I guess you can get a little bigger when you get smaller. I mean, when you’ve got People’s Sexiest Man Alive and a star on the rise who’s soon to be the next one, Kevin Feige really pulled out all the stops for what was Marvel’s little franchise off to the side. Quantumania really goes for grand spectacle in the threequel, a wild departure from the origins of the OG Ant-Man that is trying to do a lot with the teensy weensy, with mixed results.
Post, Endgame, things are pretty solid for Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), now a best selling novelist writing about the “little things” in life. He’s happily together with Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), who’s happy to be back with both her parents Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) who are all happy to raise Scott’s daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) in sunny San Francisco. The only issue in Scott’s life is that Cassie may have inadvertently sent a beacon down to the Quantum Realm, which is picked up by the worst person imaginable, Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), sucking the Langs/van Dynes/Pyms down into the subatomic world. You know, classic family drama stuff.
I think everyone was delightfully surprised by the first Ant-Man, a small superhero heist movie content to just crack some jokes and enjoy small stakes. However, not Scott, but Marvel saw how glue-guyey Paul Rudd has been in their big Avengers films, and rewarded him with bigger scopes in tinier places. Ant-Man and the Wasp never quite fully worked as a movie for example, struggling between this give and take. Quantumania at least fully abandons our humble beginnings right away. This threequel feels a lot more like a Guardians of the Galaxy movie in execution, filled with weirdo characters and a fall back to quippy banter when all else fails. So Ant-Man has to share DNA with those films, plus it has to mostly be an introduction to our new Thanos: Kang the Conqueror. Essentially, watching Quantumania is a little unmooring for fans of the character and you know, how regular movies work, as the movie feels more like a preview for “Phase 5” instead of something to be appreciated on its own.
At least Jonathan Majors brought his twitchy energy. His Kang carries a dangerous menace that might not quite fit Quantumania’s tone but imposes its will on the movie to at least give it some real stakes. Before that, the movie’s a lot of worry about running into Kang but is mostly one long Star Wars Cantina scene. Rudd has a natural wide eyed wonder that serves him well in the low key stuff, but his desire to end every scene with a joke undercuts any sort of tension the movie wants to create, and many times deflates some very intense Kangsy stuff and not in a good way. And for those not as charming as Rudd? Well that means you get poor Michelle Pfeiffer handling all the tech gobbledy gook, and Evangeline Lilly and Michael Douglas looking worried about potential price drops on the $5 million dollar beach houses they bought with their appearances here. I’ve seen Kathryn Newton be good in stuff, so this movie doesn’t really have me worried for Cassie, mostly because they don’t give her anything to do other than “be plucky.”
If Rudd and the Pym/Van Dyne clan come back for one more, let’s get back to basics eh? Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is a big spectacle Ant-Man’s happy to be in, but he’s probably more content eating a mediocre Baskin Robbins ice cream cake trying to be a good dad. If we want to go big, let’s just get Rudd a Pat Mahomes/Travis Kelce cameo instead? That’d be a nice way to repay the little guy that could in the MCU. Kelce and Michael Pena could be best friends or something.