Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Well, this movie was just another Marvel mess. They are making it really hard to be a Marvel fan with this one. I was looking forward to this film despite its reviews, but I didn’t have very high hopes going into the movie. This was not good but better than recent movies like Thor 4 and Doctor Strange Multiverse of Madness.


Taking a look at the characters, Paul Rudd's Scott Lang and Micheal Douglas’s Hank Pym were great as per usual. I thought Michelle Pfeiffer’s character was unlikeable and boring to watch. I liked the aged-up version of Cassie played by Kathryn Newton. I thought she was a great fit for the role, but I think it's odd that Cassie, who was just a little girl in the previous two movies, is now a teenager. I found that Hope was underutilized in this movie with no real character development. She was barely in this movie even though her character is half of the movie's title - "Ant Man and the Wasp". Aside from the main characters, I really liked the Bill Murray cameo and David Dastmalchin's character Veb.  


Darren, the villain from the first Ant-Man movie should not have returned, but I was absolutely shocked by the ridicuolous humpty dumpty quantum realm version of the character. If you have seen the movie, then you know what I'm talking about, and if you haven't seen the movie I want to keep the shock factor of this one. I don’t know who screen-tested this film and said this was a great way to bring this character back. 

The whole quantum realm, multiple timelines, multiverse, and stuff was too much and messy. It was not explained why they can breathe in the quantum realm without their suits when before they couldn’t. How time passes in the quantum realm vs the real world was also not consistent with what it was in previous films. For example, in Endgame, Scott is in the quantum realm for what to him feels like five hours but in the real world, it was 5 years. In this film, they were gone for likely a few days in quantum realm time, but then there is no real difference in time when they get back to their world. 


On a positive note, I did find that this movie was a lot funnier than recent Marvel films, including Thor 4 and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. So at least I had something to laugh at from time to time. The CGI world they have created is really cool and probably some of their better work, but I would also say that sometimes it just feels like too much is going on. The whole story is mediocre with a lot of useless dialogue and filler material. The main fight scene was okay but then was followed by an anti-climactic fist fight between Ant-Man and Kang. My favourite part of this whole movie was its second-end credit scene, a teaser for the Loki series featuring Tom Hiddleston, Owen Wilson, and Jonathan Majors. 


Overall, I still don’t like the direction that Marvel is going in and it’s sad to see what they have done with these characters that I used to love. I don’t know why I am still so committed to these movies at this point. If you are not a Marvel fan then this is skippable, if you are a Marvel fan… you can wait till it’s on Disney plus.