Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man, and his allies return to the big screen on Friday, years after the origin story in 2015's Ant-Man cameos in other Marvel films, ...
Uh oh. That was my first thought when I saw the review scores rolling in for Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, the third Ant-Man movie, but a seemingly ...
I do wonder if a few more reviews may sink Quantumania below Eternals, though I will say in the middle to bottom ranking order of MCU movies by critic scores, I think they got a long wrong. That’s obviously something DC can’t say, as the DCEU boasts a number of films under that mark, and early on often split between high audience scores for Snyder-era films and low critic scores. Taking place almost entirely in the Quantum Zone, the film is in turn almost completely CGI, and even in the trailers it looked like that could be a problem. Second, since the movie is actually out now, user scores are in and they are not just higher than critics, which you might expect, but much higher, currently at an 84%. That’s a dismal score for an MCU feature, and marks only the second time that an MCU movie has had a “rotten” (below 60%) score on the site, the first time being Eternals in 2021. The thrill isn't just gone, it's been buried beneath a swarm of plot contrivances and truly hideous CGI.” [Whynow](https://whynow.co.uk/read/ant-man-and-the-wasp-quantumania-review): “Visually, the film is messy and flat; the CGI is shockingly poor and the action looks muddled. It says something that out of 30+ MCU features in a decade and a half, that there are literally only two with sub 60% scores. Of course, many MCU fans may wait and see what audience scores are like. But I would be surprised if this was a huge disparity as this always seemed like a pretty risky film. What’s wrong with the movie? We know there’s currently a visual effects shortage in Hollywood, in part because of the demands of places like Marvel, and perhaps this was too much work given not enough time and the end result is just…not very good. They were never really considered top-tier Marvel movies but this is a huge drop.
The third film in Marvel's Ant-Man trilogy sends the MCU's tinest titans into a subatomic universe, where they — and we the viewers — get stuck.
The characters of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, at least, are flat. Just look at the standard line item in the budget for, say, the Mysterious Glowing Object That's Terribly Terribly Important To Everyone In Whichever Marvel Movie This Happens To Be — in this case, that yellow orb thingy with all those metal rings flying around inside it that Kang wants, for reasons I can't remember now. ... Oh and also throw in a few bucks on coconut oil while you're at it. The voice actors record their tracks in separate sound booths at separate times. In previous Ant-Man films, we may all have looked past the thinness of his characterization, because the charming Ruddishness of the performance blinded us to it. She might as well be one of the CGI barstools.) But as I sat there watching Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, I started to wonder if perhaps, back when we as nerdy little kids wished for it, all those long years ago, someone snuck a monkey's paw into the whole affair. But in absolutely no way does it look like they did, and it sure as hell doesn't feel like they did. They could have made a film together at any time during that period and now, finally, here they are and here it is. When we eventually get a The Making Of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, we might well learn that those three actors actually filmed that scene together. Even more mind-boggling: This third Ant-Man film posits the purple, time-traveling despot Kang the Conqueror as a bad guy to take seriously. This time out, it's the entire Ant-Family that gets sucked down into the MCU's own microscopic Whoville, with its sunless, surreal, slimy Color Out of Space production design.
This is only the second Marvel Cinematic Universe film to earn a Rotten rating. Jonathan Majors shines as Kang the Conqueror, but the film is an overstuffed ...
"Michael Pena's absence should have been a warning," wrote Kristy Puchko in her review of "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" for Mashable. "Ant-Man and the Wasp in Quantumania" held a 53% "rotten" rating from 148 reviews, as of Wednesday afternoon. "The result is an undercooked, overstuffed action movie that feels like a shadow of better pulpy adventure sendups before it." to buckle at the knees," O'Sullivan wrote. "Ultimately, 'Quantumania' does a middling job of both. The film itself is anything but light. There, they face off against Kang, a dimension-hopping tyrant who is trying to escape from the realm after being exiled there for his rampages across time and space. (Majors will also appear as the antagonist in next month's "Creed III." Critics praised Majors' performance in the film, as the actor was able to bring gravitas to the the role and exude the kind of menace that made previous big bad Thanos (Josh Brolin) such a compelling, and threatening, villain. He was introduced in the Disney+ show "Loki." However, Kang's larger-than-life presence overshadowed the quirky and charming narrative that fans have come to expect from Ant-Man side quests, critics say. Peyton Reed's previous Ant-Man installments offered the MCU a smaller-than-life look at what it means to be a hero.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is a sci-fi adventure in the mold of Thor: Ragnarok.
The bigger, more general theme is the strength of the little guy, even in the face of overwhelming power. Cassie (Newton) is the heart of the film, Hank (Douglas) does the science and Janet (Pfeiffer) is the plot powerhouse whose worst nightmare catches up to her. Quantumania sets up the future of the MCU, and also manages to pack in some other bigger themes. Still, the number of times characters refuse to divulge crucial information to string out the supposed suspense ("No time to explain!" If Quantumania doesn't quite know what to do with Ant-Man, it really doesn't know what to do with the other title character. Fans have been prepped for the arrival of Kang, who was first seen in the Disney Plus series Loki, and the movie does a fine job introducing the villainous characters to fresh viewers. It's a breezy, bizarro sci-fi adventure in the mold of Thor: Ragnarok, as familiar faces from the Marvel roster drop into an alien realm for fun and fighting before inspiring the locals to rise up and overthrow a hateful dictator. The weirdness of the micro-Mad Max setting gives rise to some entertaining jokes, arresting visuals and one or two mind-bending set pieces. Old enemies come looking for her and her fam, forcing her to face up to what she did during exile. Having rescued Janet van Dyne from the quantum realm in the previous Ant-Man and the Wasp film (and you'd be forgiven for remembering basically nothing about that movie), the Ant-gang is sucked back into the itty-bitty universe layered below the atoms of our full-size world. Kathryn Newton plays the now-teenaged Cassie Lang, Scott's daughter, and in the quantum realm they encounter William Jackson Harper, Katy O'Brian and Bill Murray (yes, that Bill Murray). [Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania](https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainment/ant-man-and-the-wasp-quantumania-trailer-plot-cast-release-date/) is in theaters Friday, Feb.
The loopy humor and style of the first two “Ant-Man” movies have been flattened by the M.C.U.'s franchise formatting.
The feeling of giddy wonder is what distinguishes the first two “Ant-Man” films; they help to restore the brand name of Marvel to a common noun and to a verb, and they do so starting from the top, with a sense of the filmmaker’s own experience—his ardent curiosity, free-ranging inventiveness, and imaginative sympathy. What’s absent is a sense of experience—conveying to viewers the extraordinary and quasi-miraculous aspects of what the characters are undergoing, observing, and doing. The best thing about “Quantumania” is, surprisingly, its script (by Jeff Loveness), which is like saying that the best thing about a building is its blueprint. The occasional spectacular idea—such as the weirdness unleashed when Scott is caught in a “probability storm”—gets submerged in a sludge of imagery that offers little but the concept itself, unmoored from its surroundings, its implications, and, above all, the perspective of the characters. It’s sadly appropriate for the degree zero of superhero-franchise synthetics to have been reached, or asymptotically approximated, in the infinitesimal realm in which “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” is set. The scant grounding and bare inner life of the characters give the remarkable actors little to work with. (The MacGuffin is a “multiversal engine core” that Kang needs.) They also encounter the principled underground leader Jentorra (Katy M. The second film in the cycle, “ [Ant-Man and the Wasp](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/ant-man-and-the-wasp-should-have-been-the-godfather-part-ii-of-superhero-movies),” felt tethered—Reed unleashed intermittent flourishes of inspiration, but now they were completely bound by the M.C.U.’s gravitational field, pulled down to the franchise’s established map, and sent forth to do their duty. Its modelling on the “Star Wars” template is made all too explicit by a scene (the liveliest in the film) that’s a parody of the celebrated cantina set piece. (As one of the newly arrived fivesome exclaims, “There’s quantum people in the Quantum Realm.”) It’s not just humans but also a humanoid who can read minds (William Jackson Harper), plus vaguely human-shaped beings with glowing blue heads, others with green floret-topped heads that Hank likens to broccoli, lizardy hybrids, jellyfish-like floaters, gigantic flying stingrays, and buildings that are alive. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), who devised the technology with which they shrink down to bug size yet exert colossal force; and Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), Hank’s wife and Hope’s mother (and the original Wasp), who was trapped for thirty years in the infinitesimal, subatomic Quantum Realm. Just as the trouble with Bible-thumping is the thumping, not the Bible, the problem with superhero-franchise movies isn’t the source material but the uses to which it’s put.
But the Quantum Realm, the dangerous realm from where the gang rescued Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), still poses a significant threat, especially after ...
Newton is a smart casting choice and we can only assume Cassie, who has her own superhero suit already, will be a huge part of the MCU in the future. At least Quantumania has one of the best casts in a Marvel film. Visually, the film is messy and flat; the CGI is shockingly poor and the action looks muddled. In Quantumania, by making it a place where laws of physics seem to apply and where several different tribes live, it just feels pretty safe. The Quantum Realm has always been presented to us as a hugely dangerous, abstract space that should be avoided at all costs and that no life could exist there. It officially kickstarts Marvel’s Phase V of films and gives us its next big bad: Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror.
Before you watch Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania, check out great movies like The Incredible Shrinking Man and Downsizing.
While it's not a great kid's movie, The Ant Bully makes good on its premise involving a young boy getting shrunken down to the size of an ant. On the topic of Nicolas Cage providing voice work to The Ant Bully, the movie itself has a surprisingly large and noteworthy cast, with it also including Julia Roberts, Bruce Campbell, Meryl Streep, and Paul Giamatti. [An underrated 1980s sci-fi cult classic](https://collider.com/most-underrated-sci-fi-films-of-the-80s/), Innerspace presents a more comedic take on the core story found in Fantastic Voyage. To (hopefully) no one's surprise, The Incredible Shrinking Woman has a similar premise to 1957's The Incredible Shrinking Man. [rare starring role for Rick Moranis](https://collider.com/best-supporting-actors-in-a-lead-role/), Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is one of those movies that explains the premise directly from the title alone. This means there are plenty of opportunities for interacting with people of a more normal size, which is where most of the film's entertainment value lies. He's certainly a filmmaker who knows how to make a story about transformation exciting and tense, given his mastery of the body horror genre, perhaps best demonstrated by 1986's [The Fly](https://collider.com/tag/the-fly/). He likely had a different idea of what the movie would be, and that idea didn't line up with the overall direction of the MCU post-Ant-Man. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids therefore ends up being a good sci-fi movie for families, with its iconic title and overall solid filmmaking ensuring its status as a minor 1980s comedy classic. While Ant-Man as a character is usually relied on for providing comic relief, Quantumania looks to shake things up by properly introducing Kang the Conquerer, a variant of whom was seen in [Loki](https://collider.com/tag/loki/), and who will be an important overarching villain in the MCU going forward. The popularity of the Ant-Man movies may be largely thanks to the novelty of seeing characters change size and interact with the world from a new perspective. The grandfather of shrinking people movies, the premise of someone getting shrunk down dramatically doesn't get executed much better than in 1957's The Incredible Shrinking Man.