Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania Review

Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania Review
This is my spoiler-free review of Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania. If you want spoilers, scroll all the way to the bottom where I discuss them.

Summary of Plot
Ant-Man (Scott), Ant-Man (Hank), Wasp (Janet), Wasp (Hope), and Cassie are pulled into the Quantum Realm which Kang the Conqueror is currently conquering/ruling. Good guys fight the bad guys and there’s lots of silly background characters and shenanigans.

No Luis
Remember how the funniest bit on both movies was Luis recapping events? Remember how one of the biggest requests and excitement of the fans after Avengers Endgame was for Luis to recap the entire event? Well, Marvel seemed to close their eyes and cover theirs and shout “NANANANANA!” because, for some unexplainable reason, the fan favorite of Luis, played by Michael Pena, is NOT in the movie. Not even for a single second. He’s not referenced, he’s not shown in a flashback. It’s as though he never existed. Now look, I’ve said this countless times before, especially aiming it at Marvel: The Latino Representation in the MCU is garbage. Luis was one of two Latino characters in the MCU, and he was a fan favorite. Yet, it wasn’t enough to be popular and loved because the character was still cut from the franchise. Obviously, I’m not happy about this, but I want to make it clear, my disdain for this movie has nothing to do with Luis being absent. Even if he was in the movie, the plot would have still been pretty awful.

Non-Spoiler Review
Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania, which I will now be calling ‘Quantumania’ can best be summarized by its title. It’s bloated, it tells you nothing, but it sure sounds cool! Now, if cool visuals and some okay action sequences are enough to entertain you, then you’re going to enjoy this movie. And that’s not a slight to anyone who enjoys that kind of stuff. Your entertainment is YOURS, and I’m only here to tell you MY opinion, not cut you down for yours. So let me tell you about the Good, the Bad, and the Spoilers.

The Good
Acting, Visuals, and Comedy
Acting: Everyone in this movie did a damn good job acting, and that shouldn’t surprise anyone. From Paul Rudd to Michelle Pfeiffer to Jonathon Majors; they are all great actors and Peyton Reed is a talented Director. Now often times, when a movie has this big of a big name cast, people get overshadowed. Truly, I don’t feel anyone’s acting got shadowed by anyone else’s.
Visuals: Recently there’s been some controversy and even the VFX studio who did the graphics said Marvel Studios didn’t give them enough time. I don’t think the graphics in this movie were bad. There’s not a moment where I thought, “The graphics are running this scene for me.” In fact, I felt the VFX held this movie together.
Comedy: Now yes, Luis is gone, and unfortunately many funny dialogue and laugh out loud moments went with him. Still, Scott is funny, and there’s a few ‘sensible chuckles’. Nothing too great, but when they made a joke, it landed. Nothing anyone will be quoting but still- you’ll probably laugh.

The Bad
Story, Characters, Pacing, Editing, World Building
Story: If pretty visuals aren’t enough for you and you need a story, this movie ain’t for you. This movie clearly wanted to put Janet (The original Wasp) in the center role; she’s really the one with an actual character arc and story. And even though this isn’t her movie, the writer seemingly didn’t care and made her the main character anyways. Well, her and Kang. The whole movie is an ad for the new Avengers Kang Dynasty movie; and not in the way Age of Ultron was. Ultron put a lot of first steps and said “This will pay off later”. This movie just said “Hey, Kang is cool and stuff right? Aren’t you excited to see more?” But his story in this seems to be left on the cutting room table. There’s “A” story but it’s paper thin.
Characters: Once again, just like in Ant-Man and the Wasp, The Wasp (Hope) is left to do nothing. She has no character growth, no cool scenes, no story. She’s just there. It’s honestly kind of sad. Then there’s Ant-Man, Scott, who has multiple paper thin subplots and none of them are played out well. Hank and Janet have some good scenes, but not enough. Then- there’s Kang. What a disappointment. His backstory is a 10 second montage of special effects, and then that’s it. He’s just a jerk who wants to conquer and there’s really no other story there for him. Oh and I almost forgot about Cassie, Scott’s daughter. She uh- wants to help people- and does. That’s it.
Pacing: This movie has so many weird moments where it just slows down to a halt because the story needs to keep going and the movie can’t end there. It really is a mess.
Editing: Without spoiling anything, there’s a scene where two characters are walking side by side. Then it cuts to one of those characters entering a room where the other character already is. It’s the weirdest edit and it really takes you out of the movie.
World Building: Remember how in Wakanda Forever they took twenty minutes to make you care about the Talokanil and made Talokan feel like a real place? Don’t expect that here. The Quantum Realm just doesn’t feel like a real place. And I know what you’re immediately going to say, “DUH!” but the problem is, it was supposed to feel like a real place. They wanted you to care about this world and its people. It doesn’t- it’s the most nonsensical wasted potential of a world, and there’s so many things that don’t make sense.

In conclusion…
Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania is not a movie I enjoyed and every time I think about the plot I discover more and more nonsensical things.

Spoilers!!!!
“Okay, Matt, just tell me the story. I probably won’t see it anyways.”
Ant-Man (Scott) is enjoying retirement from being a hero and going on book tours, Wasp (Hope) is the CEO of the PYM company (which I don’t even know what they do and I’m sure you don’t either), Hank and Janet are just chilling, and Cassie (Scott’s daughter) is constantly being arrested for protesting and if you think, “Oh damn I bet Scott is pissed!” nope. The daughter getting arrested is played off as a joke, which I gotta say, as a POC, that was a red flag from me.
After about ten minutes, its revealed Cassie is a super genius and a prodigy of Hank and they created a Quantum Machine Plot Device. Janet freaks out and instead of saying, “Hey, there’s this evil dude name Kang in the Quantum Realm and he’s going to kill us if we go back in.” she just gets angry, keeps the secret, and they all get sucked inside the Quantum Realm.
Don’t you hate it when an entire plot could have been avoided if they just TALKED.
They get pulled into the Quantum Realm, but not together. Hank, Janet, and Hope go to one place, while Scott and Cassie go to another place. Oh, and some Ants get sucked in, but they get stuck in the far past (or future? I don’t know). But this will be a huge plot point later.
Scott and Cassie meet a resistance group and then MODOK shows up (YEP, MODOK). Its revealed MODOK is actually Darren, Yellowjacket from the first movie, who was morphed into a monsterous baby giant face thing and Kang saved him. For some reason Kang doesn’t like MODOK yet keeps him as his right hand man. MODOK captures Scott and Cassie fairly easily.
Hope, Janet and Hank go find Bill Murray and then he betrays them but they escape. Also, apparently Hope was super badass in the Quantum Realm and a resistance hero. Do you see any of this? Nope. Not even flashbacks of it.
What you do see flashbacks of is Kang and Janet, who spent seemingly years together, just the two of them, living in the same house and working on repairing Kang’s ship. “Bro did Kang bang Janet?!” Nope. You’d think; cause that would make sense. But no. Once again, as a POC, this scene is a RED FLAG. Janet ends up destroying the device that Kang needs to escape.
Back to the present- Turns out Kang has killed multiple Avenger reams and whole realities. Do we see this in the movie? Nope. We get a brief flashback of him shouting and killing nameless people- but a badass scene where he kills another realities Avengers? Nope. We don’t get that. Would have been cool though. To be clear, Kang says he has killed SO MANY AVENGERS he’s lost track. He’s killed os many Avengers in so many realities he confuses Ant-Man for Thor. (Eye roll)
Kang makes Ant-Man steal something for him, in a silly, and in hindsight really dumb scene involving multiple Ant-Man being created. Scott is about to fail but Wasp saves him going through no trouble of her own.
Kang kidnaps Janet and if you think, “Oh he’s totally going to kill her as Revenge! Damn that’s messed up!” Nope. He just… keeps her by his side. Not even in handcuffs. Just- standing there.
Kang is about to escape the Quantum Realm until Ant-Man and the Wasp lead the rebellion against Kang because Cassie is like “Hey random citizens, stand up to Kang!” Let me repeat that- Kang is going to LEAVE- and the citizens, who hate him, are trying to stop him. Wat.
MODOK tries to kill Cassie, but she beats him and convinces him not to be a jerk and he agrees. Kang starts killing people with death rays that instantly incinerate people and other “future' sci-fi technology”. Does he use that tech on Ant-Man or Wasp? Nope. Just hits them with random energy blasts. Hank shows up with an army of ants who beat Kang.
Yep. Kang is defeated by an army of gigantic future ants. They carry him off and no one bothers to see what happened to Kang. As they’re escaping, Kang fights Ant-Man, beats him to near death, then Wasp shows up and pushes Kang into a quantum portal bomb and he dies (Maybe?). The movie ends with Ant-Man and Wasp stuck in the Quantum Realm…. until Cassie uses her plot device to immediately bring them back to the real world. The end!
The mid credit scene reveals “The Council of Kangs” which is a group of all the Kangs across the multiverse. After they find out Kang the Conqueror is dead, they decide that the other realities have become too dangerous and must bring an end to them all. Kang is coming!
Yep…. That’s- the plot of the new Avengers Kang Dynasty. A bunch of versions of Kang are going to fight the Avengers across the multiverse.