‘Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantummania’ is a rough start to Marvel’s phase five

By Katlynn Rossignol

Ant-man goes quantum once again as his family is mysteriously sucked into the dangerous and beautiful Quantum Realm. With the group split up, Scott must bring them back together again and find a way out of the Quantum Realm before Kang the Conqueror can enact his plan. 

Positives:

There was a lot of thought put into the environment of the Quantum Realm. Microbiology meets sci-fi cities as our heroes flee from giant amoebas and barter with intelligent mites. The environments are colorful and give an otherworldly impression. Paul Rudd shined as Scott Lang and was joined by Kathryn Newton playing Lang’s daughter, Cassie. The rest of the returning cast, including Michelle Pfeiffer as Janet Van Dyne, Evangeline Lilly as Hope Van Dyne, and Michael Douglas as Hank Pym, did a phenomenal job in their roles. There’s no falling asleep during this movie since the action is fast-paced and vibrant. The after-credit scenes set up the potential for future stories. 

Criticisms: 

To be blunt, the majority of this movie was hard to watch. For every beautifully rendered scene and interesting concept, there was a cringe-inducing joke and plot hole big enough to fall through. The action was engaging but didn’t make any sense, and it only got more confusing the longer you watched. And the catchy Ant-man musical cue was reduced to ubiquitous orchestral background music. It felt like watching a rough draft of what could have been a great film. Although not as boring as “Eternals” or as criticized as “Thor Love and Thunder”, “Ant-man and the Wasp Quantumania” made three critical mistakes that made it one of the worst Marvel movies to date. 

Show Don’t Tell

This movie had a serious problem of telling information that should be shown and showing information that could’ve been told. Cassie is introduced in this movie as an activist, but the movie neglects to show any of her vigilante activism or even what her life had been like since Scott came back. It’s instead talked about over dinner, before moving on. With this being the only set-up for her character, Cassie kept this undeveloped motivation for the entire movie. The rest of the cast was given a similar treatment. This was a criminal misstep since it degrades character motivations to boring mantras and didn’t allow for any character arcs to be fulfilled. 

Rushed and Confusing Editing

The editing was harsh and constantly cut between the separated groups of characters, making it difficult to keep track of the story. It felt as though pieces had been removed that would have fleshed out the family and world. Random scenes and side characters were kept in the movie that could have been removed to make time to better develop Ant-man, Cassie, Hope, Janet or Hank. The pacing was rushed and the time spent outside the Quantum Realm wasn’t enough to establish a status quo for the main characters.

Character Arcs get lost in the Crowd

Simply put, there were no character arcs explored in this movie. It’s difficult to even pick out a main character from the cast. Everyone stayed at their default from start to finish. All character development was eventually buried under quips and juvenile humor. 

“Antman and the Wasp Quantumania” suffered from an overcrowding of characters by including the main heroes, the villain and too many new side characters. It’s okay for a movie to have lots of characters, but it should have picked one or two to focus on or leave enough time for some to have development. 

Final Thoughts:

Leaving this movie, I was left with one major question: What was the point? There were almost no lasting revelations for the continuing Marvel Cinematic Universe, the characters weren’t developed and the introduction to the Quantum Realm was rushed and didn’t explore any of its interesting ideas. It’s truly a shame that this movie turned out to be mostly plot holes and cringey jokes. “Antman and the Wasp Quantumania”’s premise was too big for its tiny hero. 

“Antman and the Wasp Quantumania” is now showing in theaters. 

Katlynn Rossignol is a freshman Communications Major and A&E writer for Cedars. She loves 2D animation, superhero movies and the color pink.

Images courtesy of Marvel Studios