Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania is the latest entry into the MCU and was one of my most anticipated movies of this year, unfortunately its bad. Really bad. This may just be some of Marvel's worst, which is incredible disappointing.
The trailers pretty much give away every cool idea and set piece. Which means if you've seen any of the trailers, they give the entire thing away except for the last few minutes. You'd think by watching the trailers there would be so much more to explore and discover...yet there's just nothing but terrible execution of these ideas.
The biggest idea this movie had was to setup this next chapter of the MCU by introducing its next Thanos-like villain, that being Kang, played by Jonathan Majors who is without a doubt the best part of this movie. His performance is one of the best in the entire MCU, but he is unfortunately stuck in this movie. We've actually seen him before as an alternate version of Kang in the show Loki on Disney+ and he played that part to perfection as well.
But all of the other characters feel pretty much soulless. Michelle Pfeiffer puts in a good performance, but her character is not one we really understand. She was introduced at the very end of Ant-Man and The Wasp and didn't really need any character development there, but here with her being a main focus she's so...uninteresting. Evangeline Lily and Michael Douglas are not given much to do here. Paul Rudd has his moments but ultimately does nothing of note for his character. Kathryn Newton gives a good performance as well, but I really hated the route they took her character. It didn't feel at all like the character we knew from the first two Ant-Man movies and changes her without any sort of explanation.
Corey Stoll returns in this movie, but not as Yellowjacket, but as one of the silliest comic book characters ever, MODOK. While I enjoyed his presence, I can understand why people will hate it. I personally liked him, but he did feel like a half-baked idea thrown into the story and is needlessly goofy.
Bill Murray is also in this movie, but for only about two seconds. His character served little to no purpose. It's a massive sin for a movie to underutilize the great Bill Murray.
The Quantum Realm is where we are set for most of the movie and is not explained nearly enough with half-assed explanations for things or just not explaining it at all. We meet tons of new and pointless characters that have way too much screen-time in the Quantum Realm and are there for no good reason.
My final issue with the film is that it doesn't at all feel like an Ant-Man movie. Going into it, I was already aware of that fact and was more than willing to give that up in service of bringing the next big piece of the MCU's story to life. But it cops out at the end, and by the time the movie is over you realize this entire movie was pointless. There's no reason for the story to even happen. Even some of Marvel's worst movies have a purpose.
Don't believe the marketing for this movie; there's not real setup for what's to come besides both of its post credit scenes, which are also garbage.
Overall, this movie is carried on its back by Kang and nobody else even got close to being nearly as good as Jonathan Majors. One thing it does prove is that Peyton Reed is an awful director and has no sense of storytelling. The only reason that the first Ant-Man was as good as it was comes from everything Edgar Wright put into it before he left the project.
This is a MCU movie that can easily be skipped and you probably won't miss anything. What a mess.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania gets a D+.
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