Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania review: Too big, too small

The 2015 release of Peyton Reed’s Ant-ManIt may have been the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe feeling like an upstart. Edgar Wright’s departure from the project was surprising in part because Marvel Studios was still touting the idea that its success came from picking the right directors and letting them do what they wanted — even if they wanted to pick a more obscure hero to focus on, and even if they wanted to make a film that didn’t have to be a world-beating blockbuster and could just be fun, weird, and anti-establishment.

The previous franchise installment, just a few months earlier, was Joss Whedon’s heady Avengers: Age of UltronMarvel was able to follow-up with a film about the man who talks to ants, which seemed too corporate to me. Marvel further brought home the idea of a “little” MCU movie with a slew of cute, viral marketing gimmicks, and the cherry on top was the original Ant-Man “teaser trailer,” billed at the time as the first Ant-Man footage.

Paul Rudd and Michael Douglas are staring into each other’s eyes and snapping their fingers. It isn’t clear where they are or what they’re doing. Their snapping becomes more violent and their background noise begins to rise. As Rudd flails his clapping hands between his chest and his legs, Douglas looks at the camera as if it’s insulted his mother and barks out: “ANTS!”

That was 8 years ago. There aren’t parts of Marvel Cinematic Universe that can be ignored in 2023. Third movie in Ant-Man’s subseries. Quantumania: Ant-Man & the WaspThis is the beginning of a three year long story. The “little” MCU franchise has been saddled with introducing the load-bearing narrative pillar for the next two phases of the MCU. And in this fight between Ant-Man and Kang the Conqueror, we’re all losing.

Photo: Jay Maidment/Marvel Studios

QuantumaniaThe film opens with a cheery narration by Scott Lang (aka Ant-Man) that begins the story. Ant-Man Ant-Man and The WaspFans will recognize the familiar faces. Scott has finally been reunited with his girlfriend, kick-butt tech CEO Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly); her parents, Hank (Douglas) and Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), the latter of whom was rescued from the Quantum Realm in 2018’s Ant-Man and The WaspCassie Newton (Kathryn Newton), his daughter. (The former reached teenage years while Hope, Hank, Janet and Janet were all stuck beyond time due to the events at Avengers: Infinity War Endgame.) Scott is sad that he missed so much of Cassie’s childhood, but otherwise, his life is great. He’s a famous superhero with a close and loving family, and he just saved the world. It’s a heartwarming bestseller, his memoir on his personal heroism.

Then, quick as whiplash, Janet’s past is called into question, an experiment goes awry, and everyone gets trapped in the Quantum Realm (again), where Kang seems to have already conquered. As Ant-Man said, the Quantum Realm evolved according to the MCU. Once a void between elemental particles from which no one had ever returned, it became a time-travel McGuffin, and now it’s an entire fantasy adventure universe that exists within the microscopic spaces of our own.

It is a funny concept that never makes any sense, never will. This comic idea remains reliable for entertainment. Quantum Realm should star. Quantumania. It sums up all the problems with the film.

The film’s world-building is more like world-edificing, the narrative equivalent of building a Hollywood set where the buildings are all flat wooden facades with no interiors. Because Kang needs people in the Quantum Realm, to be a conqueror. Attributes are what those people will need. But screenwriter ​​Jeff Loveness never threads all those details into more than a jokey callback. To be a conqueror, Kang needs an army, and Loveness and returning director Peyton Reed craft a fully faceless, interchangeable legion of… It isn’t clear whether they’re living beings from the Quantum Realm or some kind of robots.

Image: Marvel Studios

Reed makes every effort to ensure that everything is included Quantumania’s Quantum Realm as unfamiliar as possible, packing the screen with all-CGI characters, impossible vistas, and digital creatures. Conceptually, you can’t fault him for trying, but it seems that quantity won out over quality in distracting ways. The effects are often not finished, despite the mention of seven digital-effects companies in the credits.

But the real drawback of sending Ant-Man to a fantasy environment is that — as we have known since Honey, I Shrunk My Kids — the appeal of shrinking hijinks lies in seeing familiar things from a new perspective. Previous Ant-Man movies have played delightful havoc with scale, with Hank Pym’s shrinking-and-supersizing technology being used to create Hot Wheels carriers full of real cars, salt cellars the size of fire hydrants, and a dog-sized ant that plays drums. Quantumania: Ant-Man & the WaspThis kind of play with scale is almost nonexistent.

Worse still, in between the blurred skies, which look almost like the walls of large caves, and the distinct absence of establishing shots and wide shots the actor’s space is limited. Quantumania — from their immediate surroundings to the very geography of the land they inhabit — is unreadable. All too often, the only way to tell if characters in a given shot are larger or smaller than “normal” isn’t any visual evidence, but the way they’re talking out loud about how they’re so big right now.

While visual scale clues can make a movie sing, they usually aren’t make-or-break. However, this movie is Ant-Man. If we can’t tell how big or small something is, what are we even doing here?

If you ignore obvious cracks in visual effects, it is possible to miss them. Quantumania wasn’t leaning so hard into visual spectacle as one of its main features. The film’s chaotic design would function cleanly if the movie’s pace wasn’t so breakneck, if there was more space to explore the Quantum characters and their world, if the main cast was allowed time to just be people every now and then. Even though the plot was convoluted, the film’s visual style was confident, assured and captivating. It’s impossible to be everything. Quantumania’s story, screen effects, and setting, Reed doesn’t create much of anything.

Image: Marvel Studios

That includes what has been touted as a must-see big moment for Jonathan Majors and his Kang the Conqueror, briefly introduced as the enigmatic “He Who Remains” in the first season of LokiDisney Plus. Majors makes a serious presence onscreen. The vertical face “seams” of Jack Kirby’s original character design have been interpreted here as facial scarification, a striking choice that makes Kang look a little like he has tear tracks running down his face at all times. Majors’ committed delivery of unflappable villain bombast feels equal to the Thanos-level threat he’s supposed to be. Unfortunately, his grandiosity and the need to establish him as dangerous enough to carry two entire Marvel Phases pretty much nixes the Ant-Man franchise’s brand of back-and-forth comedy.

It was the last time MCU truly introduced a major franchise villain. Guardians of the Galaxy used Ronan the Accuser — played with full-camp knowingness by Lee Pace — as an intermediary between the Guardians’ wisecracking fuck-ups and the impassive, unstoppable Thanos, preserving the tone of the former and the dignity of the latter. QuantumaniaIt doesn’t serve Ant-Man or Kang to pit them against one another, trying for both big and small simultaneously. The thing is, if you’re big from one perspective and small from another, you’re just normal-sized. And that’s the last thing an Ant-Man should be.

Quantumania: Ant-Man & the WaspFilm opens at theaters February 17.