Having continued to slip downwards, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is now only a solitary point above Eternals when it comes to determining the lowest-rated feature in Marvel Cinematic Universe history on Rotten Tomatoes.
Naturally, fans of the franchise are in staunch disagreement, but that always tends to be the case when critics trash a project hailing from the world’s most successful film and television multimedia monolith. The MCU is in serious danger of collapsing in on itself, but Quantumania director Peyton Reed has already shut down one popular avenue of inquiry.
Whenever a high-profile film gets pounded by critics, an opinion suddenly forms that there’s a substantially better version out there somewhere, and an extended edition of Director’s Cut would instantly solve all remedies. Speaking to IndieWire, though, Reed confirmed that the crushingly disappointing threequel will live to underwhelm in every corner of the multiverse.
“I think the philosophy on the first two Ant-Man movies for me was always, let’s keep them at or below two hours, because they’re essentially action comedies. With a comedy, you don’t want to overstay your welcome. We bent the rules on this one. I think my director’s cut was probably, I don’t know, two hours and 45 minutes, 2 hours and 35 minutes, something like that. But as you start to refine the movie, it tells you what it wants in it and what it wants out of it. We really wanted to pace it up, but also allow for that section in the middle of the movie where Janet finally divulges to her family [what] her time down [in the Quantum Realm was like] and [what happened] in this encounter with this being.”
#ReleaseTheReedCut is already dead in the water, then, but it’s doubtful that an extra half an hour of footage would have prevented Quantumania from getting both Phase Five and the Multiverse Saga off to a massively underwhelming start.