Ant-Man & The Waps: Quantumania is, of course, the third Ant-Man movie in the MCU, and stars Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jonathan Majors, Kathryn Newton, Corey Stoll, Katy O'Brian, and (sigh) Bill Murray.
Some time after Endgame, Scott Lang (Rudd) is doing pretty well for himself. He's written a bestseller about his experiences (and I'd just like to pause and note that I think that's a really solid character choice), he's got a good relationship with Hope Van Dyne (Lilly) and his daughter Cassie (Emma Fur- no, wait, not anymore, now it's Kathryn Newton). Sure, Cassie is getting on the wrong side of the law by going out and shrinking police cars to prevent the cops from tear-gassing homeless families, but that's not really a big deal, is it? Also, speaking of law enforcement, the charges against Hank Pym (Douglas) and Hope appear to have been dropped, since Hope is now running her father's old company and Hank is happily settling into grandpa-mode with his wife Janet (Pfeiffer).
And then one day, Cassie figures out how to send a message to the Quantum Realm, a gateway opens up and sucks the four of them in, and they wind up in a sub-atomic universe ruled by a brutal conqueror - Kang (Majors). Turns out Janet was indirectly responsible for giving him enough of his future-tech back (after he crash-landed in the Realm) to take the place over, and then acted as a freedom fighter until Hank rescued her. She never saw fit to mention any of this, however.
So the family is stuck in the middle of a civil war between Kang and his army (including Darren Cross (Stoll), shrunk down and deformed into the cybernetic hunter MODOK) and a ragtag group of weirdos led by Sentorra (O'Brian). With the help of some suddenly technologically-advanced ants, they destroy Kang's army and win the day! And then go home.
I have some mixed feelings about this movie. On the one hand, I don't think it deserved the hate it got. I think it stemmed from the effects not really being up to snuff (MODOK especially), but they look better on the small screen. I think the performances are perfectly solid, the main cast has some real chemistry, and while I'm a little iffy about why it was necessary to recast Cassie (especially without telling Emma Fuhrmann, who played her in Endgame, since that's a shitty thing to do), Kathryn Newton fits in nicely. Paul Rudd is charming as always and anchors the movie, and it's cool that Michael Douglas' Pym has had his rough edges smoothed over since getting Janet back. Likewise, the visuals in the Quantum Realm are beautiful, the tech is appropriately weird and goopy, and of course Jonathan Majors is awesome as Kang.
On the other hand, though...literally no one in the movie has an arc except fucking MODOK. There's no character growth, and like, Scott's had plenty so if he was going to take a back seat, that's fine, but then hey, since the movie is called Ant-Man & THE WASP, how about we actually have the titular Wasp play a real role in the movie? Evangeline Lilly does fine for as much as she's there, but she doesn't get to do much and she definitely doesn't get to develop. They kinda set Cassie up to become a budding superhero, and I guess they do that, but again, what did she learn? How did she grow (other than literally)?
And then there's fucking Bill Murray. Look, I know Murray is considered this massive comic genius, but here's my hot take: He's overrated, he's past his prime, and it's getting boring to watch him play absolute dickbuckets all the time. But more particularly, what the hell was his role here? He's in the movie for exactly one scene, just long enough to tease Janet about being his former lover and then betray them to Kang, and then he...gets eaten by an octopus, I guess, and we never see him again? I just don't see why the stunt casting was necessary for a scene that should have been cut anyway.
And also, I don't hate MODOK, but he got too much screen time. There were more interesting characters (like, oh, say, Kang), and we come away from this movie knowing that Kang exists but not having any particular reason to be afraid of him, getting glimpses of Janet being a badass freedom fighter but never actually seeing that part of her life or having it have any real, specific impact (everyone's afraid of Kang and has heard of Janet, but they cut references to anything specific to make room for more ooze jokes, I guess).
I dunno. It's charming, but in trying to up the stakes and, ironically, the scale from previous Ant-Man movies they missed out a lot of what was fun about them (including Michael Peña, which is a real shame).
My Grade: B-
Rewatch Value: Medium
Next up: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
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