Film Review — Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
A depressingly routine Marvel film that ought to be bizarre but just feels utterly ordinary
Whilst watching Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the latest instalment in Marvel’s seemingly endless superhero saga, a nagging question kept cropping up in my mind: Why does a film this weird feel so ordinary? By rights, Quantumania ought to be a surreal, opulent delight. So why did it feel so murky, so dull, so utterly indifferent?
I want to be clear: It isn’t terrible. It’s perfectly serviceable in an adventure-of-the-week sort of way, despite the obvious and rather tedious manner in which it portentously sets up sequels and spin-offs in the now customary and rather irritating mid and post-end credits scenes. But the law of diminishing returns seems to have finally caught up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The plot concerns Scott Lang aka Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), Hank’s wife and fellow scientist Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfieffer), their daughter Hope aka The Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), and Scott’s daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton), now suddenly a teenager thanks to the events of Avengers: Infinity War/Avengers: Endgame. In some ways, Cassie is a chip off the old block as she keeps getting arrested by police, though not for…
