[5.8/10] The Ant-Man sub-franchise had a few things going for it. For one, it was smaller stakes, which made it feel a little more down-to-earth relative to the other Avengers’ adventures. For another, it was fun, taking a lighter approach that gave it a distinctive flavor among its more serious brethren. And beyond its vibe, it had a good gimmick, with the shrinking and growing superpower paving the way for some inventive sequences to keep things interesting.
*Ant-Man & Wasp: Quantumania* effectively throws all of that out the window and suffers mightily for it.
You could argue the stakes are still small here, since Scott Lang, his daughter Cassie, his partner Hope Van Dyne, and her parents, Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne, all descend into the quantum realm, a subatomic world full of unusual beings and its own distinct ecosystem. But the goal here is to stop Kang the Conqueror (a version of whom made his debut in *Loki*) from not just destroying the Quantum Realm, not just destroying the world, but from breaking out and potentially destroying the multiverse. (Or saving it. Who knows!) What’s at risk is huge.
But hey, most of that is pretty abstract and spoken more in cryptic teases rather for a future Avengers flick than something at issue right now. Nevertheless, even limiting *Quantumania* to its immediate concerns, you’re still dealing with a Star Wars-esque band of rebels joining together to take down an oppressive evil empire. It’s a far cry from the comparatively mundane concerns of a divorced dad getting wrapped up in something crazy in the midst of some small-time crookery, and the premise is a poor fit for the franchise.
*Ant-Man 3* also isn’t especially fun, at least not after our heroes are sucked into the Quantum Realm. The opening has more of the tone of the other films, with amusing bits about Scott leaning into his fame, and some nice intra-family friction. But once things go subatomic, the vibe is generally life or death, with a megalomaniacal villain offering torture and killing, allegedly devastating secrets kept by family members, and a fascist regime holding its bootheel on everyone within reach. These characters aren’t really built to withstand the grim, deadly serious tone.
In *Quantumania*, it tries to joke around a bit, however intermittently and awkwardly. Scott and Cassie run into a motley crew of freedom fighters, including William Jackson Harper (a ringer from *The Good Place*) who plays a telepath who wishes he was anything but, and an ooze monster with hole envy. Bill Murray stops by for about five minutes to do his usual shtick. And there’s the occasional bit of banter among the Lang/Van Dyne/Pym clan to try to lighten the mood. Unfortunately, it largely feels shoehorned in and otherwise out of place.
To be fair, the humor’s meager landing isn’t entirely *Quantumania*’s fault. In the years since *Ant-Man*, the MCU has seen the arrival of *Guardians of the Galaxy*, and the comic shift of the *Thor* franchise. Both of those film series do the wacky aliens and zany hijinks in a wild and wooly galaxy” thing better than this film does. So *Ant-Man 3* plays like a late-comer to that approach, whose blows (and jokes) don’t land with nearly the same force, and are all but entirely lacking in novelty.
Yet, maybe the biggest departure is that the action sequences are almost entirely forgettable. Even when the Ant-Man franchise isn’t firing on all cylinders, the ability to miniaturize or embiggen people, places, and things always gave Scott’s exploits a little extra zing. *Quantumania* tries here and there, but in the Quantum realm, everything about the setting is so fantastical unreal that you never really have the sense of scale necessary to make that sort of concept work.
The closest the film comes is a mid-movie set piece where Scott and Hope shrink down into a “probability storm” that results in dozens of duplicates jostling for space. It’s at least a reasonably unique visual, even if that sort of thing has been seen in everything from *The Matrix Reloaded* to *Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End*
Unfortunately, even that is hobbled by arguably the film’s most glaring weakness -- it is just plain ugly to look at. In many places, the compositing is embarrassingly bad for a major studio release, with the human actors seeming like they’re standing in front of screensavers. Many of the CGI characters lack weight or grace in their movements, giving an uncanny valley feel. And while the makeup, costuming, design and animation teams do come up with some cool-looking players, the overall aesthetic of the film is both muddy and antiseptic, with visuals that make it feel more like a mid-2000s blockbuster rather than one released in 2023.
Even if you wipe all of that stuff away and take *Quantumania* as its own thing, the movie has other problems it cannot surmount. In particular, the script comes off utterly stunted. Corey Stoll returns as Darren from the first movie (with the most notably hideous character design as MODOK), and gets a sort of redemption arc that might be meaningful if it didn’t come off half-baked and tonally strange. The third act climax sees the rebels joining the Ant-crew to stop Kang, but since they too have barely been fleshed out at all, their grand uprising plays like an empty gesture.
Most of all, the film squanders an interesting father-daughter conflict. Cassie’s become an activist, chastising her father for resting on his laurels rather than continuing to help people post-*Endgame*. Scott is coasting on his fame a bit, worried that Cassie’s overzealousness might get her in trouble. You could build something worthwhile around that idea!
Instead, the film yada-yadas over most of it, until at the end of the picture, Scott stands up to Kang, and somehow that makes it all better. The movie barely dramatizes the conflict at all after the first act, and doesn’t do the work to really give Scott or Cassie an arc through all of this, simply slapping a happy ending on with a bit of dialogue for spackle and hoping the audience won’t notice. (Don’t get me started on Janet’s similarly undercooked arc.) Even based purely on its own merits, *Ant-Man 3* stumbles over basic storytelling.
Part of me wants to give *Quantumania* credit for being so different. In principle, it’s a good thing for a film franchise not to keep serving up different versions of the same thing to audiences over and over again. Using Scott Lang and company to do a Star Wars riff could pay dividends if done right. The peculiarity of the match could be a feature, not a bug (if you’ll pardon the expression). But the film doesn’t really achieve any of the new, theoretically cool things it tries to do here. The humor, the heart, the gimmick, and the ant-sized adventures all go by the wayside, in favor of something that is certainly different, but unfortunately, isn’t very good.
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