Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is finally on Disney Plus and while Marvel is surely busy ruing the day it decided to make the film in the first place, the studio should at least acknowledge the fact that the sequel has given the MCU a chance to experience its biggest event ever in real life — Thanos’ universe-annihilating Snap.
If you look closely at MCU’s trajectory of the past few years, it seems to be living the story of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. In this analogy, Thanos is the studio’s innate desire to oversaturate the MCU without caring whether they are serving mediocrity in its haste to produce content — Marvel’s misconstrued idea of the greater good. And the most bankable heroes — Sam Wilson, Thor, Black Widow, Bucky Barnes, and Hulk — pose as the Infinity Stones who are used to exact the aforementioned agenda.
And Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania proved to be the ultimate “Snap” — where Thanos erased half the living population, the film turned a number of things to dust:
Faith that the MCU is equipped to tell a complicated, interlinked web of stories that is the multiverse
After all, it butchered the exploration of the Quantum Realm — the story could have taken place anywhere and it wouldn’t have made a lick of difference. The intricacies of the multi-dimensional realm were lost in Quantumania’s attempt to just haphazardly debut its new villain.
Hopes that Marvel knows its way around serving good CGI
You don’t even have to look underline the sloppy visual effects in the rest of the film, just focusing on M.O.D.O.K., his giant head, and his butt is punishment enough. Heck, I still have nightmares about his twisted Minion buttocks.
That it can do justice to minor but important characters…
… Because boy, Quantumania did Darren Cross dirty. I mean, he could have been menacing, a mindless killer, or retained his old greed. But noooo, he had to be reduced to a comical and pointless sidekick who gets non-sensical lines. I thought Jane Foster’s “Let’s bring the rainbow” was bad, but MODOK’s dialogues and overall arc left me trying and failing to claw my way out of the depths of cringeness.
Oh, don’t even get me started on the Freedom Fighters — while Thor: Love and Thunder was dead set on being a parody, Quantumania was hellbent on turning every possible aspect of itself into a poor joke.
And dear Marvel, the title said “and Wasp” — it means allowing Hope van Dyne to indulge in character development and not just be there for momentary glory or only be the force that drives the “hero.” I thought we left that in the past when Wanda single-handedly overpowered Thanos? Oh, I forgot, we villanized and micro-minimized her twice (WandaVision and WandaVision Part 2… I mean Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) for the blunder.
Marvel’s finesse in debuting memorable villains
Okay, Majors was good as Kang, but he is definitely not going down in history as a memorable baddie. I mean, look at Hela, Loki, Red Skull, Ultron, and the best of them all, Thanos. They were all defeated, of course, but not in the insulting way the Conqueror got dispatched. Forget the ants that thwarted him, the poor guy was battling a mediocre script doing its lamest to look interesting throughout the film.
MCU’s ability to do justice to its existing heroes
Yes, Ant-Man was always the “goofy” part of the MCU, and a hero who is the living personification of Captain America’s The Avenger rant, “Big man in a suit of armor, take that away and what are you?” And yes, his biggest contribution in Endgame was to suggest time travel to reverse the Snap (while other intelligent minds worked to flesh out the idea), and to make eyes at Hope as Thanos and his army steadily gained ground.
But still, he is now one of the few remaining heroes that need to shoulder the MCU until the new ones gain enough trust to share the responsibility. So, his delivery of jokes that fall flat, and needing all the help in the whole wide Quantum Realm and Earth to thwart a villain isn’t exactly painting him as a reliable Avenger. Yeah, he gets the much-hyped The Kang as his enemy, but not only did the villain resemble a tantrum-throwing man-child, Scott Lang needed Hank, Janet, Hope, Cassie, the entire population of the Quantum Realm, and giant ants from Earth to even stand a chance of winning.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 — which is thankfully the last time we will see the Guardians together — could have done some damage control if it hadn’t been James Gunn’s Marvel swan song. While it did redeem the MCU a bit, it majorly served as a trip down nostalgia lane to a time when the franchise liked exceeding expectations the good way, and only hammered in the fear that it is probably that last time we are seeing the good-old Marvel greatness.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is now on Disney Plus and the dwindling faith in the MCU (when I said the fandom’s trust has been halved, that was me being generous) is more apparent than ever.