Antman just got smaller and it doesn’t seem to be in the physical sense. Now any Disney movie you watch will entertain you. It’s a law of averages, every movie Disney builds comes out of the factory under license by the Leggo Kit no Assembly Required formula.

Every movie made by Disney has all the requisite leggo components and building blocks. So for critics to ask, “dear audience, wasn’t this movie entertaining?” would be redundant. It’s not whether the movie entertained the next generation of novice moviegoers. Does Antman and The Wasp Quantumania go beyond its previous iteration in creativity, originality and authenticity?

I read some critics were bemoaning the fact that viewers now have to contend with details from 31 previous Marvel movies just to keep onboard with the deluge of callbacks and references to the MCU in this chapter alone.  That might be true for the so-called adult Marvel fans who dote on this kind of fan service. 

But most younger viewers typically “fog out” over the details and just kinda hold on to the handle bars of the roller coaster ride as the production designers for Quantumania hope they would.  What does Antman and The Wasp Quantumania deliver?  A new father and YA daughter relationship as Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is now on the greener side of the tracks, having achieved success and public notoriety with his newest published book “Look Out for the Little Guy” and as the newest and most likeable Avenger, behind Spiderman of course.  

With mother-in-law Michelle Pfeiffer as Janet Van Dyne (shouldn’t she be Janet Pym? Are they actually married?) back and safe in the fold, Hank (Michael Douglas) is now a little less cranky and more cozy with Scott as the beloved of their daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) and quite at home as surrogate grandparents of Cassie (new actress Kathryn Newton replaced younger Abby Ryder Fortson). 

Viewers are indulged in a brief set of scenes at the Lang and Pym homestead.  Cassie is of course all grown up and has a few surprises yet for her dad who had vanished and is still catching up to the Thanos “Blip”.

What made this movie so lackluster as a follow-up to Antman and The Wasp?

1. 1. Little Cassie aka Peanuts’ disappearing act

   2. Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror

   3. The Quantum Realm Revised Edition

   4. The Triple Lutz Deluxe Act of Luis, Paxton and Maggie

   5. The derivative setups from other film franchises

These are some of the biggest drawbacks in Quantumania and which will be detailed at length in this review. Quantumania introduces viewers to actor Jonathan Majors in his most important role yet in the MCU. Majors made his first appearance in the streaming series from Disney, Marvel’s Loki starring Thor’s brother and sometimes nemesis, Tom Hiddleston as Loki and Owen Wilson as Mobius from the Time Variance Authority.

Majors portrayed a Kang The Conqueror timeline variant.  Majors as Kang the Conqueror made another appearance in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness alongside Elizabeth Olsen as The Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff.

To say that the actors are all talented and capable of carrying their roles is an understatement.  Every performer hits their mark like clockwork but that does not diminish the fact that this movie loses momentum halfway and becomes an irritating voyeuristic ride some viewers were hoping they could skip over to the final few frames of the story. 

Despite all the formula it has going for it Antman 3 lands itself into Boo-R-Doom Land.  We start by enumerating the hostiles (all kind of creatures that await our freedom fighters) when they arrive in Quantum Quackery Territory.  Turns out once the Star Trek Universal communicator issue is resolved (sans Lt. Uhura) these hostiles are nothing more than Ewoks from Star Wars Return of The Jedi and they need Team Antman’s help.  Gosh Hank Pym forgot to pack a pint or two of ants in his travel purse even though by all counts he usually packs a combat tank and a research building in his keychain.

I mean if you can shrink an entire planet to the subatomic level why not downsize a research and manufacturing building to size a little more manageable than a travel luggage case with rolling casters and add it to your keychain along with the jet fighter and combat tank collection?  Bonus points if it is an Avengers jet fighter with voice command controls for easy attack and vanquish kill mode.  Screw that, why not a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier and five mild-yield nukes (one for each finger) on his keychain?  You see where I am going with this?

Hank Pym could have had a thousand killer drones larded with tomahawk missiles packed in a small golf ball pin tacked to his keychain.  You just never know when a retiree has a hankering for a golf game.

I know some of you don’t care much for Little Peanut (actress Abby Fortson as little Cassie) but her and mother Maggie (Judy Greer) and boyfriend Paxton (Bobby Cannavale) were given such endearing roles in the first two solo Antman movies that not only their absence is felt but the entire tone and structure of the film is all the worse for this shift in story setting. 

Truth be told the father/little daughter dynamic was crucial for grounding Antman in real world comedy and drama same as Aunt May, MJ and Ned grounded and parked Peter Parker’s adventures in the real world.  The sudden shift to an all-adult cast super suited Antcrew without nervous Luis (Michael Pena) and former convicts stripped this film of any worldly anchors and gave audiences a new world without world building effort.

For more than a decade critics have hailed Marvel’s world building skills and jeered DC Warner Brothers’ inept and vastly insufficient efforts at it.  That was the reason audiences cheered and connected with and love the Marvel superhero movies while WB DC’s fell flat and bombed at the box office.  Well now, Marvel and Disney step into the same pothole of doodoo as WB and give us a fresh new world for Antman that we know very little about, care very little about and the entire film leaves audiences cold, with very little to relate to.

I mean who really cares about the new characters of the Quantum Quackery Territory?  We know zero about Jentorra (Katy O’Brian) the warrior chick and Quaz (William Harper) the telepath and these are the only two the audience can connect with in a horde of new characters that are mostly CGI created cartoons and insipidly Disney + Loki inspired.  For a minute I thought I was viewing a new rendition of Who Framed Roger Rabbit a mix of live action and cartoon animation.

Even Jentorra and Quaz are cartoonish and yes Lord Krylar (Bill Murray fresh from Ghostbusters Afterlife Reanimation) is both cartoonish and buffoonish because we know nothing about them before they are shown to us as pivotal characters and crucial to the storyline.  The audience is not given enough time to give a hoot about these characters, they are placeholders and gimmicky plot devices to an empty lot …. cough … plot!

My guess is that casting agents at Disney thought hey it’s Bill Murray he’s just been dusted off for Ghostbusters Afterlife and the movie was a nominal success with the new kids (next gen young Ghostbusters) so who better to cast in a scary funny cool yet funny funky friendly way in Antman 3 for kids and old geezers alike? I mean they must have thought this is a slam dunk, everyone knows Bill Murray so you (the screenwriters) dont have to build his Krylar character in the story.  Boom, done!

The Antman series writers must have stumbled into, and apparently are oblivious to the very elements that gave Antman its special warmth and special place amongst The Avenger Antman line up – ants and Little Peanuts – both very fragile and conversely very willfull and capable.  With little Cassie gone, removed from the storyline, so was the fragility and theme of the loving protective parent and the innocent, exuberant, bubbly and highly vulnerable child.

This was the dynamic that gave Antman its very lovable and caring character, distinct from all the other Avengers, showing us his vulnerability, silliness, humanity and the measure of his courage when asked to rise to the occasion, compared to titans endowed with potentially unlimited super-powers such as The Hulk, Thor, Thanos, Captain Marvel and the Scarlet Witch.

In 2023’s Antman 3 all of this is swept under the proverbial rug and into the dust bin and in its place we get an older father and his adult daughter and wife-to-be and his parents-in-law without much of the adult humor and kinetic exchange to fill in the void.  There is very little comedy or humor, adult or otherwise to replace what the audience has been deprived from – and most unfortunate, this Antman chapter feels completely different and out of character.

A hero in a novel or movie is only as good as its villain.  An actor in a play or film is only as good as their lines and storyline.  No matter how much critics have lauded Jonathan Majors’ performance we won’t really know how good he is as Kang The Conqueror when his lines and his role are douched down for politically correct reasons or for viewing audience configuration.  Dwayne Johnson said he didnt want to play an evil black dude.  He was tired of stereotypes of the Black Man in Hollywood and hence Black Adam was rewritten to suit this new socio-political agenda.  Black Adam was humanized from a super villain and made into an anti-hero.

Flash back to 1978 Superman and Lex Luthor as portrayed by Gene Hackman is nearly comical and buffoonish just like Otis.  However, for all his witty lines and comical jabs, his resolve to nuke the West Coast, to murder the Man of Steel and bury millions of people just so he can realize profits worth billions of dollars from “beach front property” makes him a vile, cold-blooded, fast-talking manipulative super-villain of the first order.  Hollywood has ever since been at it, building its villains and bad guys, with more “human depth” that look bolted on, welded or glued on a caricature baseline, all of which maybe Frankstein’s dream come true, (and while infrequently successful) yet the results mostly testing the patience and credulity of the viewer and moviegoer.

Negan in The Walking Dead is the same as Lex Luthor only far more vile and unredeemable.  Violent, murderous, blood thirsty and a veritable cannibalistic monster, he couches his psychopathic actions in witty speeches where he paints himself a pragmatic human being and the savior of his flock.  Yet the producers flip him around and turn him into a hero of sorts close to the end of the series finale.  It took the show’s producers several years to make the gruesome monster and then cheesily deconstruct him for a U-turn.  With Kang The Conqueror we get no such treatment and Majors cannot stick the landing.

Most critics have been unanimous in their critique of Marvel’s Kang The Conqueror who is supposed to be not only an Avenger-level threat to Humanity but the next Thanos, a more bloodthirsty and unrepenting Thanos, a cross of Thanos and Negan.  But in this family outing with the family-oriented Antman as an introductory platform we get no such villain, nowhere near the arch villain that Kang is supposed to be.  Instead we have a character whose origins remain largely unexplained and unknown who requires the help of Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pffeifer as Hope’s mother and the original Wasp) to survive the Quantum Realm.  He is shown disoriented and helpless early on and somehow in the span of 30 years, Kang manages to build the kind of empire and dynasty worthy of Ming The Merciless – extremely futuristic and high tech and all of this despite the fact he never manages to repair his time machine.

Kang The Conqueror has been introduced previously in Loki (limited streaming series from Disney +) and Doctor Strange and The Multiverse of Madness.  He is invariably depicted as an extremely powerful being capable of manipulating time, rewriting timelines and altering if not destroying worlds and galaxies, and erasing not just our universe but the entire multiverse.

Kang and Janet are shown to enter the Quantum Realm at around the same time, both are overwhelmed by this new world and devoid of any means of coping with it.  Together they attempt to repair Kang’s time and space traveling machine.  We are never shown how Kang manages to get from point A (destitute with nothing but Janet at his side) to point B (absolute ruler of the Quantum Realm yet still without the technology to make his time machine work) and where would he get such technology to build the empire at his feet that our heroes are greeted with?

But hey we are in a Disney fantasy movie (ooops they insist it is science fiction) so details like that do not matter the least!

Antman Quantumania | Kang The Conqueror 2023

Perhaps the worst thing that can be said about Kang is that he is supposed to be this incredibly undefeatable evil creature, something like Darkseid (the most evil supervillain from Superman’s universe) but in Antman and The Wasp Quantumania Kang is either holding back for some reason or he is nothing as bad as he had been built up to be if Antman and Team can take him down inside of one round.

Antman is on the lower end of the Avengers superpowers and for him to rampage through the Quantum Realm mimicking a few smash moves from The Hulk was too lame to constitute a proper superhero fight against Kang.  The climax and finale are somewhat of a disappointment, with tension, danger and exploits never building up to a satisfactory conclusion.

At some during the final battle with Kang and his army if you dont find yourself asking the question “what the heck are our trio of Antman suited heroes doing?” then you really missed the ball and have been conned by the movie producers’ setup.  you are being taken for a ride.

We have Scott, Hope and Cassie shrinking back and forth big and small punching and kicking and jumping knocking and pulverizing this machine or that military guard but all three of them are at a subatomic scale in size.  Scott goes big and woohooo he is taller than the tallest building and he starts smashing things left and right but HE IS STILL AT THE SUBATOMIC SIZE.

The fact that Kang and his army and dominion exist at the subatomic size and in the Quantum Real means their entire existence is on a reality level that is completely unstable and can be wiped out instantly by a microscopic magnetic flux, a shift in electric subatomic forces or a tiny quiver in gravity. The Quantum Realm in reality is not a place where sophisticated atomic structures and molecules can exist, you have to be on a much bigger scale for atoms to bond and create molecules so buildings and flying ships can exist. On a subatomic level, a next size Antman can wipe out the entire place by just putting his foot down.

In Antman Quantamania, the Quantum Realm in this movie is not based on any notion of reality, nor on the fictional Quantum Realm which Scott visits in the first two movies. The first two films to some extent respect the boundaries of the real-world Quantum level of existence. The first two films depict the place as sheer magnetic and energy flux space, there is nothing that can exist with life as we know it at that level of subatomic size. Absolutely nothing but subatomic energy waves, energy currents.

The world of Quantumania is one where buildings, flying jets and all sort of machinery exists which require a world far larger than the Atomic Realm or the Molecular Realm and these are thousands upon thousands of time larger in scale than the Quantum Realm. For the world of Kang to exist you need a level of existence where entire atoms can be bonded together to create physical structures such as spinning gears and metallic pieces and machinery with controls like at the holding cells with numeric touchpads. Nothing in Kang’s world can physically exist at the Quantum level, it requires a much larger world so atoms bond into molecules and molecules bond into even bigger groupings and structures so gears and machinery and living beings can exist.

He can grow even bigger and bigger all the way to normal size of our world.  He and Cassie and Hope should not go back to normal size because they would not be abl to see Kang’s army and pulverize them properly into dust but he could have resized himself 20 or 40 times bigger than the tallest building in the Quantum Realm and pulverized the entire military installation of Kang with just one stomp from his boot.  Done!  Nope, like I said we got our heroes fighting while shrinking down and expanding in size yet getting bloodied fighting not once going bigger and bigger to wipe the entire place with one kick even though the way back to their world (our world) is to grow a billion billion times bigger in one click on the suit’s button.

The entire finale is nonsensical and flies in the face of our superheroes’ superpowers and what the suits and the PYM particles were meant to accomplish and are portrayed as able to accomplish.

Kang is eventually revealed as a feeble adversary.  For someone who can travel back and forth in time and has destroyed countless universes, he was sorely unable to anticipate Antman’s one simple move of expanding to a size where he can smash his tiny speck-sized empire into dust?  Come on what kind of futuristic military conqueror would not anticipate Antman’s simple play?  And Kang’s ace in his sleeves is holding Cassie hostage and hoping Antman bows out?  Kang never played a scenario where Antman might not hesitate to chance Cassie’s life to save all life in his universe from certain doom?

As we near the Grand Master move, the final battle is a straight simple-minded childish break all the little blobs out of their holding cells and they rush the place while Antman single handedly cripples the entire Kang army.  Yep, Kang The Avengers Destroyer is caught with his pants down on this timeline.  Mmmm that is a little too staid and boring, with or without the ants’ intervention.

So not only is the world of Quantumania impossible but if the viewer decides on going for the ride and accepting the premise (which properly portrayed in the first two films) then the viewer is setting themselves up for the paradox of why our heroes are fighting these bigger machines and military platoons and military base with buildings that are in reality super microscopic and where they themselves can grow infinitely bigger than Kang’s empire and its infrastructure and crush them out of existence with as much effort as a sneeze.

Why is Scott keeping his size small so that a super insignificant force field can stop him, why is Scott keeping himself small and getting bloodied and then arbitrarily expands his size big enough to lunge at the enemy and destroy some of them when he can expand even bigger and demolish the entire installation with one stomp from his shoes?

The Quantum Quackery Territory proves itself even more ridiculous as it is teaming simultaneously with intelligent mono-cellular and plasma blobs of jelly gelatin-like beings, AI military robots and intricate human-like beings whose bodies are made up of thousands far more intricate and complex structures than talking and moving blobs.  The Quackamania Realm sports a living biosphere that has far more in common with the world of Aquaman where flying sea mantas and ocean-going life very similar to coral reefs are teeming with aquatic-like lanterns and urchins, all of which have to be millions of times bigger than the Quantum Realm allows to exist in the physical world.

Some of you are screaming to me, but Antman was already a rip off scheme from day one. Perhaps so but the production design and writers managed to make all the inspirational sources one of a piece, and all their own by virtue of the commercial success of Honey I Shrunk The Kids trilogy (1989-1997). When Antman was put together by Disney and Marvel in 2015, it just felt natural and fell into place thanks to the previous efforts by Rick Moranis and team. When the first Antman was promoted prior to release in theaters, I first thought it was the fourth entry or a reboot to Honey I Shrunk The Kids. Visual effects wise and visual design wise it was not all that different.

With Antman Quantumania the visual design reeks from other movie franchises that are proven blockbusters.  Quantumania’s Quantum Realm feels strangely like a mish mash of the highly successful Avatar and DC’s Aquaman but it doesn’t stop there.  There are scenes where the look and feel of the place seems straight out of Star Wars, the cantina and the plains of Tattoine in A New Hope, the Ewoks’ gibberish excitement and crazed happy march to battle on planet Endor in Return of The Jedi and more.

By going down that route, the Antman team were driving down suicide alley.  Fans notice because they watch these movies over and over picking them apart and role playing their favorite characters, memorizing lines and creating online memes.  To go down the route of Quantumania is to do Marvel’s own fans a real disservice.  Marvel moviegoers take genuine pride in the brand and over the past decade a real online rivalry has grown between Warner Brothers DCU and the Marvel MCU.  These aren’t movies anymore in the sense of the 1970s and 1980s.  Entire personalities and escapist worlds have grown around the intellectual properties (characters) including massive followers of the synched video games, T-shirts and other merchandise that give the bored everyday consumer the extra kick in the pants and the killer of the weekend blues.

Let’s face it, just like Cassie and the ants are the heart and soul of Scott Lang and his foray into Avengers-style adventures, Maggie (mother of Cassie and her legal guardian) and her highly sympathizing police officer boyfriend complete the trio act that gives Scott and Hope pause and a little more down to earth twists and turns in the original Antman and first sequel.

Of course, Luis and his ex-convict pals were the icing on the cake.  Fact is all these characters kept our superhero from getting lost into fantasy and even without the PYM particles and supersuit, their story arcs could have made a trilogy comedy movies all their own. 

On a simple level, Antman’s powers don’t seem like much when compared to Thor’s powers but in reality, as simplistically portrayed in the first two movies, Scott was firmly adventuring in the real world and shrinking down to a small (plausible) size, like a penny or a dime. 

That in itself did not seem much for the moviegoers – Scott was always running in a kitchen sink, in the backyard under a blade of grass, hopping a flying ant or running down a storm drain.  Nothing that fancy unlike flying to another planet in a distant galaxy, running faster than the speed of light – these were gargantuan feats of power and required super slick special effects.

However even at those modest levels of accomplishments it was more fantasy than science fiction.  A person that can grow to the size of five ferries or the height of a tall building is a special kind of science fiction – there is no special suit with propulsion and AI.  Where does Scott conjure up the extra body mass (muscle, bones and blood) to grow the size of a building?  Does it come from a magic ring from the Green Lanterns (it is not magic either if you ask DC Comics). 

The point is even on a simplistic scale of the first two movies, the stuff Antman does is not so simplistic.  It seems like it because moviegoers for decades have grown accustomed to the “everyday boring nature” of going big and then shrinking small special effects.  The optical effects were used in the 60s and 70s in episodes like Bewitch and The Land of The Giants, Gulliver’s Travels and an endless string of TV episodes from the likes of the Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.

Antman was also preceded by Disney’s highly successful movies of Honey I Shrunk The Kids which parlayed the same parlor tricks  And so in the first Antman movies, the powers of the Incredibly Shrinking Comic Man were firmly in check against more earthly problems, all of which were light comedy in nature. 

Antman was the comic relief piece of the Avengers, far more than Spiderman ever could and that was a jewel in the Marvel crown.  Marvel had Antman and DC was struggling to pull Shazam off in the same direction.