Wow, it’s been over a year. What a way to get back to this blog because…
Are the films of the MCU getting worse? It’s a serious question because the latest that I’ve seen, Thor: Love and Thunder and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, are strong arguments that the answer is “yes.”
Summary: Ant-Man & Ant-Family get sucked into the quantum realm, where skullduggery is afoot. A load of crap ensues.
I’m an Ant-Man fan. I loved the first film despite its flaws. It would have been wonderful to see what Edgar Wright may have wrought. It was clear, though, that replacement director Peyton Reed kept some of Wright’s ideas alive. The result was one of the MCU’s most intimate films, a straight-forward tale of a Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) desperate to remain in his daughter’s life while being “gifted” the life of a superhero.
Ant-Man and the Wasp sorta stayed that course, but naturally, because this is the modern MCU, we had to have a female superhero take over, the titular Wasp (Hope van Dyne, portrayed by Evangeline Lilly). The result was that the film, while still maintaining a breezy tone and an intimate feel (they were not trying to save the world), shoved Ant-Man to the back of the bus and the Wasp ran the show.
This was also the film that introduced the “quantum realm,” where Wasp’s mother Janet van Dyne (Michele Pfeifer) had been trapped, until her father, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), figured out a way to rescue her. And it’s that realm that lends the quantum to the mania of this film.
It’s also where it becomes immediately apparent that the creators of this film could not care less about the groundwork they themselves did in previous films. The quantum realm that Scott sank into at the climax of his first film was abstract art, an ever-evolving arena with no human frame of reference. In the second film, the quantum realm that Pym descended into to rescue Janet was vaguely recognizable while at the same time feeling alien and hostile. For this film, the quantum realm that our plucky band gets sucked into would look perfectly all right for a Star Wars adventure or, even more on point, “the grid” from the TRON films. It is, in other words, hopelessly generic. It is also populated by hopelessly generic people and creatures. It is so very, very ordinary.
It’s not as if they followed their own “rules” anyway. In the first film, the quantum realm isn’t really a place. In the second, Hank must wear a pressure suit and travel via a special craft; it was an unresolved mystery how Janet survived in such an environment for 30 years, but there were slight hints of improv (e.g., her suit). She was also trapped for 30 years, quantum time as well as our world. Yet when Scott was trapped for five years in our time, it was a blink of an eye for him being in the quantum realm (despite their demonstrating real time communication). It’s a sign of terrible writing when you establish one set of rules, change them when they become inconvenient, and then change them yet again because your new story demands a different set of rules.
The result is that you immediately just do not care. Since anything can change at anytime, nothing really matters. It’s the weakest part of the otherwise wonderful Avengers: Infinity War (and I’ll eventually get around to discussing that film, along with its woefully inferior sequel, Endgame) and the same plague strikes here as in so many of the MCU (and Disney and Star Wars) films.
Even characters change on a whim. At the end of The Wasp, Janet was revealed to have some special gifts and/or powers. Here, all gone. Instead, she’s been keeping a secret that threatens all of existence. Why? Because at the end of The Wasp, the situation didn’t exist. Here, they needed Kang (Jonathan Majors) to be there for The Plot. Who needs continuity? On to the next shiny new thing!
The acting from everyone, with one exception, feels like a bunch of people collecting a paycheck. Only one stands out, albeit briefly, and that’s Majors. For much of the film, he brings a legit menace to Kang the Conqueror. He speaks softly, moves with deliberation, and is generally wonderful and the single best thing in the entire film. He’s being set up as a Big Baddy for MCU Phase 5, and there’s a hint that yes, maybe. Sorta like Thanos in Infinity War.
And like Thanos in Endgame, he throws it all away and becomes Generic Baddie #30 (number depending on how you breakdown the films that preceded this one). It’s such a waste.
Some characters legit annoy the crap out of me. Cassie (here played by Kathryn Newton because to heck with Emma Fuhrmann for some reason) is a terrible daughter and a rotten human being. She’s ungrateful, unloving, and self-centered to a repellent degree. She is all about the causes she fights for to “save the planet.” She berates her father, who just bailed her out of jail, for not doing more to help and dismisses with a sniff that he just fought to save the actual, entire universe. It’s a grotesque display of “but what have you done for me lately.”
The film writers add insult to injury when she becomes the MCU’s latest young girl super genius, following in the wretched footsteps of Shuri (Letitia Wright, of the Black Panther films) and Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne, introduced in Wakanda Forever). Super brilliant women who know oh so much more than the men and are filled with open scorn for all the work others did before them. Here, Cassie invents a quantum realm scanner thingie just from reading Hank’s notes.
Sure.
The film devolves into a Janet adventure. It’s really all about her and her secret adventures for 30 years in the quantum realm. It’s her past that is catching up with her and the others, that drives the plot, that leads to the ultimate climax. The titular Ant-Man is just given a series of fights to participate in and nothing more. Even at the end, at the height of his climatic battle, he only achieves success because the Wasp buzzes in for the rescue. Janet and Cassie win the day, yay?
Is this all inherently bad? No, of course not. Little coincidences and contrivances like this propel many adventure films. It’s all just so sloppy, though. From early in the film, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a weird reimagining of Tron: Legacy. The entire quantum realm felt and acted like the grid. Kang was a substitute for Clu and his army of blue-glowing faced warriors had me hearing “Rectify!” Kang even begins a speech that may as well have culminated with “Out there is our destiny!” Well, maybe it would have if Cassie hadn’t interrupted and delivered the absolute worst “fight for the Oasis!” speech ever. Cassie, who no one in this world knows, rather than Janet, who many do know and might have rallied to.
On and on, the film is terrible in all regards. Well, Christopher Beck’s score works, about the only thing that does. Since he’s scored all three Ant-Films, there’s a nice musical consistency between them. It’s all in the service of crap, though.
The effects are mediocre, both visual and audio. The acting is bad, despite Majors’ efforts. The writing is nothing short of atrocious. Ed Wood would have done better.
The film’s major purpose is to set up Loki season two, returning the favor that Loki season one set up this film. Kang is an emasculated villain; he’s already been defeated. That there are a lot of him is irrelevant. And has he really been defeated, or will the Citadel of Ricks be defeated, once again, by Rick Prime?
Sorry, will Kang the Exile, come back to life and defeat the Council of Kang? Who knows, who cares?
I don’t. I’d rather re-watch Rick and Morty, which does all of this so much better.
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