एंट-मैन एंड द वास्प: क्वांटुमेनिया

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.

I like Paul Rudd. I think he's naturally charming and really funny. I really wanted for this Ant-Man to do well, as the other 2 were just okay, and didn't do well in the box office either. Unfortunately this isn't the hit movie that changes things for Ant-Man or Marvel. It has some good moments, and cool visuals. However if you look a little deeper, a lot of things stand out. Like the fact that they were harvesting quantum energy from the quantum realm in the post credits of the last movie, yet Janet didn't seem concerned, even though she is very worried about the quantum realm, which they show in the trailer, so it's not something you'd only gather from watching the movie. Her backstory was kept quiet because they hadn't thought of it yet. Usually they keep things open for other Marvel movies, but this story felt very tacked on for the sake of this movie. Hope had some moments, but very little dialogue. Also, I thought I dozed off, as this movie seemed to jump from a long first act, to the third act. Jonathan Majors (Kang) does all the heavy lifting in this movie. His story, and his motivations seem the most developed. I wouldn't call this a bad movie, but they didn't knock it out of the park, by any means. It seems like Marvel has been in this post-Endgame slump that they haven't been able to break out of.

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-

Ant-Man's 3rd solo outting. Doubling down on the sci-fi elements of the MCU. Overall the humor was like the rest of the previous movies. The cast was all stellar. Doesn't really dive that deep into Kang's story, but what we did get was sufficient. Johnathan Majors portrayal was excellent, just wish he had more substance to work with. The visual effects were definitely spotty. Blue screen overload, wish they took more time blending in the effects with with actors. This leads into Modok, as a concept. I didn't mind his backstop changing, just wish they went more practical with his design. Overall Quantumania was a pretty fun movie, but for setting the tone of "PHASE 5", Marvel will definitely need to step up their storytelling, and start getting more into detail with these characters, and concepts.

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.