Homem-Formiga e a Vespa: 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.

Ant-Man's 3rd solo outting. Doubling down on the sci-fi elements of the MCU. Overall the humor was like the rest of the previous movies. The cast was all stellar. Doesn't really dive that deep into Kang's story, but what we did get was sufficient. Johnathan Majors portrayal was excellent, just wish he had more substance to work with. The visual effects were definitely spotty. Blue screen overload, wish they took more time blending in the effects with with actors. This leads into Modok, as a concept. I didn't mind his backstop changing, just wish they went more practical with his design. Overall Quantumania was a pretty fun movie, but for setting the tone of "PHASE 5", Marvel will definitely need to step up their storytelling, and start getting more into detail with these characters, and concepts.

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.

New Ant-Man is not a bad movie, but it's repeating current trend that been plaguing new Marvel productions. Main character is just an excuse to introduce few new characters that are definitely going to have their own stories. That makes Paul Rudd's character less important. You don't feel that this is his story. He is just there. And the story is not even that good. You can feel the lack of great characters from previous movies. They were setting the tone of story and we don't even know what happened to them after previous movie. It's hard to believe that the director is the same person who made two prior movies. Adding Kang definitely made this into Kang movie that have Ant-Man in it.