-Review-

Released just over a week ago, “Ant-man and The Wasp: Quantumania” is the third installment in the Ant-man franchise and the first movie to start Phase 5 in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The movie picks up after the events of the time jump after “Avengers: Endgame“ and “Loki.” The Marvel fandom was excited for a new, laughing-out-loud classic Ant-man movie, but it fell as flat as an ant at the bottom of a shoe.

The premise of the movie didn’t add to the story of Ant-man nor the Wasp, but felt felt like its purpose was mainly just to introduce a new villain, Kang the Conquer, played by Jonathan Majors, into the MCU.

The characters The Ant-man-Scott Lang played by Paul Rudd, his daughter Cassie played by Kathryn Newton; The Wasp, Hope van Dyne played by Evangeline Lilly; and her parents Janet van Dyne played by Michelle Pfeiffer and Hank Pym played by Michael Douglas were sucked in the Quantum realm in the first twenty minutes of the film, and they all return in seemingly the same day. They all entered the Quantum realm and simply all characters really did not serve much of a purpose rather than supporting roles. Janet, who had been in the realm for decades helped everyone travel throughout the realm and knew previously about Kang. The Ant-man and The Wasp battled Kang to help protect the realm. Cassie was there for motivation for her father, but did Cassie and Hank served minimal roles rather than moving along the plot. 

This movie was a comedic let-down compared to the last two. There were no memorable lines or scenes that I remembered compared to past Ant-man movies. I remember and appreciate the past two movies mainly for their witty lines and conversations, but “Quantumania” fails at this. One part of this is that Luis, Scott’s best friend, played by Michael Pena, didn’t appear in the film leaving a gaping whole in the comedic aspect of the franchise. 

The one character who helped make up for this slightly was villain Daren Cross, played by Corey Stoll’s, return in the Quantum realm, but this time as MODOK from the comic books. Unfortunately, the laughs came more from his appearance rather than his lines.  

The animation and editing was troublesome as well. Based on the previous scenes in the Quantum realm, viewers expected that the movie would contain many different backgrounds and designs to create the microscopic world, but this time the screen was just so busy with in-your-face animation. With new backgrounds filled with shapes, colors and science-like-nature filling up the screen, my eyes were just so busy trying to take in the world and following characters, so at times I couldn’t really figure out where to focus. 

While there were clearly some pit-falls in this film, the acting was very emotional and well done. Rudd portrays Scott as such a good-hearted man who just wants to protect his daughter inside and outside the realm. Majors brought to life a bold, intense villain who helped balance the playfulness of Scott and his daughter. The rest of the cast were also pretty good at portraying their characters and made them believable. 

In the end, the positives didn’t outweigh the negatives, and it wasn’t what I was looking for. However, it does leave me excited for the future Marvel villain stories about MODOK.