Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was supposed to be the knight-in-shining-armor that the MCU needed to make the fandom forget the rousing disappointment Phase Four had been. Sadly, all it did was reinforce the fact that the MCU is spectacularly botching the lucrative idea and presentation of a multiverse. But what’s even worse is that the third Ant-Man venture takes a step further in the world of Marvel’s worst adaptations to date and actually takes viewers on an unnecessary nostalgic trip down Thor: Love and Thunder’s lane.
Spoilers ahead.
Apparently, just like the studio has a set formula for making successful projects, it is also perfecting the recipe for how to make the ones that suck — that is unless Taika Waititi shared his exceptional pearls of wisdom with Peyton Reed on how to sink a beloved character’s soaring streak.
So, in case your brain heroically protected you from connecting the dots between the two films, here are the exasperating similarities Quantumania shares with Love and Thunder, titles that now hold the record of disappointing MCU diehards like nothing ever has.
A powerful villain who fails to live up to his hype
Just like Love and Thunder’s pre-release promotion hyping Christian Bale’s Gorr the God butcher, Quantumania kept flexing Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror and in fact, took it up a notch by claiming he would be more terrifying than Thanos.
Both actors did their parts with the excellence we have come to associate with stars of their caliber but they can only do so much when the over-arching plot bogs them down with unnecessary monologues (who else was reminded of Tron: Legacy by Kang’s hype speech for his troops?), underwhelming action scenes, and overall bad writing.
Then the said villain gets taken down by the least likely adversary
No, we are not just talking about Ant-Man. Yes, the MCU choosing Scott Lang as Kang’s first adversary was one controversial decision as his only superpowers of ballooning into a giant and shrinking down are completely reliant on how long his suit functions properly (and even then he needs saving), and unlike Tony Stark, Lang has barely had moments which would assure the fandom of his prowess of getting out of a tight spot just using his intelligence.
What we are talking about is the ants overpowering Kang who was supposed to be this all-powerful Conqueror while Jane, armed with her mind-numbing catchphrases (“Eat my hammer” still makes our ears bleed), caused Gorr’s downfall.
Oh, while we are on the topic of underwhelming villains, please add Zeus and M.O.D.O.K. to the list as well.
Characters that do nothing for the plot
Take your pick — the Guardians in Love and Thunder, M.O.D.O.K., and Krylar in Ant-Man 3. You can take them out and their absence won’t do squat to change the plots of the films. Fan service, that’s all they were, added to apply a little shine to a film attempting to sail on fake lustre.
The messy female superhero treatment
Just like Jane as Mighty Thor barely got any character development and was eventually reduced to being the trigger Thor needed to fix the error of his childish ways, the female characters in Quantumania barely get space as the plot’s urge to end Kang’s reign by Scott’s hands in the most unimpressive ways is the evident priority. Cassie’s good heart that strives to save others even at the cost of her safety, Janet van Dyne’s past in the Quantum Realm and how it defines her present, and well, defining Hope’s place in a story of Ant-Man are not afforded the time they deserve to make an impact.
The CGI overkill
Here we were, still ruminating over Axl’s floating head and other unforgettable CGI blunders in Love and Thunder. And then came Quantumania, eager to extend mental torture with its awful depiction of the villain M.O.D.O.K. If by some miracle you missed the “revelations” about the villain, thank your lucky stars that Darren Cross’ over-stretched face as a giant floating head and his minion ass aren’t forever imprinted in your scarred memories.
‘Kind of made us wish Kang was real and would pulverize the special effects team for subjecting the viewers to this banality. But again, he chooses to have a fistfight with Hope and Scott instead of just dispatching them asap, so we don’t have high hopes for the supposedly super-powerful time-traveling villain.
Underwhelming core emotional arcs
In both films, fans expected to see the titular characters trying to make up for all the lost time with the people they loved the most. But Jane’s return to Thor’s life or the fact that she is dying, and Scott attempting to bond with Cassie after being MIA for years (and not just during the Snap) feel very empty and rushed. So, even when Kang has Cassie, it is hard to care about her or the fact that Scott is being manipulated by a villain — a similar emotion that was evoked when Jane finally succumbed to cancer in Love and Thunder.
The emotional arcs which would have kicked up the middling stakes in both films were simply abandoned to make space for the rushed storyline that barely allowed any character development or made the consequences worthy to concern fans.
The lackluster and cheesy ending
Yes, the MCU is not big on being bloody and ruthless but it did give enough (until Endgame at least) to make fans feel like “Someone save the universe, please!” Heroes were incapacitated, left with no way out, having no option but to either make do or count the days up until their imminent demise.
But now, especially where Love and Thunder and Quantumania are concerned, everything is sorted by the end. In the former, Jane is enjoying a hero’s afterlife in Valhalla (which still confuses us), Gorr’s daughter is back from the dead, Thor is playing Daddy dearest, he has Mjölnir back, etc.
Quantumania also sees the immediate threat vanquished, the repressed are rejoicing, and Scott and Hope are happy to be together even if they are separated from their family. And just when we think that at least all they got was a semi-happy ending as they are stuck in the Quantum Realm for good, they get their personal Narnia exit out of the place. This bugs us even more now that we know that the studio had a different, far better, conclusion in mind for the film.
Even though many will defend Quantumania as being better than Love and Thunder and Eternals, the fact that we have stooped to comparing the latest Ant-Man adventure to the least loved MCU films speaks volumes about its merits.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is in theaters.