Why Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania is Better Than You May Think

Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania is now in theaters and to say that it is a divisive entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe would be a little bit of an understatement. The film has been widely panned by critics — at the time of this writing it has a 48 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes — but it’s done better with audiences which have been largely positive on the film. However, even within the positive audience response, there’ve been mixed reviews, much of the more “negative” reactions centering around the film’s CGI, its pacing, or questions about the “stakes” of the film not feeling high enough — some to the point of declaring the film to among the worst that Marvel’s done. But while not every movie is going to be everyone’s cup of tea, it’s worth stepping back and examining what Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania is actually set up to do for not just the MCU overall, but at this point in Phase 5 as opposed to the unrealistic expectations we as moviegoers may have placed upon it.

Warning: spoilers for Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania beyond this point.

Ant-Man 3 sees Scott, Cassie, Janet, Hank, and Hope all sucked into the Quantum Realm where they are quickly hunted by Kang who has an axe to grind, as it were, with Janet. We learn that he was exiled there at some point in the past and that Janet had helped him fix the power source for his ship that would allow them both to escape. However, in the process she found out the truth about Kang’s actions, messed with the source so that he couldn’t use it and had been at war with him ever since, at least until she was rescued and brought back to our world. Now, Kang needs Scott to use Pym particles to undo Janet’s sabotage so he can escape. A great fight ensues and while the heroes come out on top, Kang warns them that defeating him will only allow for something far, far worse to come. Post-credits scenes reveal he wasn’t bluffing, and the Council of Kang decides that now is the time for a multiversal uprising.

Going into Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, there was already a lot of hype less for the film itself and more for everything it is leading to and that comes down to one thing: Kang. We already know that everything in the MCU now is building to the next big event, something we won’t fully even get to until Phase Six, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars. Ant-Man 3 is just the biggest stepping stone in that it gives us our first, true appearance of Kang after we got a taste with He Who Remains in Season 1 of Loki. But while we were primed to expect some massive Kang moment, what Ant-Man 3 actually delivered on was a bit more subdued. The film didn’t release this Kang on reality as some people expected it might or see the death of an Avenger. Instead, it fully put into motion an idea was teased in Loki Season 1: there is something even bigger and more horrible coming than this Kang here.

With that being the story told in the film, we need to think of Ant-Man 3 in comic book terms — specifically as a lead in issue for a larger comic event series. Think of this as a zero issue for a big event. It’s meant to give you an adventure, some breadcrumbs and pathways for the larger story coming up, introduce some new characters and establish them, clean up some other stories with other characters, and then drop a hint or a bomb about the real threat the heroes are going to face. These are all boxes that Ant-Man 3 checks. We get an adventure in the Quantum Realm, we get pathways to the threat of Kang, we’re fully introduced to Cassie Lang as a hero in her own right, and we clean up much of Scott’s post-Endgame story and resolve the question of what Janet did while in the Quantum Realm all before dropping that big bomb about how bad things are about to get. The movie functions as a bridge to the next chapter of the MCU — which is exactly what you want it to do since we’re kicking off Phase Five.

Because this is a “bridge” movie, it doesn’t have to have sky-high stakes to work as intended. One of the things that Marvel fans have grown accustomed to are stories with major stakes or issues that are global in nature. It’s why we love our team up movies so much and why, to an extent, much of Phase Four felt a little uneven: we’re shifting down to stories with more personal stakes and after the spectacle that was Infinity War and Endgame. But the shift serves two purposes. First, the actual world within the MCU dramatically changed because of the Infinity Saga and it would be bad storytelling to act like there wasn’t fallout from that. Phase Four brought stories down to personal levels to show the heroes off center and impacted by the massive events they’d endured. That alone is setting the stage for the vulnerable position we will find our heroes in when the next big threat does come. Secondly, the stories at this point must be at a personal stakes level because there really is no Avengers team to speak of. Iron Man, Black Widow, and Black Panther are all dead. Other heroes exist, but they’re all dealing with their own lives and issues while new heroes start to emerge.

We’ve also gotten so used to everything being big stakes and big team that taking things small seems weird or boring.  But the reality is that what is personal often becomes global and that is what is at play here. We see that very clearly at the end of the film when Scott is wrestling with what has transpired. The movie ends with him going back to his normal life and being haunted by what Kang said about something far worse coming should he be taken out. Scott starts to briefly have anxiety that maybe in saving the Quantum Realm he’s damned everything else. It’s a valid fear — but so is his response to it. Scott pretty quickly shuts down that little nagging voice telling him to be concerned. How often do we, as real people, shut down that voice in our heads telling us something just isn’t right only to find out later that we should have trusted our gut? What makes that scene work as a conclusion for the film is that that is a universal human experience but also that we as the audience are in on something that Scott isn’t. As Marvel fans, we know Kang is bad news and that he’s not bluffing because we’ve seen Loki — and we get to see in the post-credits scenes just how dire things are about to get. We, as audience, have information the heroes do not have. It makes things all the more uncomfortable.

That sense of discomfort also plays in a bit to one of the other complaints about the movie — the CGI. Ant-Man 3 isn’t supposed to look realistic in any way. It’s supposed to look off and weird and cheesy because this is not a realm within human understanding. The Quantum Realm is a mishmash of things and worlds so it’s not always going to be cohesive and make sense. We are also told that there are different worlds represented within the realm, which would explain why different parts look so wildly different. On top of that, much of this film is meant to evoke the feel of 1950s B sci-fi movies that are frequently over the top and just blatantly weird, which in turn lines up with a very comic book feel to things. We talk a lot about how Thor: Ragnarok took cues from Jack Kirby, but it’s Ant-Man 3 that fully excels at delving into that very unique and wildly weird approach. The appearance of the movie is giving viewers a personal scale, character-driven story with slow burn stakes set in the wackiest setting possible. It’s disorienting and deliberately so as it serves as metaphor for the MCU at this point in that no one will see what’s coming.

All of this isn’t to say that Ant-Man 3 is a perfect movie and that there aren’t some valid complaints. The script here isn’t great and there are some missed opportunities as well as some moments that probably weren’t necessary — that full moon M.O.D.O.K. moment, the “not being a dick” of it all were admittedly sort of weak links, though they did get plenty of laughs. But even for the small flaws, Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania does exactly what it’s designed to do. It was never meant to be like any other MCU movie. It’s meant to be that bridge from what was to what’s coming, and it works perfectly in that regard. In a franchise that has grown as large as the MCU — and the superhero genre writ large — installments that bring things down to this level are necessary realignments to tell larger stories in more authentic ways.

Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania is in theaters now.