Filmmaker Peyton Reed badly wants to make a “Star Wars” film. We know this because he’s already spent a lot of time directing Lucasfilm’s “Star Wars” spin-off series “The Mandalorian,” and because his new ‘Ant-Man & The Wasp’ film, ‘Quantumania,’ is essentially a big-budget “Star Wars” movie. That’s great for Reed because that’s clearly where his ambition and aspirations lie, but it’s bad for Marvel, Ant-Man, and the “Ant-Man” franchise because the strengths of that series— its humor, its modesty, its small-scale humanity—is largely lost in a big space epic which eschews its foundations for something bigger, but alienating and not very entertaining either.
READ MORE: ‘Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania’ Trailer: Scott Lang’s Daughter, Kang & M.O.D.O.K. Complicate The Marvel Universe
At its core, the” Ant-Man & The Wasp” franchise fundamentally has always been about family— Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) trying to be a good father to his daughter and earn trust and redemption for his past transgressions as a thief. And it’s been a generational story about a family of superheroes, the legacy of Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), and whether Scott Lang could live up to that heritage. There’s even been the idea of found family units around Scott— the trio of Luis, Tip, and Kurt, for example— or his extended family, his ex-wife Maggie and her husband Jim Paxton, but all of this stuff, that’s been the essential element of ‘Ant-Man,’ is discarded in favor of upsizing the franchise into something supposedly bigger and better, which ends up just feeling generic and dull.
‘Quantumania’ does flirt, initially, with its themes of family, this time trying to get into family dysfunction and secrets. The all-grown-up Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton) is a passionate advocate for human rights and just causes but keeps getting arrested for various protests. And it turns out she’s been arrested more than Scott knows because family members like Hank have been clandestinely bailing her out. Secrets and how they can become toxic to a family, in general, are the film’s basic theme at first. Hank and Cassie have been bonding by secretly creating some kind of Quantum Realm G.P.S. doo-dad, a gadget that resembles a two-way radio of some kind that helps them map out this miniature universe.
But Janet van Dyne freaks out when she discovers what they’ve been making—which foreshadows all the secrets she’s been keeping about her 30 years exiled in the Quantum Realm. Conveniently and predictably, the thingamajig short-circuits just as the whole family is having a major come-to-Jesus shouting match brawl over the irresponsibility of creating such a dangerous and unpredictable contraption that’s tied to the erratic and hazardous Quantum Realm.
Soon, the whole family is sucked into the Quantum Realm—luckily, Scott, Cassie, and Hope (Evangeline Lilly) all have their suits, yes, Hank made one for Cassie, too— and becomes separated in this vast and unknowable micro-verse. From there, this is where Reed’s “Star Wars” movie begins, but because it’s Ant-Man and supposed to be wacky and amusing, it’s “Star Wars” by way of “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” with all kinds of weird and absurd CGI creatures in a world that is generally wall-to-wall VFX and Volume-LED screen generated (and it looks dark, muddy and visually bland).
This is also where ‘Quantumania’ ceases to be interesting, frankly, favoring big, empty, silly-string-like CGI creatures and Quantum Realm ephemera over character, story, heart, and soul. Not that ‘Ant-Man’ films were particularly deep, meaningful, or soulful, but they innately understand what they are, how they differ from the rest of Marvel, and how that makes the franchise unique and often relatively heartfelt on top of funny and enjoyable. The strengths of the first two ‘Ant-Man’ films are the subversion of epic-scale superhero films, grounding them in something human and relatable. Reed and Co. understood the assignment, the parameter, and even the limitations that they instead looked at as opportunities to carve out their own niche and voice. Seemingly against all their previous instincts, ‘Quantumania’ grows to a super-sized scale but loses all the color and personality of the series.
From there, ‘Quantumania’ is just a collection of mostly forgettable scenes that take them from point A to point B, to the inevitable point C, where everyone is back safe and sound at home again. Even Bill Murray, who shows up for a second (for an inexplicably brief and pointless amount of time), can’t even register a blip of interest or amusement. Thankfully, the Marvel character of M.O.D.O.K. does provide a lot of laughs, but other than that, it’s a startlingly solemn, unamusing, and miserable movie that disregards how enjoyable ‘Ant-Man’ movies were supposed to be—seemingly the consequence of making a big, serious, epic movie where capital “I” important things are supposed to happen is that everyone and everything tends to lose their sense of humor.
Which is ironic given how insignificant ‘Quantumania’ is. It purports to be this huge movie that will have larger-than-life ramifications for the MCU, but other than introducing Kang The Conqueror (Jonathan Majors)—the events of the movie don’t even unleash the character on the Marvel universe— given how the movie ends (nothing happens, nothing of consequence really matters), ‘Quantumania’ is one of Marvel’s most inconsequential movies in some time.
It’s tempting to say Jonathan Majors steals the show—since he’s so popular at the moment, he can seemingly do no wrong in the eyes of anyone—but the Napoloen-like character and his performance are really joyless and humorless. Majors makes the classic mistake of mistaking grave seriousness for gravitas and lacks the charm of Thanos or Loki. His performance is highfalutin Shakespearean bad guy arrogance, drunk on his own self-regard, worldview, and clarity of purpose, but it’s all puffed up and stiff (ven Thanos was scarier, had more personality, and more convincing, to be honest). It should be said Majors’ more effervescent He Who Remains version of Kang in Disney+ “Loki” was much more interesting for all of these reasons this one doesn’t work.
Marvel loves its “Rick And Morty” writers, and ‘Quantumania’ fits into that tone a little bit too. But maybe they need a break. Penned by “Ricky and Morty” writer Jeff Loveness, this one is definitely insubstantial and lacking (and it’s worrisome that this is the same guy writing “Avengers: Kang Dynasty”).
‘Quantumania’ is not all dud, per se. Even if it’s not as comical or entertaining as usual, there is a good cast involved here, Kathryn Newton is a welcome edition, and Paul Rudd can’t help but elevate sub-par material. But otherwise, ‘Quantumania’ is shockingly unremarkable. And it should be said it’s not that franchises ever have to be one thing. “Thor: Ragnarok” proved you can take a franchise in a radically new direction and still yield terrific results. Franchises should be taken in whatever direction they need to go into or where they most naturally want to go; everything can and should evolve. But ‘Quantumania’ just feels like Peyton Reed trying to impose and square peg “Star Wars” onto “Ant-Man,” and it’s frankly incongruous, inorganic, and doesn’t really fit to size. [C-]
“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” hits theaters on February 17.