Ant-Man y la Avispa: Quantumanía

I enjoyed watching Quantumania. It's a mostly solid and fairly entertaining movie. But relative to MCU standards, it's a bit underwhelming and feels like more of a throwaway movie than something memorable I will keep coming back to.

My biggest issue is that I wasn't fully engaged for at least the first half of the movie. I was enjoying it but I wasn't locked in. The story was unfocussed. When the villain becomes prevalent, the movie jumps a level. But it doesn't completely make up for the much weaker first half.

The other thing that surprised me was not being mesmerized by the visuals. It's very creative and I didn't notice poor CGI like some others. But it didn't wow me like it frequently does. Maybe we're just getting spoiled with the visuals in movies like Doctor Strange 2 and more recently Avatar 2.

There is still a lot of good here. It's pretty funny but doesn't overdo it. This is the second movie in a row where the MCU seems to have dialed back on the "insert joke here" strategy. It's probably a result of the negative reaction from the cartoonish Thor 4. Also, I love the villain. I won't say who in case you're smart (and crazy) like me and don't watch trailers. But he's so damn awesome.

As someone who loves almost everything in the MCU, Quantumania is near the bottom of my MCU rankings. And it's making me a little nervous that it comes only two movies after Thor 4 which is below it (5 stars). But I still have faith and am not joining the MCU doom and gloom crowd. Phase 4 has three of my favorite entries in the entire MCU (Shang-Chi, Loki S01, No Way Home) and I only disliked two (Eternals, Thor 4). They just need to be more consistent while also not playing it so safe.

(3 viewings, opening Thursday IMAX 2/16/2023, IMAX 2/28/2023, 10/5/2023)

Well it's happened. The MCU has run out of gas. The last few MCU films have been lackluster at best. Not counting the sort of stand alone Spider-Man No Way Home. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is supposed to start the Phase 5 of this thing and if it goes on like this it's going to get worse!!! This film is of course competently made, looks good and is not horrible but is completely uninspired and like pretty much everything out of the MCE factory since Endgame it's totally forgettable. The reason that the MCU was so successful is that the films had characters we cared about. Stakes were there, of course they were lightoments but there were heroes to root for and some pretty good villains. We cared about what was on the screen. I didn't care at all about what I saw in Quantumania. Not that every film from Iron Man to Endgame was great but they were mostly at least better than average. The two previous Ant-Man films were among the weakest but were still more memorable than this one. The acting in Quantumania is fine but but again no one to really care about. Even Paul Rudd who is usually very engaging seemed just flat and disinterested here. He seems to be phoning it in. The only notable performance is Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror but he alone can't save the film from being a complete snooze fest. I was actually bored fir much if the film.

Just below average in an MCU that is just churning out film after film with diminishing results. I think Kevin Feige and company should go back and see what made these films good when they first started. They are getting so formulaic and forgettable.

Below average.....

Grade: C-

Marvel really has fallen and it can't get up. This is the third legacy character that they've absolutely wasted. In fact, for Doctor Strange, Thor and Ant-Man they not only wasted great established characters but superb casts. Add that they made Kang, the main villain out to be a chump and it appears Marvel has no plan moving forward. Not Kiang the conqueror but Kang the chump.

This movie adds to the malaise of poorly written disappointments that is permeated the MCU since Endgame. With one of the worst third acts of any movie in recent history. MODOK use and "dick" turn could be the dumbest thing I've ever seen and that's not even a spoiler. He also ended the movie as if they ran out of budget. What an absolute waste.

No wonder all those "creative" people in so called creative businesses and crafts are afraid of AI - no doubt, in the not too distant future, AI will do the work - cheaper and better than humans can do. At least if Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and such movies (and books, comics, whatever, quantity beats quality these days - in all fields) are the best human mind can come up with. The first Ant-Man movie was a nice one, the second one was okay, but if you take away all the (finally by computer generated) visuals and effects, there is maybe enough story left in this third chapter to employ two or maybe three and a half brain cells of the viewer. The rest of the neural network goes quickly into stand by and sleep mode. I like the production and a few scenes, this is the only reason why this one does not crash totally. But in the end, this is at best mediocre and sometimes even really bad.

As a huge fan of the first one, and almost as big a fan of the second one, I decided to go all out and see this one in 3D with the 4DX motion and sensory seats. What a let down; sure, sitting in the nicest seats for the best visual, motion and sensory experience was great, but I felt like I was watching a Looney Tunes story, instead of any type of story that is part, or compliments the MCU timeline. This was literally one of Marvel's dullest and most unnecessary movies to date. The entire story was cliched and predictable, and there was more CGI than there was any type of interesting story, let alone one with any substance. Even the normally awesome and hilarious humor in the previous installments was absent in this one. Almost the entire film is taking place inside a CGI story, so there was no need for any movie sets or locations... this was all green-screen nonsense. It's a very generous 6/10 from me, only because I still enjoyed the fun ride in my upgraded seats, although the money spent would've been more fun at an amusement park.