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The unspoken motto of the “Ant-Man” films is “think small,” which has ironically set it apart from other areas of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that lean toward the grandiose. “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” toy with that idea by shrinking Ant-Man/Scott Lange (Paul Rudd) and the other major characters to subatomic proportions ten minutes into the story and transporting them to the Quantum Realm, which looks like James Cameron’s Pandora reimagined as the cover of a 1970s jazz fusion album, and keeping them there for the rest of the film as they battle an exiled supervillain named Kang. (Jonathan Majors). The resulting picture is both the largest and smallest of the Ant-Man films, a clever trick.
Is it worth seeing? No, the middle hour is enjoyable in that trademark relaxed “Ant-Man” manner. Returning director Peyton Reed and screenwriter Jeff Loveness let the characters roam around the Quantum Realm, which is like a psychedelic sci-fi cartoon version of those 1930s serial jungles where a clueless Western explorer would misinterpret a gesture and anger a local tribe, or get dunked in a river by an elephant, or be grossed out by the prospect of eating snake meat until they took a bite and realized it tastes kind of like chicken.
The tribe here includes a guy with a flashlight for a head and another with a transparent, gelatinous body who is obsessed with how many “holes” humans have (the comedic high point of Rudd’s performance is the pause he takes while Scott counts in his head), and a telepath (William Jackson Harper) who is cursed to constantly hear the bizarre and/or filthy thoughts that race through others’ minds. Instead of elephants, there are houses that look like Fred Flintstone’s house mated with the Pillsbury Dough Boy, and that are alive and can move and fight in battle. There are also gelatinous bugs and other creatures, shrubs and trees patterned after fungi and lichens, and a mitochondrial creature the size of Godzilla.
They appear to be based on photos of “small worlds” with different magnification levels. The fact that the designers grouped these microscopic and subatomic objects because they are “small” adds to the fun. It looks like something a kid put together for a science fair, expecting that the sheer charm would compensate for the lack of real science content. Unfortunately, despite its amusing jokes, the world onscreen appears mostly like a Marvel screen saver. Bill Pope, who photographed the “Matrix” films as well as numerous Sam Raimi and Edgar Wright films, is the cinematographer here, but not in a noticeable way. There’s not much a cinematographer (or director—even Ryan Coogler has seemed stifled by Marvel) can do to show individual personality on these projects when so much of the running time is pre-visualized by effects companies; and when Marvel studios boss Kevin Feige wields an aesthetic veto pen, seemingly determined to keep art to a minimum for fear of clogging up the content machine.
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Kang, on the other hand, is what genre fans refer to as a “ret-con.” The filmmakers want him to be a terrifying and all-powerful villain (he’s basically Thanos in a new guise: a genocidal madman) and to be introduced in this film so that he can quickly be positioned as the Big Bad for the next Avengers team-up. However, they must explain why Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), the erstwhile wife of the original Ant-Man Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), who was trapped in the Quantum Realm for 30 years, never mentioned Kang to anyone.
Despite Pfeiffer’s best efforts, the explanation is not convincing. But, since this is a comic-book story, you have to go with it. Pfeiffer, on the other hand, has a lot to do with moving the narrative forward and covering up flaws in the storytelling. Meanwhile, Evangeline Lilly’s Hope, nicknamed The Wasp, only appears to be present. She is present and engaged, but she does not leave an impression. (Narratively, of course, she’s been eclipsed by Cassie: the previous film was more about the Pyms, and this one is primarily about Scott and Cassie, who is now a teen with her own super-suit and is portrayed by Kathryn Newton. But they still gave Michael Douglas a lot of excellent lines.)
Ant Man And The Wasp Quantumania Quiz
Kang is a poorly written character—he’s bad, he’s mad, he’s a genius, and he wants to flee the Quantum Realm. There’s only so much the actors and directors can do to make him appear terrifying. The film lacks the guts (or perhaps the permission of the studio?) to wipe the audience’s smile away in the fashion of, say, the final act of “Avengers: Infinity War” or the middle hour of “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” Kang persuades Scott to use his thief abilities to take this film’s version of the Ring of Power, Infinity Stone, or Mother Box by threatening to murder Cassie in front of him, then making Scott relive her death for all eternity. But we know that’s not going to happen in this movie, nor will any of the main characters we care about suffer too much.
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As a result, Majors delivers an uncharacteristically hammy portrayal as Kang. He appears to be channeling post-1970s Marlon Brando performances in which Brando was fed lines through an earpiece or read them off notecards taped to the costumes of other performers. Sometimes he’ll pause for an eternity between words in a line, staring ahead, up, or to the side, as if the next idea is lurking there. He, like Brando, is faffing around in ways that appear to be at odds with the film, but it’s all in the name of making something out of nothing. One intriguing aspect: Kang appears deeply, furiously sad, echoing one of the most potent lines from “The Sopranos,” “Depression is anger turned inward.”
Eventually, the film succumbs to the MCU formula and devotes its final act to a slew of overly busy CGI battles, with objects colliding, exploding, and disintegrating while people yell about having to save the world. Sometimes the film overdoes the self-awareness in that unfortunate MCU way, such as having a character affirm a strange event by saying, “That was weird,” or declare that another character is cool, both of which occur here. However, the film’s low-stress, low-stakes approach rescues it.
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The Ant-Man films appear unconcerned by pressures to break box office records or win Oscars, satisfied to be clever entertainments with heart, but not so much that they become cloying. The series manages to be light but not insignificant, whether a given scene is sentimental (anything involving Scott and Cassie) or cheerfully deranged, from the size jokes to the running gags to the casting of Rudd, who has spent his career behaving as if he’s a random regular guy who stumbled into stardom and finds it all quite silly. (the climatic fight at the end of the first movie atop a Thomas the Tank Engine train set). Ant-Man is formally a member of the Avengers, the MCU’s starting lineup, but he feels like a fill-in who receives a text when Thor calls in sick. By having Scott mistaken for other superheroes, this new film confirms Scott’s not-quite-insecurity (he’s not deep enough to be existentially tormented). He’s not bothered by it. He was fired from Baskin-Robbins two films ago, and before that, he was in prison. Like size, happiness is a question of perspective.
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The film will be released in cinemas on February 17th.
For more personality quizzes check this: Breeding Difficulty Quiz.
