Is Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania Too Small To Fail?

I’m temporarily pausing the 2023 DC deluge for Marvel. (The other outlier thus far is my Willow season one review. I’ve unilaterally decided the ship portmanteau for Thraxus Boorman x Scorpia is Thraxorpia.) I’ll bounce back to The Flash’s final run like a boomerang later. Now it’s Kang time for Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, which seems like it’s missing an m. Or have we all been saying “Quantum-mania” when it’s really “Quantu-mania?” Shrink down for SPOILERS with The Wages Of Cinema collaboreview! We left the Spy Kids 3D comparisons to those who actually saw it. (Why hasn’t Robert Rodriguez directed anything Marvel yet?)

One of the weird critiques of the Ant-Man trilogy is that they feel too small. Not every superhero film needs big stakes, especially one about a shrinking hero who’s rarely a headliner. The first two were a palate cleanser from all the apocalypses. The third outing, however, gives the impression it’s going to be hugely consequential for the MCU. After being teased in Loki, Kang The Conqueror is officially debuting here before going on to menace additional Marvel movies. You don’t need to have seen that Disney+ series to understand the movie though. Like Dr. Strange In The MOM, I worry that this is straying too far from the charm of the title characters. I just wanted to watch them wrestle Whirlwind!

Peyton Reed is the second MCU director to helm an entire arthropod trilogy. It’s past time to stop carping about him not being Edgar Wright & give him the kudos he deserves for making these so enjoyable. Jeff Loveness is the only credited writer, which avoids a “too many cooks” situation. They unite to make a movie that’s much less tonally discordant than the unfortunately underwhelming Thor: Love & Thunder. The humor is higher quality & doesn’t undermine the emotional stakes.

Much of the trilogy’s success rests on Paul Rudd’s endearing shoulders. It’s a perfect example of how the right casting can turn a supporting character from the page into a star on screen. (He’s still not ginger.) Too bad he can’t team-up with Brandon Routh’s Ray Palmer. Even when Scott Lang celebrates how wonderful his life turned out, he still has an underdog’s humility. You can actually buy his autobiography from the film. He’s one of the rare lead protagonists that also serves as an audience surrogate bemused by all the weirdness around him. Ant-Man would’ve solved The Trolley Problem: The Movie.

While Lang has blossomed into an unlikely hero, Hope Van Dyne has the least characterization of the shrinking legacy family. (Much like the star of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Evangeline Lilly is an anti-vaxxer. Playing a fictional scientist doesn’t grant you a doctorate in another field.) Hope saves Scott in two crucial moments. This action cements them as both a romantic & professional duo.

It feels like a disservice to half the eponymous characters, but The Wasp in the title is more accurately Janet Van Dyne. After all the effort setting up Hope as her successor, they decided they’d rather concentrate on the original anyway. (That’s sort of like how Sharon Carter’s trajectory got altered when fans latched onto Peggy Carter so tenaciously.) Although less boisterous than Oscar-worthy Angela Bassett, Michelle Pfeiffer commits to a charismatic performance as the film’s backbone. (It’s hard to tell whether Hank Pym’s nonchalant vibe is an unexpected direction they’re taking the character or Michael Douglas not being invested enough.)

While she was trapped in the Quantum Realm for decades with slug-horses, Janet inadvertently aided the exiled Kang The Conqueror. Although she rescinded their mutual escape bargain, she’s wracked with guilt over having given Kang the means to conquer the Quantum Realm. She’s so ashamed she’s never told her family about this or sufficiently warned them against returning there. Hank & Janet may’ve missed out on Ultron, but they got another classic Avengers foe as a consolation.

(Kathryn Newton uses acting as a fallback career to golf.) This activist is disappointed by her dad not doing enough for the disenfranchised. While he’s easing out of superheroics to finally spend time with his family, Cassie thinks he’s being a hypocrite. They have intergenerational drama over the relative responsibility of aiding strangers or relations. Her purple supersuit has no wings, so she’ll probably go by Stature rather than Stinger.

Jonathan Majors is magnetic as Kang the Conqueror. (Go check him out in Lovecraft Country, now streaming on HBO Max Tubi, co-starring Black Canary.) Conquest & fatalism are all this insatiable despot knows. He made his broken time machine into a throne like an ironic hipster. Although he’d conquered I Can’t Believe It’s Not The Microverse ages ago, there’s no explanation why he didn’t intervene in Janet’s rescue or the Time Heist. One downside to Kang being so compelling is that it’ll be an upshill battle making Dr. Doom unique. Is Kang’s imperialist drive a meta-commentary on Disney’s & Marvel’s brutal IP monopolies that exploit creators to entertain the masses & increase profits?

#SellTheSnyderverseToKang

Rather than having multiple personas across his lifetime, the MCU presents each as a separate multiversal variant. (Kangs of alternate timelines may still end up becoming just as confusing in the comics.) Not only does this dodge paradoxes, it’ll make Kang look less incompetent at defeating Avengers since he won’t have the experience of his earlier iterations. If he’s from a future where he’s monstrously successful, why does he keep going back in time to get embarrassingly defeated? Is The Conqueror an ironic nickname?

The prologue explains Hope started using Pym Particles for philanthropic purposes. This acknowledges size manipulation would ameliorate real world issues without involving superheroics. Even though Hope is supposedly creating affordable housing, Cassie is defending the homeless of San Fransisco. (She says they’re unhomed as a lingering consequence of Thanos, but I bet most are pre-Snapture homeless based on the city’s high cost of living.) So at this point it feels like just lip service to how the MCU’s superscience would reshape the world without actually showing a world that’s too unrecognizable from viewers’. This is also an issue with the comics, who’ve had much longer to show 616 not being more advanced beyond superhuman proliferation.

Scott encountering a surreal probability storm while recovering the multiversal engine core is a highlight. Not only does he get to do his Multiple Man impression, he demonstrates the power of teamwork without ants. The climax is a more standard yet still exhilarating battle of rebels against imperials. There’s still enough personality to keep the big action from being generic or unintelligible. Once they recalibrate the scale for everyone being subatomic, shrinking & embiggening is incorporated without everyday reference points.

This is a missed opportunity to make the color blocking on Ant-Man’s suit comic accurate instead of just adding superfluous detail to an already solid design. I was hoping he’d have a red suit with black accents this time so at least the change would be something more noticeable than a new chest circle. It’s confusing that Hope is still wearing one of Janet Van Dyne’s more prominent comics costumes instead of one with red accents since she’s loosely inspired by Nadia “Unstoppable Wasp” Pym Van Dyne. She has the Karen Janet haircut too. Movie Janet doesn’t have an opportunity to be a fashionista constantly changing her costume like her comics counterpart. None wear the appropriate t-shirt.

Kang has one of the MCU’s best page to screen costume translations since Mighty Thor & Namor The Sub-Mariner. Rather than running from its weirdness, it embraces the fancy future fashion to great effect. Having his mask be facial scars combined with a blue forecefield is a novel update that works well with the classic design.

Marvel Studios can’t use Micronauts, but here’s some legally distinct equivalents. Is the Microverse Quantum Realm primarily populated by time travelers who got trapped at dinky size? The Quantumnauts felt more Farscape than Star Wars to me. Sadly William Jackson Harper isn’t playing Reed Richards. (Since I loathe Marvel’s first family, maybe I should say thankfully?) Nor does his telepathic Quaz (likewise not short for Quasar) meet Titania for a The Good Place reunion. Katy O’Brian’s Jentorra, however, has the buff build MCU Titania was missing. Thankfully this is a more substantial role for her than when she cameoed on Agents Of SHIELD & The Mandalorian. On the downside, Jentorra was adaptated without green skin & magic powers. Ditto Bill Murray as Lord Krylar. Kurt may not be in this, but David Dastmalchian has another role voicing the (not Jack) Kirby-like Veb filled with translator ooze. Xolum the hulking biomechanoid has an energy canon for a noggin! Was that broccoli-head a D’Bari?

Jentorra surrounds herself with compatriots of permanent “looking respectfully” faces.

Agents Of SHIELD had its clearance to adapt MODOK revoked. The New Warriors was cancelled before we got to see Keith David as MODOK. Patton Oswalt was squandered as janky Pip The Troll instead of having him reprises his star role from the stop motion cartoon. So when the Mental Organism Designed Only (for) Computing Killing finally makes it to the MCU, he’s Darren Cross? That sounds like a disservice to just recycle Yellowjacket. MODOK’s grimacing face shouldn’t be a unarticulated mask! It’s like the movies got him & Ultron mixed up. When the MODOK mask is retracted, Corey Stoll’s face just looks chessily photoshopped into a nicely rendered chassis. His visage is not significantly distorted for maximum body horror. I’m glad MODOK is more Kirbyesque than Arnim Zola, but it still feels like his inclusion was an afterthought. At least they weren’t forced to cut corners by a TV budget.

For viewers who weren’t spoiled for Darren’s return as MODOFK (Mechanised Organism Designed Only For Killing) like me, the movie spoils it anyway with a montage from the first film during his monologue before his big unveiling. That kinda kills the joke. The flashback to his transformation is a direct homage to Darth Vader. (Good thing Disney owns both Marvel & Star Wars now!) True cinema is witnessing MODOK’s ass in IMAX! After Cassie curbstomps him during the climax, Darren has an existential crisis about who he’s supposed to be. This references how Marvel Studios imposed both the Yellowjacket & MODOK identities upon him. Then Darren is inspired to sacrifice himself. So after all that, it seems like a waste to kill MODOK off without involving The Serpent Society. Instead of being a comedic henchman, he could’ve survived to lead

The trailers made me worry there’d be no ant friends this time. How can you have an Ant-Man without ants? Instead they’d kept them a surprise, either intentionally or because the effects shots hadn’t been finished yet. (Human friend Luis is absent though.) Some lab ants fall into the Quantum Realm portal so Hank can rally them against Kang. Well, how many ants does it take to fire a gun? Does it vary by firearm model? What if they’re comparatively giant Quantum-ants a.k.a. Quantz?

Since we know Loki season two & The Kang Dynasty are on the way, I thought it’d remove the suspense over whether Kang gets defeated even more than usual. Thanks to variants, however, this version of Kang The Conqueror is definitively dead. (Scott surviving is equally surprising.) The stingers show Rama-Tut, Immortus (not the one who’ll be in Doom Patrol’s final season), Victor Timely, & So I’m guessing they didn’t toss out any Kang concept art. Perhaps there will be an Iron Lad to woo Cassie? When do we meet the kangaroo Kang? The Conqueror is the most iconic form of Kang, so I’m sure they’ll introduce another who’s not quite the same as this vanquished version. Hooray for loopholes! Despite the set-up for future escapades, this installment does feel like a complete story.

I was worried the third installment would lose its charms by becoming an interdimensional war epic. Thankfully the family dynamic at its core remained strong. (Here’s another franchise to show Jame Cameron. Maybe let him ignore Superman Returns.) Quantumania is thoroughly entertaining escapism, which is no small feet thirty-one films deep into Marvel territory. Its flaws were suitably miniature. Ant-Man & Usually The Wasp is the little franchise that could.

Its Marvel Legends wave wasn’t unveiled until almost a week before the premiere. Scott, Hope, Cassie, Hank, Janet, & Kang could’ve easily filled out an assortment with a MODOK BAF. The actual line-up substitutes half of those with underwhelming comics characters at current outrageous price. MODOK will most likely be a deluxe release since giant-sized Cassie is the BAF. So when do we get normal-sized Cassie? He Who Remains’s head won’t quite fit on Kang’s body, so you’ll have to double dip on a future unmasked version. We’re still not getting MCU Janet Van Dyne & Hank Pym? Perhaps they’ll be in a two-pack later? Will Jentorra, Quaz, Veb, & Xolum ever get the action figures they deserve?

Unstoppable Wasp would’ve been much more exciting than the comics half of the wave combined. Some are happy to get fodder bodies to customize mad scientists, but no one is excited for slimmed down Egghead himself. Even Hasbro has him confused with the “egg-slinging” Batman enemy. Ultron must now hold his energy loogie aloft because it no longer fits into his new noggin? Target has an exclusive classic Ant-Man which looks nice until you think about all the accessories earlier versions included yet it doesn’t. Shouldn’t there be a matching first appearance Wasp by now?

~

Mattel finally caved to my demands for a Masterverse deluxe God-Lyn action figure! Fear my power! Why doesn’t this Mattel Creations exclusive also include The Sword Of Power? That’s a crucial accessory to omit, especially at deluxe price! Celebrate me literally being an influencer by pre-ordering God-Lyn now!