Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania Review

 

Ant-Man and the Wasp is a comic book film, the third Ant-Man film, and the 31st film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The movie's produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is written by Jeff Loveness and directed by Peyton Reed.

The story is Scott's daughter Cassie made a device that sends a signal down to the Quantum Realm. This quickly goes wrong and Scott, Cassie, Hope, Janet and Hank are all sucked into the device and end up in a universe just beneath their own. Their presence catches the attention of Kang the Conqueror.

Initial Reaction

The reason for seeing this was because until I hit my limit with this franchise, I was curious where this new saga of the MCU would be going.

Cons

The only thing I truly hated about this movie was MODOK. Just...what was this character? Every scene he was in made me cringe. In the comics he's supposed to one of the smartest characters in the Marvel universe, but in this, he's just an idiot. He's basically this movie's version of Jar Jar Binks.

Middle Ground

One gray area was the CGI. Now in some areas it was pretty good, it could even look awesome. Some areas not so much. Although I guess I shouldn't be surprised considering Marvel Studios overworks the poor VFX artists. Then there's the humor. Not gonna lie, there where plenty of times where I laughed. I especially loved one scene where one of Kang's soldiers said he'd die before he told them the code for a bridge, and it didn't go as he hoped. That was actually a good moment. But then there were scenes that just weren't funny, and I'm not just talking about the MODOK scenes. Another mix bag was the performances. Now Paul Rudd, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jonathan Majors, they were awesome. They really helped carry the movie. As for Evangeline Lilly and Michael Douglas, They were good enough. I just think maybe they weren't given enough direction, probably because their characters sometimes don't do that much. The last thing I'll write about for this section will be about the tone. I don't know if it's just me, but I really feel like this was suppose to be more serious than what it was supposed to be. But Kevin Fiege was like "No no no. You can't do that. Rewrite this so it'll have more humor in it! This is a MCU movie damn it!" Seriously, the tonal switches in this can be very annoying.

Pros

Let me tell you about the good things now, one of those was the action. It was pretty good. I actually liked that whole rebellion against Kang in the final act, and I even got a kick out of Kang vs. Ant-Man. A nice good old fashioned hand-to-hand fight. I dug it. Speaking of Kang, wow. He was really one of the best things in this. The best part was the character was 100% played straight. I was honestly quite refreshing to have a villain who was not only taken seriously, but also not badly written. The last good thing about this was the mid and post-credit scenes. Yes it typically Marvel fashion, they set up for the next movie and/or movies but, they weren't setting up a completely pointless & stupid joke! Not only were they serious, but they actually served a purpose for the overall story! Marvel Studios, please do more of that!! 🙏

Overall while I didn't hate Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, this is still one of those movies you can just wait for it to come to streaming and/or on DVD or Blu-Ray.

My final rating is, Okay.

That's going to do it for me. Come back on Monday, Feb 20th, for my review of season two of The Mandalorian. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.