Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne, along with Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne, explore the Quantum Realm, where they interact with strange creatures and embark on an adventure that goes beyond the limits of what they thought was possible.
I was not impressed with Marvel’s Phase 4. It incorporated some of the worst movies to date (I’m looking at you “Eternals” and “Thor: Love & Thunder”) and even some of the more enjoyable films, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” while enjoyable, were not up to the standard of the previous three phases. I was also not very fond of “Ant-Man” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp,” the whole shrinking gimmick just felt oddly out of place for a Marvel superhero and movie; it brought back memories of movies with less-than-stellar special effects such as “The Incredible Shrinking Woman,” “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” and its two sequels, “Honey, I Blew Up The Kid” and “Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves.”
With “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” director Peyton Reed ups the ante regarding character exposition and narrative structure. While Ant-Man does metamorphose from average size to small to huge, it’s not done in such a comical approach as before, the overall story is more serious in tone, and the stakes have never been higher. When Scott Lang’s (Paul Rudd) daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton), following in her family’s love of science, reveals her latest project to her dad, his girlfriend Hope (Evangeline Lilly), and her grandparents Hank and Janet (Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer), an experimental apparatus that can delve deep into the Quantum Realm, Scott is pleasantly surprised. When he inquires about how it works, she explains its equivalence to a seafloor mapping system that will obtain detailed maps of whatever area it is sent to explore. Janet realizes for that to work, a signal has to be sent to the Quantum Realm and demands that the machine be switched off, but before they can do so, they are all sucked into the machine.
Scott and Cassie end up in a separate part of the Quantum Realm, while Hope, Hank, and Janet wind up elsewhere. Both parties set out to find each other and encounter various beautiful and deadly lifeforms along the way. Eventually, they reconnect, and Janet informs them of Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), a man she met while trapped in the Quantum Realm for thirty years after his spacecraft crashlanded. Over time, they became friends, and she tried to help him fix his ship as he promised a way back home for her, but she quickly learned that he had nefarious plans, not just for the Quantum Realm but for countless planets and timelines, promising to wipe out anybody who got in his way. Now that they are back in the Quantum Realm, she must make herself inconspicuous, avoiding unwanted attention, but it’s not long before they discover that Kang is aware of her presence and will stop at nothing to get her back.
Screenwriter Jeff Loveness infuses post-apocalyptic elements into “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” helping to elevate the film beyond the conventional boundaries that most Marvel movies adhere to. When Kang threatens entire civilizations in the Quantum Realm, our heroes incite a revolution, bringing all kinds of lifeforms together in a battle for the ages. Even Hank’s ants contribute to the rebellion. Jonathan Majors more than rises to the occasion as the new Marvel Villain after Josh Brolin’s larger-than-life Thanos was snapped away in “Avengers: Endgame.” He can manipulate and influence the weak-minded, but those who stand against him will meet a horrible fate. We see just a glimpse of what Kang is capable of, and I am very excited that we have a new bad guy, and while he may not take center stage in every film throughout Phases 5 and 6, he will always lurk in the background, like Thanos before him. “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” is far superior to its two predecessors, and while there is a lot of humor, thankfully, it doesn’t go overboard like “Thor: Love and Thunder.” What a great start to Phase 5.
In Theaters Friday, February 17th
