family splits. Scott and Cassie meet natives rebelling against their ruler. Hope, Janet and Hank go looking for answers in a sprawling city. They meet Lord Krylar, played by Bill Murray, a former ally of Janet’s who reveals that he is now working for Kang. They flee and steal his ship.
Jonathan Majors plays Kang the Conqueror. The film calls him a time-traveling, multiversal adversary trapped in the Quantum Realm. He needs Pym Particles to get his ship and a device online that would let him go anywhere and when in time. Kang is an alternate-timeline variant of He Who Remains, the creator of the Time Variance Authority introduced in the first season of Loki. He Who Remains does not appear in this film.
The rebels tell the Langs that Janet’s involvement with Kang is indirectly responsible for his rise. Janet confesses to Hope and Hank that she met Kang during her earlier time in the Quantum Realm. He claimed they could both escape if she helped him rebuild his multiversal power core. They repaired it. Then Janet saw a vision of Kang conquering and destroying entire timelines.
Majors said he played Kang differently from He Who Remains, with a shifted psychology, because the characters around him are different and because he was moving from a series to a film. Loveness called Kang a top-tier, A-list Avengers villain. The tagline promises: “Witness the beginning of a new dynasty.”
M.O.D.O.K. and the Rest of the Cast
Corey Stoll returns as Darren Cross, now M.O.D.O.K. Cross survived his apparent death at Scott’s hands, received Cassie’s message, and leads Kang’s forces against the rebels. David Dastmalchian voices Veb. Katy O’Brian plays the rebel leader Jentorra. William Jackson Harper plays Quaz. Jamie Andrew Cutler plays Xolum.
That is a deep bench. Almost none of it lands. The Quantum Realm is the film’s central problem. It is a setting with no rules a viewer can hold onto, filled with strange new creatures who arrive, deliver exposition and vanish. Bill Murray shows up as Lord Krylar and the film does nothing with him. A cameo is not a character.
The Numbers
- Runtime: 125 minutes
- Release year: 2023
- Net production budget: $330.1 million
- MCU installment: 31st film
- Metacritic: 48/100
The budget is the fact that should stop you. At $330.1 million net, this is one of the most expensive films ever made. The money is on the screen in the volume of digital creatures and cityscapes. It is not on the screen in anything a person says to another person.
Where the Third Ant-Man Goes Wrong
Here is the ranking of what actually fails, worst first.
- Kang. Majors is the reason this film exists and the reason it was sold. The character is written as a man who needs a power core fixed, which is a chore, not a threat. The dynasty the tagline promises never arrives on screen.
- The Quantum Realm. A subatomic setting should feel like a trap. This one feels like a soundstage with a color grade.
- Janet van Dyne. Pfeiffer gets the film’s only real secret and reveals it in a monologue. The confession should carry the movie’s middle. It does not.
- Cassie Lang. Newton is given an activist daughter with a grievance and then handed a device. The device becomes the plot.
- Scott Lang. Rudd is the most likable actor in the franchise and the script gives him little to do but stand in the middle of the frame.
The first two Ant-Man films were small. Quantumania is not. The result is a film that looks expensive and feels weightless.
What the Third Ant-Man Means for the MCU
Marvel built this film as a beginning. The tagline says so. Kang was described by Loki season one head writer Michael Waldron as the next big cross-movie villain for the MCU. Quantumania was supposed to be where that promise got cashed.
It does not cash it. A villain is only as good as the movie that introduces him, and this movie gives Majors a man with a broken machine and a grudge.
The production history says a lot. Plans for a third Ant-Man were confirmed in November 2019, with Reed and Rudd returning. Loveness was hired by April 2020, and development began during the COVID-19 pandemic. The title and the additions of Majors and Newton were announced in December 2020. Filming in Turkey began in early February 2021, with additional shooting in San Francisco in mid-June. Principal photography started at the end of July at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire and ended in November.
That is a film made under hard conditions. It is also a film that had years to figure out what it was about.
The part worth watching is Majors. The part worth ignoring is how little the film gives him to play against. A dynasty needs a first act. This one ends before it starts.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania scores 4.8/10.
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