Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

Scott (Paul Rudd), his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton), Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), and Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) are pulled into the Quantum Realm so that there will be a movie. Scott and Cassie run into rebels while they try to find a way back to our world, while separately Hank and Hope are led though the realm’s twists and turns by Janet who has many, many secrets which she continues to keep for no good reason. They all meet up eventually to fight Kang The Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) who is also trapped and is one of Janet’s secrets.

This is an MCU movie, so on a scale of movies, it’s pretty good. On a scale of action movies, it’s even better. But on a scale of MCU movies, it’s not so good. It’s less than it should be in almost every way, but its real problem is quite specific.

No, this isn’t an issue of “superhero fatigue.” The problem has nothing to do with superheroes. Nor it is the problem the strange claim that MCU movies are too much alike and just following a template. No, the issue here is the opposite: Quantumania fails to follow the template.

People get confused on what the MCU template is, talking about action beats and mirrored villains. But nope, that’s background. The MCU template is to have charismatic if flawed characters (sometimes very flawed) interact in witty ways while they do stuff. The stuff doesn’t matter, just so long as they are active while they interact. It’s the characters that draw us in, not the action. It’s why Winter Soldier works so well even though the plot makes no sense. The story IS the characters.

So what went wrong here?

To begin, there are five leads. Now usually I’d call that an ensemble, but an ensemble needs to be built and maintained. Joss Whedon and James Gunn are masters of that. Director Peyton Reed is not. He’s OK with sidekicks, but this Ant-Man movie jettisons the sidekicks, leaving us with 5 leads and no way to give each the attention they need. Everyone is underdeveloped and underutilized.

So, is the little we get good?

You’d think it would be easy with Scott since we know him from past films. He’s a funny kind of everyman (who happens to have some remarkable skills). But here, he’s Cassie’s dad. That’s it. That’s all he is. He has no other traits. He isn’t Scott Lang; he’s Cassie’s dad. OK, this is not good, but could work if Cassie was something special. What’s Cassie? She’s Scott’s daughter. That’s it. We’re told she’s smart, though we don’t see that. All we have is Cassie’s dad and Scott’s daughter. They don’t even have a story. They do nothing. Early on there’s a suggestion of conflict with Cassie wanting to help and Scott not wanting to, but that’s dropped, which is just as well as it was a terrible idea. As far as the plot goes, they could have been cut from the film, but that would be OK if they had some kind of arc or we learned more about their characters or they just were really engaging. But they are just Cassie’s dad and Scott’s daughter.

As for the other three, Hope is barely in the movie. Physically she is. We see her standing or sitting or walking, but otherwise, she has zero character. Again, she could have been cut out of the film. I’d have been a bit pissed if I was Evangeline Lilly.

Janet… Well, Janet isn’t a character either, though in a different way. Half the time, she’s an exposition machine. The rest of the time she’s an anti-exposition machine, refusing to tell even the most essential information she knows, instead simply saying how bad things are and leading the others forward. The plot is all about her. She is the only one necessary for the plot and the whole film could easily have been rewritten to be just her and Pym on an adventure. But again, she has no character.

Which leaves Hank Pym, who, like Hope, suffers for the lack of focus on him, but this is the only case where it isn’t a disaster as Pym actually seems like a character. He has a personality. I attribute that to Michael Douglas just having fun. It’s not much, but it’s something.

Other things don’t work as well as they should. Kang is generic and his power levels fluctuate so wildly it is impossible to determine when anything is a threat (the power level issue is a problem for most everyone). Bill Murray’s cameo comes off as Bill Murray, not a character, so breaks any sense of a world. The art design is very pretty, but has no focus; there’s nothing to go “oh wow” about, rather just a lot of attractive colors.

But none of that matters in the end. It’s the characters, and this film doesn’t have them. I don’t want to spend time with Scott and Cassie and Hope and Janet because there’s nothing there to spend time with. I don’t care about what happens to them because there’s nothing to care about.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is better than a random shoot’em up you’ll stream from Netflix, but that was known before the film was made. If you want some action, it’s fine. But I want more from an MCU film, and this one is a disappointment.