Disney, You Know I Love You, But We Need to Talk About Quantumania
You really should have called me before you put it out, too
Listen, Disney. Since I know none of you watched your own movie, I could start this by warning the poor soul you have reading this that spoilers will ensue, but the title of this rant should tell you what’s about to happen in the same way it works with the fable of The Tortoise and the Hare. I mean, a tortoise is several times slower than a hare; so, in order for there to be a story about the two animals racing, somehow, the tortoise is going to have to give the hare a run for its money. In Quantumania, Ant-Man and the Wasp are the tortoises to Kang’s hare. Kang is crazy strong, but we know the heroes will win, and the fun is in seeing how the heroes snatch that win from the jaws of defeat.
But there’s a lot of story that should have gone in between the starting line and finish line that just didn’t make it.
Story isn’t everything, but it’s where everything lives
I liked a lot about this film’s story. I liked that we get to see where Scott’s new income comes from (his book, ostensibly), and he wasn’t nonsensically made CEO of Hank’s company over Hope. I liked the fact that the core protagonists got together quickly. I even liked the fact that Darren (Yellowjacket) came back. More villains should get a second shot. #MakeMalekithGreatAgain.
But it’s the missed swings that lose games.
The first major problem of this movie is its propensity to rely on script-engineered secrecy. Janet has to keep Kang and the goings-on in the Quantum Realm (QR) a secret so that Cassie 3.0 thinks it’s alright to study the godforsaken place. Cassie 3.0 has to keep studying the QR a secret from Janet and Scott because Janet would have stopped it, and Scott wouldn’t have gotten a tour of Cassie 3.0’s device, both things that would have prevented adventures in the Quantum Realm. Other secrets include Cassie 3.0 having a Pym particle suit (that they forgot they spoiled early in the movie), Kang not telling Janet what his deal was when they met, and so little historical information being given about Kang that we don’t even know which Kang we saw kanging up this whole film. After the third or so secret, the plot of the film feels less organic than canned peaches, and that makes this next issue seem more of a problem than climate change.
Conservatively, there are a bazillion coincidences in this film. Kang’s ship crashes right next to Janet’s Quantum Realm hideout despite the fact that we see the vastness of the realm. MODOK pulls everyone into the QR at the exact time that all of the main characters are within reach to be pulled — and not much else from that room. MODOK pulls everyone to different and ostensibly random places in the QR, rather than to where he and Kang are, thereby allowing adventure in the QR to ensue. Quantumaliens show up to save Scott and Cassie 3.0 right before they are eaten by Quantum Ditto.
There’s a quantumalien (Veb) who can excrete red “ooze” that grants linguistic assimilation, and he’s right there in the village that Scott and Cassie 3.0 are taken to, not excreting the ooze and waiting for some other quantumaliens to bring a vat of it out like they do that regularly. There’s a quantumalien (Quaz) who reads minds, and he’s right there in the village when Scott and Cassie 3.0 need to be trusted to continue their quest rather than using his gift to do reconnaissance on Kang and his forces. I could go on, but I don’t want to hit the half-bazillion-character limit before I actually touch on the characters.
I think this needs more, Luis, please
But he didn’t appear, and we all have to deal with that. However, all of the other characters that we did see were acted out superbly. Of course, when you have a cast like the one in this film, acting was never really going to be a worry. Characterization, on the other hand, wasn’t done evenly, and that spoiled much of the film a bit more than the plot did.
Scott stayed pretty much the same. He came. He quipped. He won without being much of a fighter, thinker, or hack-using hexer (I’m looking at you, Scarlet Witch). To be honest, the fact that there wasn’t much change to Scott’s character is both the strongest and weakest thing about his character, and giving him some sort of power-up might have been in order, especially given the villain he went up against.
Hope didn’t get much to do, despite being second-billed in the title (unless, of course, the Wasp in the title was meant to be Janet). She did rock as a businesswoman, stepmother, daughter, and romantic partner in this, though. Seriously, both the way she went after her parents when they fell in the trap and the way she came back for Scott at the end was fantastic, and the fact that she wasn’t more involved in the story was a misstep.
Cassie 3.0 not being super rebellious and disrespectful to her elders was a smart move. Consequently, she honored her characterization prior to the current Cassie build (1.0 and 2.0, obviously, being the predecessors) and gave the character some wiggle room to show how she’s grown. That said, the fact that she didn’t have a heart condition as she did in the comics probably resulted in her having to have a suit rather than gaining powers through exposure to Pym particles, and this means that we don’t get to see her differentiated from her father. She needs that. Wanting to save the downtrodden can’t be her only characterization, though it’s a good start.
Hank did some fun stuff in this film, and I don’t think there’s much to change. Were I to nitpick, however, I’d ask for some Ant-Man antics from him that involve a suit, the original suit (or its current iteration).
Janet was flat-out awesome in this film. I mean, you have a name like Michelle Pfeiffer, you give her stuff to do. We get that and respect it. But how did she end up seeming like the main character of this film? She was the one who stranded Kang (the second time). She was the one who knew dealing with the Quantum Realm was bad. She was the one interacting with the people of the QR in her group, that so without the help of the red ooze (ostensibly). She even fought a bit. If it wasn’t for her blurting out to Kang what she saw while touching his ship, only to later decide not to blurt out what went on in the QR to her family, a family that has the propensity to deal with the QR a lot, I’d have no notes for her here. Seriously, she let Scott go down there to collect quantum energy at the end of the previous film and said nothing. #MakeItMakeSenseMyScreenwriters.
Kang is where things start to get aggravating. “Who is Kang?” said the Wasp to the Conqueror. But it never really got answered. What can he do? Science and Technology stuff, I assume, but STEM the Conqueror would have been a terrible name. What is time? Apparently, it’s not what we think it is, and now we don’t know what it is. What had happened and will happen with all those other Kangs? To be continued, I guess, and that’s not that big of a problem since most of us comic book fans will be watching the upcoming movies anyway. Where it does become a problem, however, is when an entire movie is based on the idea of fighting a villain whose motives and mission we don’t really get to see. Majors gave the character a lot of emotion, but it went nowhere when we can’t understand why he seems like kind of an okay guy and also a tyrant. And, while we’re here, how in the bleeding heck did you have Kang, the next big bad in the entire MCU (ostensibly), getting beaten by technology at least a millennium behind his own? #WrongGuyForTheJob. In reality, Kang probably should have been the shadow boss to MODOK’s main villain rather than making the latter a simple lackey.
MODOK was indeed just a lackey in the film, too, and that was just disappointing. Sure, he waxed villainous enough when it came to dealing with his former nemesis but having him shoot like a stormtrooper in a smokescreen a few minutes later took most of the bite out of him. He was comic relief in a film that stars Paul Rudd, let that sink in for a MODOK or two. He could have been vengeful. He could have been cunning. He could have earned that heel-face turn/redemption arc, but he didn’t — not really. But since no one thinks he’s really dead, it’s never too late for him to stop being a derp, Disney.
There were other characters in the movie, too. Bill Murray played a Lando Calrissian clone for a minute or two. The guy from The Good Place was one of the leaders of this movie’s bad place. Elia Kane from The Mandalorian got to hit people with her cane in this other Disney property. The actor who played the Russian ex-con from the first two Ant-Man films voiced one of the quantumaliens, and the new character was not Russian, obviously. And some old characters show up in flashbacks. That’s it. There’s no need to regard them or their place in the storyline any further because they’re all a bit superfluous to the storyline a minute or two after they’re introduced.
Not a bad film, though
This film was Guardians of the Galaxy meets The Empire Strikes Back wrapped in a sheet of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and it didn’t work as well as any of them. As the first outing of the MCU’s Phase 5, it was supposed to bring balance back to the film industry, but it couldn’t do that while trying to keep its (mostly Kang’s) secrets for future movies. That must of have been a nightmare for the screenwriter to try to navigate, and with that in mind, I can’t hate this film. The Quantum Realm was lush and beautiful like it was supposed to be. The film prioritized entertainment over messaging, and that’s rare enough to warrant praise. I even liked the soundtrack. So, Disney, if you want to get a bigger win next time, just be sure to be generous with the story, the Hope, and most importantly, please squeeze in a little Luis.
