Summary
Phase Five officially begins in the MCU, bringing with it the knowledge that something big is coming. Eventually.
The 31st film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe arrives with a sense of inevitability.
It’s the latest vital link in the never-ending chain of lynchpins that dominate the box office. Which is no slouch given how unlikely a success the universe’s most diminutive hero. From his debut in a low-stakes comedy, the titular hero became a key player in Avengers: Endgame. Hell, he and the Wasp even have an attraction on a Disney Cruise.
So, in their first screen appearance since Endgame, director Peyton Reed and the crew waste very little time in throwing us straight into the action. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is releasing his memoir, and enjoying some well-earned rest after saving the world. (A fact he never tires of reminding people). Yet his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) is keen to do more and has been trying to communicate with the Quantum Realm with the help of Hope (Evangeline Lilly) and Hank (Michael Douglas).
Yet before former Quantum prisoner Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) can warn them to stop, they are all sucked in the unseen universe. Scattered and hunted, they are all warned that someone is looking for them — and he has it in for Janet.
Of course, we know who he is. At least, if you’ve been paying attention to the Disney+ Loki series as well. Kang (Jonathan Majors) is a Multiversal traveler who is set on conquering pretty much everything. So, it’s up to this ragtag group of heroes to put a stop to him.
ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QANTUMANIA is definitely the most delightfully weird of the Ant-Man (Ant-Men?) films to date, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It is, after all, a film that brings a comic book figure as bizarre as MODOK to a multi-billion dollar franchise and owns it. In fact, it comes with all the mind-bending otherworldliness that I’d hoped Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness would bring. At least it does that for a while.
With Lang removed from his comfort zone of San Francisco, where quips and comedic capers are his stock in trade, Reed and writer Peter Loveness never quite finds the right rhythm here. Sure, it hits all the expected marks: large-scale effects, cameos old and new (from no less a figure than Bill Murray), and an army coming together over a hopeless cause.
Yet it’s also chaotic. “With time,” says Kang, “it’s really hard not to skip to the end.” Yet that’s exactly what they try and do here, foreshadowing the next two phases of the MCU without having the patience to tell a single story in the here and now. There’s individually great set-pieces, like the so-called probability storm featuring countless versions of Scott. Yet even in the immediately afterglow, it’s hard to say what the connective tissue was holding them all together.
Which is probably because this whole film is the connective tissue. ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QANTUMANIA represents the start of Phase Five of the MCU, and it comes burdened with setting up more future markers than all of Phase Four. Indeed, one could very easily argue that this isn’t so much a standalone as another spin of the self-perpetuating flywheel. Or, as Kang so aptly puts it, “It’s never over.”
2023 | USA | DIRECTOR: Peyton Reed | WRITERS: Peter Loveness | CAST: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors, Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Douglas, Kathryn Newton, David Dastmalchian, William Jackson Harper, Katy O’Brian, Bill Murray | DISTRIBUTOR: Disney | RUNNING TIME: 161 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 15 February 2023 (AUS), 17 February 2023 (USA)
