PART OF what was so exciting about the first 22 films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe—dubbed “The Infinity Saga” by the powers that be at Marvel—was the constant knowledge and understanding that every moment was leading somewhere. This culminated, of course, in the two-part saga of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, which pitted just about every hero in the Marvel encyclopedia (sans the X-Men and Fantastic Four, surely coming soon to a theater near you) against the mighty Thanos (Josh Brolin), a supervillain teased and built-up over the course of several appearances and several years.
Marvel’s post-Endgame slate, while including some stand-alone fun (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), some genre experimentation (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) and some epic nostalgia (Spider-Man: No Way Home), has also been largely lacking any sort of formal direction forward. With Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the intent is for that now to officially change. Last summer, Marvel Studios officially announced that everything to come in the next few years will culiminate in another two-part Avengers extravaganza: The Kang Dynasty in 2024 and Secret Wars in 2025.
I think it’s important that we judge movies as far as their intent lies. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, clearly, has one primary objective: to fully introduce Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors). A “variant” of the character, named “He Who Remains,” made a memorable appearance in the Season 1 finale of Loki back in 2021, but Quantumania marks the big screen debut of Kang the Conqueror in earnest. And for better and for worse, that’s what this movie exists to do (and succeeds at doing).
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Above all the Ant-Man and the Wasp branding, Quantumania is a Kang the Conqueror movie. He enters in an opening scene, and everything in the movie revolves around his presence, his actions, and what he can and will do in the future.
While everything centers on Kang, the movie does a nice job showing the continued evolution of Scott Lang’s (Paul Rudd) family dynamic. His small cell now includes his mentor, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), his love interest, Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lily), her mother, Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfieffer), and his daughter, Cassie (now played by Freaky star Kathryn Newton). We miss the likes of Michael Peña, Judy Greer, and Bobby Cannavale from past movies, but you can only fit so much into a Marvel story (fan favorite Jimmy Woo, played by Randall Park, shows up for a single five-second scene).
Scott is still clearly longing over the years he lost to the blip and the quantum realm, but he’s also cautiously proud to see his daughter somewhat following in his Robin Hood-esque shoes of standing up for the “little guy” who needs help (we first meet her in the movie after she’s used a Pym Particle to shrink the car of cops who were being abusive toward the homeless). There are touches added in—like Cassie calling Hank “Grandpa”—that help to illustrate how close this family has grown in the time since we last met them.
But if Cassie has some of her dad in her, she also has some of her “Grandpa” Hank in her as well; she’s built a map and passageway down to the Quantum realm, where Janet once spent 30 years. Obviously, this is a movie; that goes wrong, and our heroes are stuck in the miniature world for the duration of the movie’s two-hour runtime.
The world down there includes some really out-there, fun visuals, and while Kang is constantly looming, the movie’s secondary villain, M.O.D.O.K., is present quite often. M.O.D.O.K.’s appearance won’t be for everyone, but I found the character’s live-action debut to be quite campy and enjoyable, and he’s written in a way that’s quite entertaining and quite funny.
Another thing that Quantumania does particularly well is allow its impressive cast to just have fun on screen. Quantumania isn’t trying to be The Godfather; it’s a fun popcorn movie, and no one seems to understand that more than Douglas, who just constantly seems like he’s having a blast. From one-liners to piloting a ship by sticking his hand into some sort of jelly tubes, that’s one legend the movie makes great use of. Pfieffer, too, is of course superhero movie royalty—never forget her turn as Catwoman in Batman Returns—but gets a lot to do here. She’s the audience’s window to meeting Kang, as she met him in the Quantum realm, and learned all about who he is and what his motivations are in years past. Bill Murray has been billed as part of the movie’s cast, and he certainly shows up for one scene, but don’t expect much; think a significantly scaled back version of Jeff Goldblum’s character in Thor: Ragnarok.
Quantumania is different from the other films in the Ant-Man franchise, which largely previously focused on being something different from the MCU’s other entries: they were essentially low-stakes heists. This time, the aim, and the ambition, are greater; we enter a Star Wars-esque world, and while the story doesn’t quite have the peaks and valleys of a typical Star Wars saga, it introduces its own sorts of versions of a Boba Fett (in MODOK) and a sith lord (in Kang).
And while we may have hoped for something a bit more spectacular, Quantumania does the job it set out to do—and still manages to have some fun along the way.
Evan is the culture editor for Men’s Health, with bylines in The New York Times, MTV News, Brooklyn Magazine, and VICE. He loves weird movies, watches too much TV, and listens to music more often than he doesn’t.
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