By Amarah Stevenson
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is a good movie if you’re going to see it as a non-Marvel fan. But if you’re a Marvel fan like me, I would lower your hopes just a tad bit because this movie really isn’t all that great, especially for it being a Marvel movie.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is the first film ushering in Phase 5 of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). It gives us a mere glimpse into what this new phase will look like and what it has to offer. Like Thanos, this phase also has an all powerful villain that drives the story. His name is Kang the Conqueror. He was introduced at the end of Loki season one and will be the overall focal point for the new phase.
In the movie, Scott (Paul Rudd) is riding on the success of helping the Avengers save the world in the last Avengers movie, Endgame. He publishes a book, his relationship with Hope (Evangeline Lilly) is thriving, while his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) has become a political activist, causing a strain on her relationship with her father. While visiting Hope’s parents, Hank and Janet (Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfieffer) Cassie reveals that she has been building a device that can create contact with the Quantum Realm. Upon learning this, Janet shuts down the device immediately but the message was already received resulting in a portal opening sucking the five of them into this realm. The five become separated from one another causing them to venture out into this unknown world and figure out what’s going on.
Cassie and Scott are discovered by “quantum people” and after talking to the people, they discover that they are attempting to rebel against the evil ruler of their world, Kang the Conqueror (Johnathan Majors). Meanwhile, Hope, Janet and Hank are on a similar journey through this mystical world. Janet reveals that while she was trapped in the quantum realm for those 30 years (refer to the first AntMan movie), she actually came in contact with Kang while they were in the realm. She attempted to help free him but when his evil plans were revealed she stopped him, angering him, trapping him in this realm. So the five of them team up with the quantum people to put an end to Kang so they can return back to Earth and the people can live in peace.
Overall, the movie isn’t that bad but it isn’t all that great. Personally, I’ve never really been a fan of AntMan. He has an amazing story and background but I’ve never found him interesting like the other Marvel characters. I found the storyline to be very rushed and somewhat confusing. Bringing Darren back in this movie as M.O.D.O.K was a big surprise. The action scenes were okay. I loved how powerful and strong they made Kang. I was kind of expecting more intense action scenes since it’s a Marvel movie but what I got was okay. I’ve personally never been a big fan of Ant Man so I had low expectations for this film. I would give it an overall ranking of 7.5/10.
