Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — out February 17th — is full of big, bold visual wonder, but its compelling family dramas all get crushed under ...

Watching it might feel a bit like doing homework at times, but at this point, it seems like that might just be part of the price of admission. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has a lot going for it, though, and it’s obvious this story’s going to factor largely into But because we don’t really have a solid frame of reference for the Quantum Realm, it’s often hard to watch Quantumania and not see actors standing on soundstages trying to imagine what it might be like to walk through a lava lamp where lighting seems to come from all directions. But between Kang and Janet’s thing, the Van Dynes’ drama, the Langs bonding, and yet another plot about the Quantum Realm’s refugees rising up, Quantumania frequently feels like it’s got just a little bit too much going on. Both because of the way Majors inhabits Kang with an intense, mesmerizing mania and because of the way Quantumania frames Janet as an aloof, Complicated Mom™ who hordes secrets, their dynamic ends up being the film’s most interesting. But ultimately, the movie puts much more energy into establishing how important Janet and a time traveler named Kang (Jonathan Majors) became to one another after first meeting in the Quantum Realm, and that choice makes Quantumania feel bigger in some ways and smaller in others. Quantumania tries to do the same with its foray into the Quantum Realm, which often looks and feels like a cross between Osmosis Jones’ After years of Marvel teasing out what a dangerous, incomprehensible place the Quantum Realm might be, Quantumania dives in headfirst and reveals it to be a sprawling, lush universe teeming with seemingly alien life that Janet pointedly never mentioned to anyone. With its immediate focus on Cassie and Scott’s relationship, Quantumania highlights this clearly as it digs into how she grew up to be a troublemaking activist while he was out for quantum cigarettes. Quantumania knows [those bits have worked in the past](https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/24/23420801/ant-man-and-the-wasp-quantumania-kang-the-conquerer), and it gamely whips them out as part of the Ant-Man series’ most visually imaginative stories yet. But as it’s doing its best to fill you in on what Scott and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) have been up to since becoming Avengers, you can immediately tell that Quantumania’s story is best experienced with its predecessors fresh in your mind. But what the public doesn’t really know — because Scott didn’t put it in his book — is how being away from Cassie for so long has created an emotional distance between them that he’s terrified he may never be able to close.

Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania is a forgettable movie that even a stellar performance from Jonathan Majors as Kang can't save.

But it definitely isn't a good one, and certainly not what Marvel needed to jumpstart a new phase in the MCU and give it a North Star to move towards. The previous movie was completely incoherent and full of plot holes, but it was still an extremely entertaining ride that worked as a comedy. Even just that setup, which happens within minutes of the movie starting, is emblematic of how slapdash the MCU has become. But Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania is the start of a new day. And maybe that version of the movie exists on some other version of Earth. Rather, it's the kind of movie you'll completely forget within a couple of days because there's nothing really worth remembering.

Ant-Man and family return to the quantum realm to battle a new villain.

Sometimes the movie overdoes the self-awareness in that unfortunate MCU way—such as by having a character confirm that a weird thing just happened by saying, "That was weird," or announce that another character is cool, both of which happen here. One element that does intrigue: Kang seems deeply, furiously sad, in a way that echoes one of the most powerful lines from "The Sopranos," "Depression is anger turned inward." [Avengers: Infinity War](/reviews/avengers-infinity-war-2018)" or the middle hour of " [Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom](/reviews/indiana-jones-and-the-temple-of-doom-1984)." The filmmakers need him to be a fearsome and all-powerful villain (he's essentially Thanos in a new wrapper: a genocidal madman) and to be introduced in this movie so that he could quickly be positioned as the Big Bad for the next Avengers team-up. There's not much for a cinematographer (or director—even [Ryan Coogler](/cast-and-crew/ryan-coogler) has seemed tamped down by Marvel) to do to show individual personality on these projects when so much of the running time is pre-visualized by effects companies; and when Marvel studios boss [Kevin Feige](/cast-and-crew/kevin-feige), who seems determined to keep art to a minimum for fear of gumming up the content machine, wields an aesthetic veto pen. The result is simultaneously the biggest and smallest of the Ant-Man films, a neat trick.

Before watching Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, find out how many end credits scenes the movie has and if they are essential for the MCU.

So, if you care at all for the intertwined story of the MCU as a whole, you must stick around to the very end of the second Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania end credits scene. So, are the two end-credit scenes of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania important, or can you skip them? [first movie in the MCU’s Phase 5](https://collider.com/marvel-studios-release-dates-2023-2026/), which will amp up the stakes after Phase 4 only strolled around the MCU introducing new characters and Variants. After the mind-boggling ending of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, fans who decide to stick around for the credits will get exactly two post-credit scenes. [Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania](https://collider.com/tag/ant-man-3/) is finally coming to theaters to introduce the world to Kang the Conqueror ( [Jonathan Majors](https://collider.com/ant-man-and-the-wasp-quantumania-poster-jonathan-majors/)), the villain who’ll torment the Marvel Cinematic Universe until the next big crossover event, appropriately titled Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. That tracks with previous Scott Lang adventures, as both 2015’s Ant-Man and 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp have two end-credit scenes each.

You have to work pretty hard to suck the life out of a movie starring Paul Rudd and Jonathan Majors, but the latest MCU sequel is evidence that it can be ...

The disconnect is particularly obvious watching Rudd — a brilliant comic actor and hugely appealing leading man — spending most of “Quantumania” running and yelling amid green-screen fakery and CGI filler. On-trend subjects like the multiverse and hegemonic tyranny come in for comment and critique; the production design grabs snippets from the “Star Wars” cantina scene and reaches back to Ray Harryhausen, Japanese kaiju and “King Kong” for inspo in the final showdowns. The endearing sweetness of the early “Ant-Man” movies, which tapped Rudd’s ineffable charm, has been bigfooted into a noisy, smash-and-grab extravaganza that, for all its self-conscious bigness, feels smaller and less ambitious than its predecessors. In “Quantumania,” sprightly pacing and lighthearted humor have succumbed to the turgid seriousness that plagues so much of the comic book canon. The plot — which is very plotty — is beside the point in “Quantumania,” which pulls from a variety of sources for both its themes and its visuals. [Avengers: Endgame](https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/with-humor-and-heart-avengers-endgame-is-a-fitting-send-off-for-marvels-superheroes/2019/04/23/539f3890-6391-11e9-9412-daf3d2e67c6d_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_6),” the new installments have sought to introduce new storylines and characters to keep the vibe alive (also known as maintaining billion-dollar profits), with mixed success.

The MCU's "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" lays out the lengthy road map for the entire next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Before “Multiverse of Madness” or “No Way Home,” the six-episode (and far superior) “Loki” heralded this entire arc as Kang openly described each of the ostensible spoilers in the third act of “Quantumania” (seriously) and possibly the entire Multiversal War that’s coming. “There’s only one way this can go,” Kang says in “Loki,” in one of the most revealing bits of dialogue in the entire MCU. And yet, everyone’s exotic land is someone else’s home, and Kang’s plan to escape hinges on the slaughter of the people already living there (a mishmash of unfortunately designed, cantina-style “Star Wars” characters). But annoyingly, the movie makes far more sense if you’ve seen Majors’ first version of Kang in the final episode of the 2021 Disney+ series “Loki,” where he’s called He Who Remains. Lang’s daughter Cassie (Newton) invented a road map of sorts for the Quantum Realm, where Pfeiffer’s van Dyne also happens to have been trapped for three decades before being rescued in the last “Ant-Man” movie. And yet, there’s a sense that the MCU’s multiverse is spinning out of control.

After two diverting 'Ant-Man' movies, the Paul Rudd-starring action-comedy franchise descends into gloppy-looking CGI overkill.

[“Ant-Man and the Wasp,”](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-ant-man-and-the-wasp-review-20180627-story.html) though spending the length of an entire feature there turns out to be an altogether less enticing prospect. [this latest, newly launched phase](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-07-23/marvel-studios-hall-h-panel-comic-con-news) of it, though in the moment you will gladly settle for a swift conclusion to “Quantumania” itself. The moments of wit and feeling that occasionally steal into the frame — in Cassie’s stubborn yet affectionate eye-rolls, Hank’s genial befuddlement and Janet’s poignant mix of guilt and resolve — feel like emotional outliers in a flat, inexpressive void. the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) — down, down, down into the quantum realm and strands them there for the story’s duration. There were reasons to hope that “Quantumania” might be another slick, refreshingly low-key diversion in the style of its two “Ant-Man” predecessors (both directed, like this third movie, by the journeyman Peyton Reed). The other thread follows Hope and her parents, the ant-mad scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), who knows the terrain better than anyone, having recently returned from 30 years’ imprisonment in the quantum realm. And are there really just three months to go [until the next one](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/jqcnclpi9zw-123), and another three months until the one after that? That keenly disciplined sense of scale is one of the first casualties of “Quantumania,” which drags Scott and his allies — chief among them the brilliant particle scientist Hope van Dyne, a.k.a. [the last Marvel movie](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-11-08/black-panther-wakanda-forever-review-ryan-coogler-letitia-wright-angela-bassett)? [COVID-19 pandemic](https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fcalifornia%2Fcoronavirus-everything-to-know-right-now&data=04%7C01%7Ckevin.crust%40latimes.com%7C52633c0a516544dd252a08d9e81168f0%7Ca42080b34dd948b4bf44d70d3bbaf5d2%7C0%7C0%7C637795983749169191%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=EARyZgH1vGMtlQdur%2F61n5fLiwKXExOWtv3guJOFSn8%3D&reserved=0). Time works a little differently in the quantum realm, which may explain why the two-hour “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” lasts an eternity. To be sure, even as I entered the theater and took my seat, I found myself succumbing to a familiar, dread-soaked kind of temporal disorientation.

But the Quantum Realm, the dangerous realm from where the gang rescued Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), still poses a significant threat, especially after ...

Newton is a smart casting choice and we can only assume Cassie, who has her own superhero suit already, will be a huge part of the MCU in the future. At least Quantumania has one of the best casts in a Marvel film. Visually, the film is messy and flat; the CGI is shockingly poor and the action looks muddled. In Quantumania, by making it a place where laws of physics seem to apply and where several different tribes live, it just feels pretty safe. The Quantum Realm has always been presented to us as a hugely dangerous, abstract space that should be avoided at all costs and that no life could exist there. It officially kickstarts Marvel’s Phase V of films and gives us its next big bad: Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror.

The MCU sequel now stands as the second “rotten” movie in the franchise (which, considering this is the 31st movie is a pretty good track record) and currently ...

The MCU sequel now stands as the second “rotten” movie in the franchise (which, considering this is the 31st movie is a pretty good track record) and currently holds a rating of 53% based on 136 reviews on the review aggregator site [Rotten Tomatoes](https://movieweb.com/tag/rotten-tomatoes/). As Frank Scheck of the Hollywood Reporter puts it... [Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania](https://movieweb.com/movie/ant-man-and-the-wasp-quantumania/), and sadly, things are not looking too good. “Marvel, with all their resources, have made a film set in a universe where time and space are not as we know them, yet have ended up with something that looks surreal, but feels shackled. Too bad that, for all its amusing jokes, the world onscreen mostly looks like a Marvel screen-saver.” Jonathan Majors is an absolute beast as Kang the Conqueror.

Uh oh. That was my first thought when I saw the review scores rolling in for Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, the third Ant-Man movie, but a seemingly ...

I do wonder if a few more reviews may sink Quantumania below Eternals, though I will say in the middle to bottom ranking order of MCU movies by critic scores, I think they got a long wrong. That’s obviously something DC can’t say, as the DCEU boasts a number of films under that mark, and early on often split between high audience scores for Snyder-era films and low critic scores. Taking place almost entirely in the Quantum Zone, the film is in turn almost completely CGI, and even in the trailers it looked like that could be a problem. Second, since the movie is actually out now, user scores are in and they are not just higher than critics, which you might expect, but much higher, currently at an 84%. That’s a dismal score for an MCU feature, and marks only the second time that an MCU movie has had a “rotten” (below 60%) score on the site, the first time being Eternals in 2021. The thrill isn't just gone, it's been buried beneath a swarm of plot contrivances and truly hideous CGI.” [Whynow](https://whynow.co.uk/read/ant-man-and-the-wasp-quantumania-review): “Visually, the film is messy and flat; the CGI is shockingly poor and the action looks muddled. It says something that out of 30+ MCU features in a decade and a half, that there are literally only two with sub 60% scores. Of course, many MCU fans may wait and see what audience scores are like. But I would be surprised if this was a huge disparity as this always seemed like a pretty risky film. What’s wrong with the movie? We know there’s currently a visual effects shortage in Hollywood, in part because of the demands of places like Marvel, and perhaps this was too much work given not enough time and the end result is just…not very good. They were never really considered top-tier Marvel movies but this is a huge drop.