AntMan and the Wasp: Quantumania carries a far greater burden than it can carry and makes no effort to fit that meaning into its script
February 16, 2023 9:31 p.m
(updated on 02/17/2023 at 09:01)
At this point in the mastery, Anticipation has become the greatest villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU, its English acronym). More than Mephisto, Mandarin, Gorr and now Kang, the main threat surrounding the heroes in the cinemas is the monster that Marvel Studios created itself and that simply swallows AntMan and the Wasp: Quantumania.
However, to what extent is it fair to lay all of these charges on an AntMan film? Okay, so the feature kicks off Phase 5 of the MCU and introduces the big villain of the entire Multiverse saga, but we’re still talking about AntMan, a character who never delivered anything other than Afternoon Sessionlevel adventures.
To be honest, it’s already a remarkable event that we’re in the hero’s third film, and it’s clear that it doesn’t have what it takes to be the big moment that audiences have been waiting for. And the result is an average thing that, while not as catastrophic as many people have painted it, also fails to deliver everything it promised or intended to show.
Whether it’s Marvel’s confidence or fans’ inflated expectations, the truth is so Crowd It’s a harmless film. It doesn’t impede the progress of the grand narrative, but neither does it upset, paralyzed by its own limitations.
By parachute and with bad faith
Conceptually, introducing Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) to an AntMan story makes perfect sense. After all, that’s where we first heard about the quantum realm and the possibility of time travel pathways that lead to this multiverse threat. But that’s a responsibility that doesn’t seem to fit the film.
This problem is reflected in the script itself. Like the film itself, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) parachutes into a story in which he had nothing to do. He follows his life as he is swallowed up by a portal and must resolve a conflict that has never bothered him until then.
Photo: Disclosure/Marvel/Canaltech
It is something so played that it seems like a deliberate allegory about the dilemma of Crowd within the Multiverse Saga. This was meant to be just another goofy AntMan movie to make us laugh, but it’s taken on a meaning it wasn’t prepared for and doesn’t know how to handle.
And just as Scott goes from nowhere to nowhere, so too does he go around in circles with a script that doesn’t thrill. The idea of taking the hero and his whole family to the quantum realm is interesting, but the execution isn’t very creative as it’s a mix of Lost in Space with old pulp scifi storylines that don’t seem out of place.
The main point is that behind this cheesy storyline of people living under the tyranny of a dictator that we’ve seen countless times, there’s no clear arc for the protagonist or for the supporting cast. At best, Cassie (Kathryn Newton) tries to remind her father that being a hero is about helping people, not living off fame, but it’s something so stupid it almost goes unnoticed.
This lack of real impact moving the characters makes the 2+ hour film condense into one long episode dragon cavewith a group of misfits running around wanting to go home while dealing with an evil army or strange monsters from this bizarre land.
The real purpose of Quantumania
It’s obviously that Crowd it only exists to introduce Kang. And it deserves it as it’s the best part of the whole movie which, to be honest, doesn’t say much.
Menacing, he shows why he is the villain everyone seems to fear and makes clear the level of power capable of stopping the Avengers as he has done in other realities. So much so that the scenes that see him in action are really good, whether he’s using his skills or overtly exchanging punches.
Only, even the good performance of Jonathan Majors doesn’t deliver a script that doesn’t seem ready to deliver anything other than the bread and butter that has characterized the AntMan films since the very beginning. He’s present and has good moments, but nothing around him is cooperating and even that flash is overshadowed.
Pleasant and harmless
And that’s the big problem with AntMan and the Wasp: Quantumania. He’s like the student who is happy with a grade of 7 and tries as little as possible to stay average. Precisely because it’s a film about a hero no one has ever cast in the series and whose dumbest formula has worked well so far, it doesn’t seem to want to be any more than that almost as if it doesn’t want to be noticed.
The problem is that Marvel has proposed something bigger than that and the public expects us to have something worthy of a Phase 5 launch, and that importance clearly doesn’t fit into a script that insists on being small and simple . It’s not bad, but it’s disturbing to see him housed in his own smallness. In the end it doesn’t stink or smell, it just exists. Despite all of Kang’s promises, Crowd it’s just harmless
The problem is that he’s now giving up his own heart as well, which has made the previous films work despite their limitations. Scott’s relationship with his daughter and the hero’s own insights and his allies were what kept the plot going, which doesn’t happen here. In order to live up to all this burden of the Multiverse saga and become something great, he gave up the only thing that really worked.
The biggest mistake was believing that ant man could be bigger than it actually is. A mistake by the public and by Marvel in particular.
AntMan and the Wasp: Quantumania jIt’s available in cinemas. Buy your ticket on Ingresso.com
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