By: Bryane Escobar
A review of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantummania, released on February 17th, 2023. This film kicks off phase five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Spoilers for the associated film.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantummania was highly anticipated due to the reappearance of Jonathan Majors character, “Kang the Conqueror” and his leading a villainous role within the franchise.
So, did the film live up to the hype? Personally, no it didn’t.
The two most important aspects in film is casting and writing. Neither one can make up for the other, nor can they be held up on their own apart from each other.
The main cast of characters were fine.
Paul Rudd, who played the titular Ant-Man, and Jonathan Majors, who played Kang, were the highlights of the film.
Paul Rudd was able to play a convincing loving father, willing to do whatever it takes for his daughter, and provide the expected laughs in a typical Marvel movie. Jonathan Majors played a menacing and overconfident villain very well, making me excited to see more of him In future Marvel projects.
All the other actors are passable. I didn’t recognize anything exceptional aside from our leads.
My biggest issue with the film was there were so many aspects of the plot that felt unnecessary.
Here we enter spoiler territory, so if you don’t want to ruin the movie for yourself, please click away.
There was no need for a rebellion subplot in the film. [What’s the Rebellion Subplot?]
Kang could have either ruled by himself or been a harsh dictator. Marvel wanted us to get invested in those side characters within the film yet none of their acting or writing was convincing enough for me to care. It felt like a waste of time which could have been swapped out with the development of the ants which fell into the Quantum Realm.
Simply introduce the Ant aspect sooner rather than having it be some mediocre plot twist. The Ant could have easily served the role of the people that rise.
The emotional stakes would have been the same or improved upon as we already had a connection to the Ant through previous films. And you can’t talk about this film without talking about Modok.
Some elements from the comics need a lot of time in development in order to be properly adapted. Some concepts are so ridiculous they may not even be able to be adapted at all. This felt like one of the latter.
Firstly, Modok visually looks unfinished.
His face is stretched out looking like a low-quality captured photo. He only serves one purpose in the film which was to capture Ant-Man and his daughter, something easily possible by Kang.
If the story truly wanted to keep Modok, they could have simply said it was a robot which Kang built. This would accurate show the intelligence behind Kang, making him a more intimidating and threatening antagonist.
As a result of these unnecessary pieces, the film manages to feel unnecessary as a whole. It feels shameful to be in the overall Marvel Cinematic experience.
To me, this film wasn’t worth the watch. The only thing worthwhile in the film are the two post credit scenes. One that shows off, seemingly, the beginning of Loki Season 2, a much better project. And the Kang Dynasty teaser, showcasing Jonathan Majors’ wide scope of acting abilities. At the end of the day, I’d say, “Save your money and wait for the end credits scene to come out on YouTube.”
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