Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
Help! The Multiverse is in danger! Who will save the day?
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
Determined Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) faces Implacable Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors)
The last superhero movie I saw was The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014). I suppose, like many at the time, I watched it because I could have used a little “heroism” in my life, because the world badly needed saving. It still does.
The problem was, as far as I could tell, the young hero’s “powers” came, miraculously, from outside himself.
But all the actual heroism I’d seen in the world – from the likes of King, Mandela and Fannie Lou Hamer – came from inside the person doing the world-changing.
They weren’t endowed with heroism. They literally had to concoct it, maybe because they needed saving, too, along with the rest of mankind.
In the years since my last superhero experience in 2014, Marvel has produced some 30 movies, within five “Phases”.
None of the reviews of those movies tempted me to see them. Comic book fantasies, however elaborate, didn’t strike me as essential viewing. There’s no CGI for courage.
Ignoring holdouts like me, however, the superhero movies’ creators continued to deploy expensive flash and kept the cash rolling in. The churn still couldn’t lure me to the theater.
So, I came to Phase 5’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania knowing nothing of its two predecessor movies, and nothing about how it might resemble other blockbusters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
But I decided to plunge in because (1) it features a game cast, and (2) a friend gently chided me to get over myself and check out the genre that has dominated the movie business – well, its profit margins anyway – for the last decade.
To my surprise and delight, I had rather a good time being tossed into this technically dazzling superhuman power struggle.
Jonathan Majors is so quietly skillful it’s easy to miss the Miltonic dimension he gives to Kang. He makes The Conqueror both Lordly and Satanic.
True, director Peyton Reed and scripter Jeff Loveness don’t stir much profound human interest. But the eye-popping space and time travel impressed and tickled me.
In two earlier iterations of the series, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and his wife Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) became Ant-Man and the Wasp and, I gather, more or less saved our world.
This time out, Scott and Hope’s personal bliss is shattered when Scott’s teenage daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) builds a device that can reach into the Quantum Realm. Hope’s father, Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), an experimental scientist, has lent Cassie his expertise.
Hank’s wife, and Hope’s mother, is Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), who spent 30 years exiled in the Realm’s fathomless depths. She warns Cassie and Hank that it’s dangerous Down There.
Too late. Fiddling with her device, Cassie triggers an energy wave, and in the blink of an eye they’re all whisked into the Quantum Realm.
Floating timelessly, the Realm is filled with gigantic swaying trees and squiggly hanging vegetation.
Darting between leaves and vines is a multitude of eerie beings: stormtroopers with huge blue light bulbs for faces, hundred-foot-tall sea creatures that swim through the air, and a talking blob fascinated that humans have holes in their bodies.
There are also people. A huge rebel population is oppressed by the Master of the Quantum Realm, Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors).
We learn that during Janet’s 30-year imprisonment in the Realm she colluded with Kang to create an Empire, and thus won her escape back to Earth.
Kang the Conqueror’s vast Empire includes fearsome, disciplined armed forces
Kang remains trapped in the Realm’s limitless eternity, a prison that nonetheless lets him play with multiple universes and timelines. To console himself, he’s vastly expanded the Empire, whose people and creatures he rules with an iron fist.
Now he wants his old collaborator Janet to help him secure his exit from the hell of infinitude. He captures Cassie as a hostage and demands that Ant-Man and the Wasp put their superpowers in his service.
Thereafter . . . no, wait. You can’t comfortably absorb more plot, and neither could I.
So, why did I stick around? Quite simply, because, to my eye, unaccustomed to superhero special effects, the visuals looked splendidly designed. And the swirls and darts of people and creatures were thrillingly executed.
To take one example, superheroes in this movie can assume differing shapes and sizes. When Ant-Man wants to hide, he can become tiny.
On the other hand, when he needs to challenge Kang across regions of the Empire, he literally becomes gigantic, toppling structures and crushing hostile warriors.
Even more fascinating, at one point Ant-Man divides into multiple selves. In less than a minute there are thousands of “Scotts” scrambling atop one another trying to reach the rotating core of Kang’s power source.
Some of these versions of “Scott” cast doubt on what the majority are trying to do, while still other versions shout encouragement.
This visual conceit is charming: even superheroes get the blues and have to find strength within.
Scott’s multiple selves desperately search for a way out of Kang’s illusory trap
The battle sequences between the rebels and Kang’s army are tense, as power shifts from the populace fighting for freedom and Kang’s gang of oppressors trying to beat them back.
Once Scott and his family join the rebels, their uprising gets its chance to overcome.
But is Kang absolutely defeated? That question is answered in a surprise ending that leaves us wondering what exactly we’ve seen and what we can expect in Ant-Man’s future. We’re suspended, for now, like Kang.
I’ve noticed that this movie has gotten more negative reviews than many of its predecessors, so I guess I’m slightly in the minority in liking it.
Maybe this happened because I’m naively wide-eyed before these grand fantasy spectacles, while others have seen plenty before. Where I was dazzled, some reviewers were unimpressed.
Then again, perhaps they want more from superhero movies than their makers have so far delivered. Could the audiences for these movies actually be clamoring for depth, not just more elaborate spectacle?
Are they satiated, jaded, or simply bored? Could superhero movies be going out of style? Such questions came to mind.
Meanwhile, as a neophyte, I’m psyched for more of Phase 5. I hope its arresting visual effects will become even more intricate. I’m also eager to get back with Ant-Man because this movie’s three lead performers — all sure to return, it would seem — are excellent.
Paul Rudd has made a career of playing the slightly clueless, good-hearted Everyman who somehow finds strength when it’s most needed. He’s both relatable and unyielding here, never overplaying the nice guy but making certain the worried father comes through.
Michelle Pfeiffer does authoritative double duty. We first see Janet early in her exile, when she and Kang, both lost in a realm they don’t understand, fashion the time-encapsulating golden orb he’ll use to control timelines across multiple universes.
She escapes before he sets his most dire plans in motion, and when Janet is thrust back into the Quantum Realm, Pfeiffer projects a sad wisdom that laments the relentless mayhem.
Jonathan Majors is so quietly skillful it’s easy to miss the Miltonic dimension he gives to Kang. He makes The Conqueror both Lordly and Satanic.
Like Lucifer, Kang is driven by vengefulness – for reasons we don’t actually learn in this chapter – but he’s also fleetingly seductive as a man trapped in an immensity he can master but still keeps him captive.
We’re promised at the close that Kang will return, and this movie was intriguing enough to make me wonder what icy menace he still has in store, how he’ll continue to bend time and people to his will. I’m curious to see him strut his elegant stuff again.