Ant-Man et la Guêpe : Quantumania

I enjoyed watching Quantumania. It's a mostly solid and fairly entertaining movie. But relative to MCU standards, it's a bit underwhelming and feels like more of a throwaway movie than something memorable I will keep coming back to.

My biggest issue is that I wasn't fully engaged for at least the first half of the movie. I was enjoying it but I wasn't locked in. The story was unfocussed. When the villain becomes prevalent, the movie jumps a level. But it doesn't completely make up for the much weaker first half.

The other thing that surprised me was not being mesmerized by the visuals. It's very creative and I didn't notice poor CGI like some others. But it didn't wow me like it frequently does. Maybe we're just getting spoiled with the visuals in movies like Doctor Strange 2 and more recently Avatar 2.

There is still a lot of good here. It's pretty funny but doesn't overdo it. This is the second movie in a row where the MCU seems to have dialed back on the "insert joke here" strategy. It's probably a result of the negative reaction from the cartoonish Thor 4. Also, I love the villain. I won't say who in case you're smart (and crazy) like me and don't watch trailers. But he's so damn awesome.

As someone who loves almost everything in the MCU, Quantumania is near the bottom of my MCU rankings. And it's making me a little nervous that it comes only two movies after Thor 4 which is below it (5 stars). But I still have faith and am not joining the MCU doom and gloom crowd. Phase 4 has three of my favorite entries in the entire MCU (Shang-Chi, Loki S01, No Way Home) and I only disliked two (Eternals, Thor 4). They just need to be more consistent while also not playing it so safe.

(3 viewings, opening Thursday IMAX 2/16/2023, IMAX 2/28/2023, 10/5/2023)

Marvel really has fallen and it can't get up. This is the third legacy character that they've absolutely wasted. In fact, for Doctor Strange, Thor and Ant-Man they not only wasted great established characters but superb casts. Add that they made Kang, the main villain out to be a chump and it appears Marvel has no plan moving forward. Not Kiang the conqueror but Kang the chump.

This movie adds to the malaise of poorly written disappointments that is permeated the MCU since Endgame. With one of the worst third acts of any movie in recent history. MODOK use and "dick" turn could be the dumbest thing I've ever seen and that's not even a spoiler. He also ended the movie as if they ran out of budget. What an absolute waste.

No wonder all those "creative" people in so called creative businesses and crafts are afraid of AI - no doubt, in the not too distant future, AI will do the work - cheaper and better than humans can do. At least if Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and such movies (and books, comics, whatever, quantity beats quality these days - in all fields) are the best human mind can come up with. The first Ant-Man movie was a nice one, the second one was okay, but if you take away all the (finally by computer generated) visuals and effects, there is maybe enough story left in this third chapter to employ two or maybe three and a half brain cells of the viewer. The rest of the neural network goes quickly into stand by and sleep mode. I like the production and a few scenes, this is the only reason why this one does not crash totally. But in the end, this is at best mediocre and sometimes even really bad.

I like Paul Rudd. I think he's naturally charming and really funny. I really wanted for this Ant-Man to do well, as the other 2 were just okay, and didn't do well in the box office either. Unfortunately this isn't the hit movie that changes things for Ant-Man or Marvel. It has some good moments, and cool visuals. However if you look a little deeper, a lot of things stand out. Like the fact that they were harvesting quantum energy from the quantum realm in the post credits of the last movie, yet Janet didn't seem concerned, even though she is very worried about the quantum realm, which they show in the trailer, so it's not something you'd only gather from watching the movie. Her backstory was kept quiet because they hadn't thought of it yet. Usually they keep things open for other Marvel movies, but this story felt very tacked on for the sake of this movie. Hope had some moments, but very little dialogue. Also, I thought I dozed off, as this movie seemed to jump from a long first act, to the third act. Jonathan Majors (Kang) does all the heavy lifting in this movie. His story, and his motivations seem the most developed. I wouldn't call this a bad movie, but they didn't knock it out of the park, by any means. It seems like Marvel has been in this post-Endgame slump that they haven't been able to break out of.

I looked forward to Kang joining the Antman trilogy and I was very excited what they are going to make with him, so I went to the first possible screening of the movie and yup it wasn't good...

So to start with good things, Jonathan Majors was great as Kang. He is just a talented actor just as Micheal Douglas as Hank Pym. But that's pretty much it...

The movie feels like a cheap and bad copy/mix of Ready Player One and Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and I am a person who loves both of the movies. The movie introduces us a character, who we know (I won't spoil who), in a new form which makes this character with high potential to a ridiculous character about we only laugh! I mean, common Marvel, you don't have to make everything a joke.

So if you ask me if the movie is better then the first two? Definitely not.