The Marvel Movie That Finally Broke Me
I'm among the many who felt that Marvel has largely been on the decline in their Post-Endgame glut of content. I hemmed and hawed about my commitment to the brand as I continued to turn up for everything they put out regardless. Now that Ant-Man 3 has released as the official kickoff to Marvel's Phase 5, I'm finally ready to cut the cord, as the lack of quality in their recent content has reached a new nadir.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is a soulless product, and its value rests solely in being a set-up for what Marvel will be doing in the future. The first 10 minutes or so were actually promising, starting with the good natured fun and humor of the previous Ant-Man movies, and setting up potentially interesting (though also out of left field?) character conflict. Once our cast is thrown into the Quantum Realm however (thanks to the daddy of all Deus Ex Machinas), there is little to grasp onto to enjoy the remaining runtime.
The writing is atrocious, from its structure, to dialogue, plot contrivances, and even signature Marvel humor. The potentially interesting character conflict it sets up in the beginning is thrown to the wayside to make way for endless plot and exposition, as it's made clear that the priority is setting up what Marvel has in store in the future, rather than focusing on the characters in the current movie. A couple of lines are thrown out here and there to try to round out the paper-thin attempts at theme and character development, but they amount to nothing. Ultimately, there wasn't a single thing that did not ring hollow to my ears, and even a cast as effortlessly charming and talented as Ant-Man's could do little to convince me otherwise.
The other component of the one-two punch that made the film so joyless to me is the physical setting of the movie. I was amazed (not in a good way) that Marvel had the confidence to set 95% of the movie in an entirely CGI realm, without providing any sense of physical reality for us to grasp onto. This is especially intriguing given that this is an Ant-Man movie, and the characters' size-altering powers are only interesting in comparison to other physical objects that the viewer can inherently understand. I also found the Quantum Realm to be, for lack of a better word, ugly. To clarify, I don't mean the route they decided to take with creature and environment design, which some could find kind of gross. The entirety of everything just amounts to something I found aesthetically unpleasant. I would never revisit this movie as something just to look at.
There are a few redeeming factors. Jonathan Majors' performance as Kang was excellent, managing to lend a sense of gravitas to the happenings of the movie in spite of my total lack of investment. I also will never be able to hate dumb action and comic book goofiness, and at least some of the jokes are fairly funny. To be clear though, those standards should be the bare minimum for a film of this nature, and that is the only bar that is cleared here.
When Scorsese made his "superhero movies are only theme park rides" comments that set the internet ablaze years ago, I was part of the camp that thought they have so much more to offer than what he was willing to see. His analogy has never been more apt than with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, however, and it's a ride that I think I'll remember more for making me want to throw up than for wanting to go on it again.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is a soulless product, and its value rests solely in being a set-up for what Marvel will be doing in the future. The first 10 minutes or so were actually promising, starting with the good natured fun and humor of the previous Ant-Man movies, and setting up potentially interesting (though also out of left field?) character conflict. Once our cast is thrown into the Quantum Realm however (thanks to the daddy of all Deus Ex Machinas), there is little to grasp onto to enjoy the remaining runtime.
The writing is atrocious, from its structure, to dialogue, plot contrivances, and even signature Marvel humor. The potentially interesting character conflict it sets up in the beginning is thrown to the wayside to make way for endless plot and exposition, as it's made clear that the priority is setting up what Marvel has in store in the future, rather than focusing on the characters in the current movie. A couple of lines are thrown out here and there to try to round out the paper-thin attempts at theme and character development, but they amount to nothing. Ultimately, there wasn't a single thing that did not ring hollow to my ears, and even a cast as effortlessly charming and talented as Ant-Man's could do little to convince me otherwise.
The other component of the one-two punch that made the film so joyless to me is the physical setting of the movie. I was amazed (not in a good way) that Marvel had the confidence to set 95% of the movie in an entirely CGI realm, without providing any sense of physical reality for us to grasp onto. This is especially intriguing given that this is an Ant-Man movie, and the characters' size-altering powers are only interesting in comparison to other physical objects that the viewer can inherently understand. I also found the Quantum Realm to be, for lack of a better word, ugly. To clarify, I don't mean the route they decided to take with creature and environment design, which some could find kind of gross. The entirety of everything just amounts to something I found aesthetically unpleasant. I would never revisit this movie as something just to look at.
There are a few redeeming factors. Jonathan Majors' performance as Kang was excellent, managing to lend a sense of gravitas to the happenings of the movie in spite of my total lack of investment. I also will never be able to hate dumb action and comic book goofiness, and at least some of the jokes are fairly funny. To be clear though, those standards should be the bare minimum for a film of this nature, and that is the only bar that is cleared here.
When Scorsese made his "superhero movies are only theme park rides" comments that set the internet ablaze years ago, I was part of the camp that thought they have so much more to offer than what he was willing to see. His analogy has never been more apt than with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, however, and it's a ride that I think I'll remember more for making me want to throw up than for wanting to go on it again.
- MovieTim14
- Feb 22, 2023