Sean Marshall Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is Marvel’s first film to jumpstart Phase 5. Although a number of Disney Plus films came after its release, this film is closely connected to the Loki series. The film stars Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors, Kathryn Newton, David Dastmalchian, Katy O’Brian, William Jackson Harper, Bill Murray, Michelle Pfeiffer, Corey Stoll, and Michael Douglas.
Scott is enjoying life after the events of Avengers: Endgame. Scott and Hope having a loving relationship and he wrote a book that is doing extremely well. What could go wrong? Well, when his intelligent but delinquent daughter, Cassie reveals that she’s been working on a project that is sending a signal to the Quantum Realm, things turn for the worse, and they are pulled into the quantum realm to face their toughest foe yet.
This film has a lot going on and not all of it is good. The story, which was written by Jeff Loveness, was as dull as the previous Ant-Man films. Loveness stuffed too many characters inside of this film and didn’t develop them well enough for people to connect with them. Characters like Veb (David Dastmalchian), a pink slime-like creature, Jentorra (Katy O’Brian), the leader of the freedom fighters in the Quantum Realm and Quaz (William Jackson Harper) were characters that add nothing to the overall story. In fact, Veb and the unnamed cyborg freedom fighter were identical to Korg and Miek from Thor: Ragnarok.
Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michelle, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Michael Douglas have been the same throughout the trilogy. Newcomer to the Marvel family, Kathryn Newton, who plays Cassie Lang was just thrown in here to introduce moviegoers to Scott’s replacement for the Young Avengers. Loveness gave Newton some standalone scenes, but she didn’t shine. This is mainly due to too much going on with the story.
Kang the Conqueror (Johnathan Majors) is the main villain in this film and Phase 5. We were first introduced to one of his variants, He Who Remains, in the season finale of Loki. Marvel seems to have an issue handling its villains and repeats this trope with Kang. Majors was a letdown here. It had nothing to do with his acting but everything to do with the script he was given. If you came here expecting to see Kang get his hands dirty, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. If anything, we got a tease of what Kang can do and it wasn’t anything worth the hype. The same could be said for Cory Stoll’s MODOK who was the butt of every joke. Yet another solid villain wasted.
Marvel chose the wrong film to start Phase 5 off with. They gave us the entire Quantum Realm and barely explored it. Two great viable villains from the comics and squandered them. The only thing from this film that will affect future films happens during the final battle. Everything else in this film is skippable.
The Ant-Man films only seem to get worse as they continue. What’s disheartening about this is that Loveness will also be writing 2025’s Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.
