From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in the Superhero Movie Rewatch. He’s periodically revisited the feature to look back at new releases, as well as a few he missed the first time through.
Having already broken his trend of never doing sequels, director Peyton Reed was brought back a second time to do a third film starring Paul Rudd as Scott Lang. Like the second film, it was billed as an Ant-Man & The Wasp film, with Evangeline Lilly as Hope van Dyne, fighting alongside Lang’s Ant-Man as the Wasp. But unlike the last two films, this one wouldn’t be a caper film…
The previous two films established the Quantum Realm, and the QR was also a plot driver for Avengers: Endgame, as the QR was used as a gateway to time travel for the “time-heists” in that film.
Screenwriter Jeff Loveness—who wrote the film during the apocalypse of 2020, with the movie’s filming time delayed by the lockdown—provided a story that took place almost entirely with the QR and which explored what Janet van Dyne did during the three decades she was trapped in the QR (established in Ant-Man) until she was rescued by Scott, Hope, and her husband Henry Pym (which happened in Ant-Man & The Wasp).
That backstory includes a detailed exploration of the world that exists deep in the QR—deeper even than Pym was ever able to explore in the past—and also introduces one of Marvel’s most enduring villains, Kang the Conqueror.
Kang first appeared in 1963’s Fantastic Four #19 by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby as Rama-Tut, a conqueror from the future who subjugated ancient Egypt. The identity of Kang was established in 1964’s Avengers #8 by Lee & Kirby, as an older version of Rama-Tut, and later the Avengers foe Immortus, ruler of the Limbo realm outside time and space—who debuted in 1964’s Avengers #10 by Lee & Kirby—was retconned into being an older version of Kang. The character has had other identities, among them the Scarlet Centurion (first seen in 1968’s Avengers Annual #2 by Roy Thomas, Don Heck, & Werner Roth), Iron Lad (2005’s Young Avengers #1 by Allan Heinberg, Jim Cheung, & John Dell), Kid Immortus (2013’s FF #8 by Matt Fraction & Mike Allred), and Mister Gryphon (2015’s All-New All-Different Avengers #1 by Mark Waid & Adam Kubert).
Along with Ultron, Korvac, and the various incarnations of the Masters of Evil, Kang is one of the Avengers’ primary villains, and his introduction into the MCU was nigh-inevitable, especially once the series started embracing time travel and alternate timelines. The character was first seen in the Loki TV series, where he’s been given some more identities: He Who Remains and Victor Timely.
The expanded QR is very similar to the Microverse, introduced in 1963’s Fantastic Four #16 by Lee & Kirby, which was later home to the Micronauts—a toy tie-in of Marvel’s that was very popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In addition, this movie introduces the villain M.O.D.O.K. to the MCU. Originally the Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing when he first appeared in 1967’s Tales of Suspense #94 by Lee & Kirby to fight Captain America as part of Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M., a subdivision of Hydra), M.O.D.O.K. was a person A.I.M. experimented on to make him more intelligent, but it resulted in a freakishly enlarged head and a stunted body, so he needed a hoverchair. For some reason, Loveness decided to meld Darren Cross, the bad guy from Ant-Man who was sent to the QR by Scott Lang in that film, with M.O.D.O.K. (now the Mechanized Organism, etc. etc.).
Back from Endgame are Rudd as Scott, Lilly as Hope, Michael Douglas as Hank Pym, and Michelle Pfeiffer as Janet. Back from Loki season one are Jonathan Majors as various versions of Kang, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, and Owen Wilson as Mobius M. Mobius (the latter two in a post-credits scene that later was revealed to be part of the Loki episode “1893”). Back from Ant-Man are Corey Stoll as Cross and Gregg Turkington as Dale the Baskin-Robbins store manager who fired Scott. Back from WandaVision is Randall Park as Agent Jimmy Woo. New to this film are Kathryn Newton as Cassie Lang (the third to play the role after Abby Ryder Fortson in the prior two Ant-Man films and Emma Fuhrman in Endgame), David Dastmalchian as Veb (Dastmalchian appeared in the prior two films as Kurt), Katy O’Brian as Jentorra (a version of the character from the comics who was a member of the Micronauts), William Jackson Harper as Quaz, Bill Murray as Lord Krylar, and musician Mark Oliver Everett as a guy who asks Scott to take a selfie with his dog. Everett is the son of Hugh Everett III, the physicist who originated the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory, which is pretty much the basis of every MCU film since Endgame.
Majors, Hiddleston, and Wilson will next appear in Loki season two. One assumes that at least some of Rudd, Lilly, Pfeiffer, Douglas, and/or Newton will appear in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and/or Avengers: Secret Wars.
“Looking out for the little guy”
Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania
Written by Jeff Loveness
Directed by Peyton Reed
Produced by Kevin Feige, Stephen Broussard
Original release date: February 17, 2023
We open with Scott Lang doing a reading at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco of his best-selling memoir Looking Out for the Little Guy (while “Welcome Back” by John Sebastian plays on the soundtrack). We also see him in his daily life, being stopped by passers-by and being asked to take selfies, and getting free coffee and pastry from a coffee shop owner who thinks he’s Spider-Man. We also learn that Hope van Dyne has taken over her father’s company, now called PymVanDyne, and is using Pym Particles to do good in the world. (We also see Scott and Hope having lunch at the top of the Golden Gate Bridge, because they can.)
His reading ends with a phone call from a police precinct. His daughter Cassie has been arrested at a protest of the treatment of homeless people, of which there are many post–Blip. (She also used a Pym Particle widget to shrink a cop car.) Scott is appalled to realize that this isn’t Cassie’s first time being arrested. Scott’s attempt to rebuke her is met with a rather pointed reply that at least Cassie is trying to help people. Since helping save the world from Thanos, all Scott has done is book tours. At least she’s trying to do some good.
It eventually comes out that she’s been doing some science with Hank and Hope’s help, to the surprise of both Scott and Janet. She’s figured out a way—with the help of an army of ants—to create a sort of satellite for the Quantum Realm. She can beam a signal into the QR and then they can properly map it without having to actually go there.
Janet—who has refused to discuss in any detail what she did in the QR for thirty years—grows incredibly apprehensive, and tells Cassie to shut the device off. However, it turns back on by itself and opens up a portal to the QR that sucks all five of them in.
They find themselves deep in the QR, far deeper than Scott, Hank, or Hope have gone during their sojourns to the QR. They’re also separated. Hank, Janet, and Hope find each other, and Scott and Cassie find each other, but the two groups are far apart. Hank keeps hearing weird things in his earpiece. That’ll probably be important later….
Janet uses her knowledge of the area to track down a nomad, who provides them with a mount and with protective clothing to blend in. They go to a bar that you know was described in the script as “just like the Mos Eisley Cantina,” where Janet asks to see Krylar.
Meanwhile Scott and Cassie are captured by a group of refugees, led by a woman named Jentorra, and whose number also includes a goopy being named Veb—if you drink a bit of his oozy body, you can understand any language—and a telepath named Quaz. (Quaz doesn’t like being a telepath, as people are disgusting.) They’re on the run from the conqueror, who removed them from their homes. They travel in ambulatory armed buildings. (Scott is blown away by this and exclaims, “Your buildings are alive?” to which Veb, appalled, replies, “Yours are dead?”)
Upon learning that Scott and Cassie are from the same place as the hated Janet van Dyne, Jentorra wants them gone. She says that the conqueror will burn the world to find them. And just then, some ships arrive with Quantumnauts, robotic foot soldiers, who attack the refugees.
Krylar shows up at the bar—he’s Lord Krylar now, apparently—and it soon becomes clear that he and Janet had a thing going for a while during her exile, and that they fought against the conqueror together. He orders a drink that has a small creature in it, which you’re supposed to both drink and eat (thus killing the creature). To Janet’s horror, Krylar is now working for the conqueror and he’s summoned Quantumnauts to capture them. The trio fight back, with Hank enlarging one of the drinks so that the creature can now eat people instead of the other way around, and one chows down on Krylar.
Hope takes care of the Quantumnauts while Janet and Hank hotwire Krylar’s ship, and they make their escape.
Scott didn’t want to get involved in local politics—Cassie does—but once it becomes clear that they’re in danger, they help the refugees fight. To Scott’s shock, Cassie also has a super-suit, and they help Jentorra, Quaz, Veb, and the rest fight back. However, these Quantumnauts are led by M.O.D.O.K., a genetically modified version of Darren Cross, who was exiled to the QR by Scott two movies ago. Cross is the one who got Cassie’s signal and reflected it back to bring them all here. He’s working for the conqueror, and he captures Scott and Cassie.
Janet finally tells all. Years ago, she saw a one-person ship crash, and she saved the life of the pilot, who is called Kang. They bonded while trying to fix his ship. The ship operates by the power of thought, and once they get it working and Janet touches a component, she sees in her mind what Kang has done, how many universes he’s destroyed, how many worlds he’s conquered. He didn’t crash in the QR by accident, he was exiled here for his crimes.
She takes his ship’s drive and shrinks it down, then, when he catches up to her, makes it incredibly huge, and therefore unusable. However, thanks to her, his suit was fixed, and he is able to conquer the QR. She tried fighting back, but when the opportunity to go home presented itself, she left.
Kang comes to Scott with an offer: steal back his ship’s drive. If he does, he can take them all home and he also will be free. If he doesn’t, he’ll kill Cassie in front of Scott and make him relive that moment over and over again. Scott’s attempt to threaten Kang with being an Avenger and having summoned other Avengers falls on unimpressed ears, as Kang has killed many Avengers in many different timelines. (At one point, he asks if Scott is the one with the hammer. Scott allows as how that’s Thor, and they get mixed up a lot, what with being the same body type, ahem ahem…)
Scott goes to the drive, which requires him to dive deeper (and get smaller), but once he’s at the core, which he needs to shrink, other versions of him start to appear. These are all other possible Scott Langs, all but one of whom are still Ant-Man (the exception still works for Baskin-Robbins). At first, the infinite Langs start to overwhelm him, but they all rally behind him at the notion of saving Cassie’s life.
Hope also arrives and dives into the core, though she’s there to get it away from Kang. She’s able to rescue Scott and together they shrink the engine. Kang then destroys the ship, captures Janet, leaves Scott and Hope in the wastes, and Cassie remains a prisoner. Hank survives the destruction of the ship and is rescued by the ants who were building things for Cassie. They arrived in the QR thousands of years earlier, thanks to the QR’s weird time thingie, so they’ve evolved into major badasses.
Kang restores his ship to its full glory, then gets on a holographic PA to announce that he’s about to go conquering some more places.
Cassie escapes, and frees Jentorra. Together they barge in on Kang’s announcement to rally the troops.
The refugees attack, as do Ant-Man and the Wasp. Cassie and Jentorra also fight, with Cassie getting into it with Cross/M.O.D.O.K. While they’re easily able to take care of the Quantumnauts, Kang himself is another story. At one point, Kang derisively tells them that he’s Kang and “you just talk to ants.”
At which point, Hank and his army of evolved ants show up and kick his ass. They’re aided, not just by the refugees, but also Cross, whom Cassie has convinced to switch sides by telling him not to be a dick. Cross dies in the effort, but he helps save the day.
Janet is able to use Kang’s ship to open a portal back to Earth. Hank, Janet, Hope, and Cassie make it through, but Kang—his suit trashed—stops Scott from going through. Fisticuffs ensue, and Scott does not do well (especially after Kang smashes his helmet), but then Hope comes back through the portal and makes extremely short work of Kang, eventually knocking him into the engine, consuming him, which also wipes out the portal. However, Cassie is able to reopen the portal, because she’s just that awesome, and they go home.
Scott is worried because Kang said that he needs to escape the QR to keep something much worse from happening. Scott is worried that if the bad thing happens, it’ll be all his fault. But then he brushes it off…
In Limbo, three other Kang variants—who look a lot like Immortus, Rama-Tut, and the Scarlet Centurion from the comics—discuss that the exile was killed, and not by one of them, and that “they” are now touching the multiverse, and they need to be stopped.
In 1893, Loki shows Mobius M. Mobius a presentation by Victor Timely, who is a dead ringer for He Who Remains—and of Kang.
“It’s never over”
There was a way for this to be a good film—and parts of it are absolutely fabulous—but overall, it’s a massive disappointment on several different levels.
First, let’s start with the inexplicable folding together of Darren Cross and M.O.D.O.K., which starts with the even more inexplicable decision to do a literal interpretation of M.O.D.O.K. in live action. While big giant heads look really cool in a comic book, it’s pretty much impossible to make them look anything but doofy in live action. This is why the MCU versions of Arnim Zola and the Kree Supreme Intelligence weren’t big giant heads, and they should’ve taken that instinct to M.O.D.O.K.
And Corey Stoll goes from being a mediocre villain to a pathetic villain, and it’s not really an improvement. His presence as it stands adds nothing to the storyline.
The storyline itself is just all wrong for this particular corner of the franchise. Setting up the next big bad is not really in the wheelhouse of the Langs and the Pyms and the van Dynes of the MCU. Kang is too powerful a foe for these guys anyhow, which is why they needed to bring in a deus ex formicidae at the end to defeat him.
Buy the Book
Cascade Failure
And it wasn’t necessary! The basic notion of Ant-Man and the Wasp (both old and new) going to the Quantum Realm to stop a bad guy there could work. In fact, up until Jonathan Majors started sucking all the air out of the room, that movie was what we got, and it was an interesting and fun one. But the comics are full of bad guys they could’ve used (for example, Psycho Man, though he’d need a better name, or a non-Hasbro-owned version of Baron Karza, like they did for Fu Manchu in Shang-Chi). Hell, they could’ve used the one they had! Darren Cross could’ve been the conqueror, having used his super-science to take over the QR. Then you still have the personal hit, because Scott Lang would’ve been the one to have sent him to the QR in the first place.
But that would’ve required a heroic male character to do something wrong in this movie, and scripter Jeff Loveness doesn’t seem to be interested in that. Every single screwup by a good guy in this movie is committed by either Cassie or Janet. Cassie’s device is what catalyzes the plot, and Janet feels guilty for unleashing Kang (which isn’t really her fault) and then abandoning the QR completely (which kinda is). It’s left to Scott and Hank to save the day and rescue them. It’s not a good look, though I suppose I should be grateful that Janet at least lived to the end of this film, which bucks the appalling trend of recent MCU films of killing off its recurring women.
I didn’t mention Hope in that previous paragraph, and that’s one of this movie’s biggest flaws. While she does get a crowning moment of awesome in the climax, saving Scott from being beaten to death by Kang, it’s one of her few major contributions to the film. Mostly she sits around saying, “Mom!” a lot. For a movie whose primary title is Ant-Man & The Wasp, there’s damn little of the latter character in it.
On top of that, there’s so much missing from this movie: no Luis, or the rest of X-Con Security, and no Maggie. Doing an Ant-Man movie without Michael Peña is a crime against humanity, quite frankly, and Cassie’s mother deserves to be part of the story as well.
Good acting can cover a multitude of sins, and luckily this has plenty of that, at least. The five heroes are all fantastic, from the magnificent father-daughter banter between Paul Rudd and Kathryn Newton to the endless scratchy sarcasm from Michael Douglas, to Michelle Pfeiffer beautifully playing Janet’s free-floating guilt. (Evangeline Lilly creates no impression due to not having enough screen time. See above.) Jonathan Majors is incredibly mannered, but he makes it work, and his Kang is legitimately scary as a bad guy—plus, he also skillfully carries the weight of his knowledge of the (much) bigger picture. The movie also has superb support from three great actors in Katy O’Brian (also magnificent in The Mandalorian, as well as Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Black Lightning), William Jackson Harper (who will always be Chidi on The Good Place to me, but who absolutely kills it as the weary telepath), and David Dastmalchian (whose bodily-orifice-obsessed Veb gets some of the best lines). Plus you’ve got Bill Murray at his absolute Bill Murray-est, letter-perfect as the ultra-skeevy Lord Krylar.
Next week, we switch over to a DC-based sequel with Shazam!: Fury of the Gods.
Keith R.A. DeCandido’s most recent work includes short stories in the magazine Star Trek Explorer (issues #8 and 9) and in the anthologies Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird, The Four ???? of the Apocalypse, Joe Ledger: Unbreakable, and The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny.
Another bit of low-level misogyny I didn’t mention in the review: during the thirty years that Hank and Janet were separated, Janet very obviously had a relationship with Krylar, while Hank just went on one date and he said it didn’t work out because “she wasn’t you, baby.” Hank — who, in every other appearances, has been a self-centered jerkoff — gets to be the noble one who stays faithful, while Janet not only wasn’t faithful, she did it with the guy who betrayed them……
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Excellent review, though you left out the Council of Kangs!
@1 krad
Ouch
I liked the first half of this film quite a lot, because I like it when movies based on comic books embrace the weirdness of that genre. As for the second half, well, your last paragraph sums up how I was able to enjoy it. I agree that bringing Darren Cross back as the main villain rather than a sideshow would have improved the movie, because it would have given Scott a more interesting story. He caused this, so he’s gotta put it right. And due to the timey-wimey nature of the Quantum Realm, Cross could still have ended up arriving around the same time Janet did, so you could still tell basically the same story. Cross could even still have decided to call himself MODOK, if they wanted to go that route. But ultimately, I think the people who made this movie were probably mandated by the studio that the villain be Kang, so that was probably never on the table.
I thought the film was reasonably good, though overly cluttered. It would’ve been nice to get another Ant-Man movie in the same vein as the first two, but I kind of like the subversiveness of letting this “C-list” superhero be the guy who ushers in the next Big Bad in the MCU. It’s kind of like how Darkseid and the New Gods debuted in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen.
And yes, it does underutilize Scott and especially Hope, but I don’t mind that much, because this time it’s Janet and Cassie’s turn to be the focus. Nothing wrong with different installments of a series focusing on different characters. And I really liked Kathryn Newton as Cassie here.
As for why they merged Cross with MODOK, I figure they realized the only way they could make MODOK work was in a comedy (and She-Hulk probably didn’t have the CGI budget left over after spending it on the main character and her cousin). And Cross’s fate was a dangling loose end. The whole MODOK business was really weird, but I kind of liked how he got a redemptive arc.
And her cousin’s son
Had a bit of trouble, doing this on my phone is hard.
I didn’t see last week’s update till last night. Lol
Okay, using Antman to kick off the Kang storyline was a big mistake! He isn’t a strong enough character, and it sort of diminished Kang.
Note: Victor Timely is a comics variant of Kang, he who remains was the name of a different one shot character in Thor.
You resisted talking about the political messaging. “Socialism Works”?! *profane tirade* *Rant Rave*
@1 – Can we even call it “unfaithful?” For all intents and purposes, she was dead (from her perspective, she probably thought she was never going home). Though it stretches belief that Hank never hooked up with another woman in all those years.
@6/EP: I think the whole point was to show that the assumptions about Ant-Man being “not strong enough” are erroneous. After all, ants are just about the most populous, widespread, and evolutionarily successful non-microbial life forms on Earth, numbering in the quadrillions with their collective biomass exceeding humans’ by nearly a factor of ten. A case can be made that they’re more the dominant life form on the planet than we are. Mastery over that vast population would therefore be, if anything, one of the most formidable superpowers on Earth. Keith called the super-ants a deus ex machina, but I disagree, since the assistance of ants is an integral and defining part of Ant-Man’s power set as much as the size-changing.
Besides, who doesn’t like an underdog story? It worked for David and Goliath. That’s really the theme of the movie — not to underestimate the little guys. And it works in opposition to Kang, because he’s an arrogant megalomaniac who assumes he’s superior to everyone. The fact that Kang would never have expected Ant-Man to be a serious threat is exactly what makes it work.
You forget about online rumors spoiling the ending in the end of the movie which circulated by a marvel insider who previously leaked incredibly accurate predictions spoiling a LOT of Marvel movies (endgame, no way home, etc). Original leak claimed a different ending where Scott loses to Kang and remained trapped in QR, others escape to real world and Cassie gets obsessed with saving Scott. (Everything else was supposed to be the same including Council of Kangs, only Hope doesnt return to save Scott but saves Cassie as he asked her to do). The spoilers were leaked a good 6 to 8 months prior to release of movie, Marvel probably saw it too. So when movie released and this part (only this part) was changed to a feel good deux ex machina of evolved ants and returning Hope saving Scott and the day. Needless to say a lot of disappointed fans
The trailer: “I’ve heard you’re a good thief. Steal something for me.”
Me: Well, it looks like CGI mush, but an elaborate heist in a science fiction setting could be cool.
The movie: “I’ve heard you’re a good thief. Steal something for me. It’s just right over here. You have to jump in and grow small and then make it grow small so I can have it.”
Me: That’s… that’s not even remotely what stealing is… nor does it make use of his thieving skills.
@1 No real surprise, this is Marvel, post Lee after all. It went to hell when he died.
Clb @@@@@ 5
I read that issue and honestly, this film would’ve been improved drastically with a Superwagon!!
Everything about MODOK pulled me right out of the story, every time that big head wandered on screen. I just couldn’t take it seriously. His death is about as close as we get to this story having what feels like consequences. Killing off Scott (or trapping him in the QR) would have at least felt like something meaningful. As it was, Kang was defeated far too easily and everything that happened here felt like it lacked weight.
@11/wlewisiii: “No real surprise, this is Marvel, post Lee after all. It went to hell when he died.”
Uhh, that doesn’t make any sense, since Marvel Comics has been “post-Lee” since he left the company in the 1990s, and he was never in charge of Marvel Studios, having his own separate, non-Marvel media company at the time it was founded. His executive producer credit just meant he held the screen rights to the characters; he had no active role in the MCU beyond showing up for his cameos.
Will this run end with The Marvels? Or will there be some older movies in the mix?
#11.
Post-Endgame is more like it, or, as I like to refer to it, the AfterMASH phase.
@16. Are you trying to say that Tom Holland, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Brie Larson are the Colonel Potter, Sergeant Klinger, and Father Mulcahy of the MCU?
EP: what older movies?
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
#17.
Haha, sure.
By the by, I’d watch Jamie Farr as Dr. Strange.
@18 krad You know, all the dozens of movies that we pointed out a while back.
EP: I’ve covered all the ones you’ve mentioned that I feel fit the rubric of this rewatch.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Hi Krad,
Any intention of including the Six Million Dollar Man direct-to-TV movies?
MODOK was never going to work in the context of a “live-action” film as you note. I think the best take on the character was Patton Oswalt’s series on Hulu. The character is absurd to begin with, so lean into the absurdity. It is a rotten shame that this got swept out with all the other Marvel Television stuff and only got 1 season.
@22/Chitnis: Keith is only covering movie-length adaptations of comic book characters. The Six Millon Dollar Man was adapted from Martin Caidin’s prose novel Cyborg, so it’s outside the purview of this series.
I’ll admit to be fairly disappointed with this installment. I think it boiled down to the fact that there were many bits that felt like absolutely required some development. I was there for Scott and Hope, however there was way too much of the Hank and Janet. I could have entirely done without Bill Murray in it.
Basically just a lot of pieces that individually might have been interesting if not compelling, but there was zero breathing room. The rebellion was interesting, and the characters within it interacting with Scott and Cassie were good, but whoosh, they’re off to being captured, so on and so forth.
For whatever reason, MODOK’s creation/inclusion didn’t bother me much. He did look pretty goofy, but I always thought the character was pretty dorky, so… earns a pass from me I guess.
Just absolutely too MUCH (and this coming from someone who doesn’t usually mind the too much of the MCU and largely being positive about each of them.)
@26/Remillard: “however there was way too much of the Hank and Janet.”
I don’t get that. Why shouldn’t there be plenty of them? We only got Janet back late in the second film, so it’s only right that the third film should devote a lot of its attention to filling in what we’ve missed about Janet and Hank. Plus it’s Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer, so it can’t be a bad thing to give them a lot to do.
Besides, the title Ant-Man and the Wasp applies just as much to Hank and Janet as it does to Scott and Hope, if not more so.
I waited until it was on Disney+ to catch this one. It wasn’t as bad as a lot of the reviews made it seem, but it also felt pretty inconsequential – particularly for a film that was supposed to set up the next Thanos-level threat.
Much has been made about this film having slipshot FX. This film – more than any other Marvel movie – definitely feels like every frame after about the 10-minute mark was filmed indoors on a soundstage. The biggest issue (as nearly everyone had noted) is MODOK. The compositing job they did to give him Corey Stoll’s face is nearly always terrible. I really don’t understand why they didn’t just make MODOK a more generic scary CGI face and give him Stoll’s voice instead of taking the journey all the way into the uncanny valley
@28/twels: “I really don’t understand why they didn’t just make MODOK a more generic scary CGI face and give him Stoll’s voice instead of taking the journey all the way into the uncanny valley”
Because they were going for comedy, not scariness. It was more important to the story that the audience connect to him as Darren Cross, resolving his character arc from the first film, than that they see him as MODOK from the comics (since up to 99% of the moviegoing audience has never read a comic book at all). So he had to have Cross’s face and the capacity for humanizing emotional expression.
And the Uncanny Valley aspects were entirely intentional. The whole point was that anything with the proportions of MODOK is going to look totally wrong and unnatural and ridiculous. They were leaning into that, not trying to avoid it.
Incidentally, this isn’t the first attempt to do a version of MODOK in the MCU, if you count the TV continuity that’s now in an ambiguous place canonically. In season 4 of Agents of SHIELD, the character called the Superior (Anton Ivanov, based on one of the Red Guardian identities from the comics) at one point had his head cut off and preserved alive with technology, and when his head was attached to a Life Model Decoy body, he said his new form was “designed only for killing.”
@29 said: And the Uncanny Valley aspects were entirely intentional. The whole point was that anything with the proportions of MODOK is going to look totally wrong and unnatural and ridiculous. They were leaning into that, not trying to avoid it.
i think that was a big mistake. Cross wasn’t a laughable figure in the first film. Having him be frightening instead of ridiculous (he is Designed Only for Killing, after all) would have upped the personal stakes in a movie that really needed a little more of that. That whole segment at the end where he proves he’s “not a dick” is nowhere near as funny or redemptive as the movie seems to want it to be, and the “I’m an Avenger” joke just feels cruel in a film series where the jokes were usually more uplifting.
I liked this movie but really felt like it was a HUGE step down from the likes of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and the other two Ant-Man films. Marvel’s post-Endgame period is really full of peaks and valleys. This one was fun and passable – and at least not at the level of outright terrible that “Thor: Love and Thunder” was.
@30/twels: I disagree. This film already took the Ant-Man series in a more serious direction overall, so it was important to maintain some of the comedic flavor of the series. Since Kang was a serious villain, it made sense to give him a more comedic henchman.
Besides, Cross was one of the weaker aspects of the first film, a one-dimensional villain with no character arc because he was just assumed to be insane due to radiation poisoning. Just bringing him back the same as he was would’ve been a mistake. This film actually gave him some dimension and growth that he didn’t have before.
While I would never place this one on the same level as say, Guardians 3, or the last two Avengers movies, I think Quantumania more or less sits alongside The Marvels. A decent, but flawed sequel that could have spent more time in editing and way more time polishing the VFX (needless to say, VFX artists need to unionize yesterday – push back against studio politics and unrealistic release dates, allow these films the necessary time to make their work as good as it can be).
The Jonathan Majors drama aside, I feel this version of Kang never fully comes across as a real threat. The movie has the unfortunate luck of taking place between both Loki seasons, which are both superior, and both give far more weight to Kang and his overall influence on the multiverse. The fact that this version of Kang is killed off at the end takes a lot of the mystique away and it feels overall redundant. If he’s supposed to be the next Thanos, he shouldn’t die so easily. And there are no casualties at the end. If he’s a threat, this would have been the opportunity to kill off either Janet or Hank, giving the story a bit more weight.
But, as pointed out, Ant-Man movies have always been lighter affairs, especially compared to the Black Panthers and Captain America entries. I like the concept of the second-tier team being the first to tackle the new Big Bad (to borrow from the Whedon lexicon), even if I don’t feel it quite delivers as good as it could have.
I do appreciate the extra time spent with both Cassie and Scott Lang, even if it comes at the expense of Hope. I like that the 5 year blip more or less divorced Scott from Cassie’s life all over again. Thus he’s yet again still learning who is daughter is. And we get some nice stuff early on such as learning she’s had a few brushes with the law over righteous causes.
Using Cross and turn him into M.O.D.O.K. was an interesting idea, but soon after watching this movie, I checked out the non-canon M.O.D.O.K. animated series produced by the still active Marvel TV division (still headed by Jeph Loeb and Karim Zreik). And that version was far more interesting than what we got here. Just like the movie fails to make Kang a serious threat, it never quite builds on the comedic aspect of M.O.D.O.K. either.
@32/Eduardo: “And there are no casualties at the end. If he’s a threat, this would have been the opportunity to kill off either Janet or Hank, giving the story a bit more weight.”
I don’t agree that killing a main character is necessary to establish a character as a threat. I mean, in the original Star Wars, the Empire killed Owen & Beru, Tarkin blew up Leia’s whole planet, and Vader killed Obi-Wan (corporeally, anyway). But in The Empire Strikes Back, nobody in the main cast died. Does that mean Empire was less successful than Star Wars at creating a sense of menace? I think most people would say the opposite. What made the Empire scary in TESB was their cruelty, their ruthlessness, the pain and fear and hopelessness they engendered. Even though all the major characters lived through it, they suffered from it, and that’s what made it scary.
Character death is a blunt instrument. It does the job, but that doesn’t make it the best or only way to do it. And it cheapens it if you do it too often or as a matter of formulaic obligation.
Plus, as you said, it would’ve been a poor fit for this lighter series.
@33/Christopher: I meant it as a possible option, not necessarily the only way to make Kang a bigger threat. I don’t feel his actions have affected the main characters that much (other than Janet’s guilt at giving him the tools to become the Quantum Realm’s dictator). Most of the consequences were felt by the people who already lived there and who they just met.
But I agree that Empire manages to convey the imperial military as a greater threat to the heroes without causing the same direct casualties as seen in A New Hope (and Return of the Jedi).
@34/Eduardo: I think that when you’re talking about a superhero story, something about people whose life’s mission is to help other people rather than just be self-interested, it’s not a negative to say that the consequences are felt by other people than the heroes. The stakes to the heroes are not just about their own survival or well-being, but about whether they succeed or fail at helping others. At least, that’s how it should be. I think we’ve lost sight of that in this era of serialized writing, which tends to center more on protagonists dealing with their own ongoing troubles, as opposed to episodic storytelling which focuses more on the problems of the people the heroes are helping.
“without causing the same direct casualties as seen in… Return of the Jedi“
Come to think of it, the bad guys don’t kill any major characters in RotJ either, unless you count Palpatine and Vader offing each other. Yoda dies of old age, and other deaths are limited to villains and bit players.
@35/Christopher: That’s a fair take on what superhero stories should be focusing on. That’s one of the reasons I feel the Spider-Man movies never fully lost themselves. Even with the ups and downs in quality, they never lost the focus on his main goal: protecting the neighborhood.
And while there are no major character casualties in Jedi, I do count the Death Star taking out two massive Mon Calamari Cruisers to be quite the casualty (not quite on the level of Alderaan, but still…). Plus, R2, Chewie and Leia all get shot and wounded (even Luke’s mechanical arm gets singed). But I mostly include it because it shows Ewoks being savagely killed onscreen.
@36/Eduardo: Yes, of course, all three movies feature lots of bit-player or offscreen deaths, but I’m talking about significant, speaking characters that the audience is emotionally invested in. The point is that you don’t have to kill off a member of the core ensemble to make the villains threatening.
I suppose it says something that I totally forgot about this movie until I saw your column come up, and that I had forgotten most of the plot.
Admittedly, the Ant-Man franchise hasn’t been my favorite, but what I DID like about it was that it felt unique in terms of the genre. I liked the heists and I agree that the omission of Luis and the gang just didn’t feel right. I also agree Hope felt really under-used.
I guess part of my general boredom with the movie is that I’m still kinda unclear on all the relationships/stakes/connections between the multiple timelines, the multiverse and the quantum realm. Do I care about this Kang? Is he a threat, or just a dime a dozen given how many other Kangs are apparently out there? (I guess – are we to believe that this version of Kang exists BECAUSE Sylvie killed HWRM?)
I guess I don’t really care about the number of female characters who make mistakes though; that kind of bean counting feels really artificial. I say this as somebody who’se had my share of online arguments over things like “The new season of Star Wars Visions has too many female characters in it because they want to erase men” or arguments about how TLJ was an ant-male manifesto because in THAT movie the men are the ones who made mistakes. I just feel like…it’s a story. For the writers to have to make sure virtues and vices are all perfectly equally distributed feels forced in an unnatural way. As long as the female characters feel real and there are a wide variety of them, I feel okay and I feel like in general in teh MCU we do get that for what it’s worth. (Maybe not specifically THIS movie but I don’t necessarily care for this movie in general so I don’t really have a strong enough opinion, I guess…)
But I agree the whole reveal with Janet and Bill Murray’s character was just kind of…unnecessary, as they COULD have just been good friends/comrades and now he’s betrayed her. But I also kind of appreciated that the narrative didn’t act like it was this horrible thing she did (and honestly I’m not even sure it was such a huge failure on her part given the circumstance). Perhaps it was just intended to play up how lonely and awful it was to be trapped there, but it honestly just kind of felt more like a way to play for laughs the Bill Murray character and establish how charismatic he was supposed to be.
I do agree with CLB at 8 about the ants…although again, I just wasn’t as invested in the story to really care. But the concept is fine, I think (and definitely fits in with the Ant-Man movies).
Gotta say, LOL at Kang’s face in that last picture. That is peak meme material!
The Quantum Realm seemed to me to be a live-action version of Looney Tunes’ Wackyland.
Cassie’s device is what catalyzes the plot,
….and why is that a problem?