Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ on Disney+, Proof That MCU Fatigue is Very Real

Curiously, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania bucked the trend for Marvel Cinematic Universe films by first debuting on VOD services (like Amazon Prime Video), which leads one to believe that Mickey Mouse wants to wring a few more bucks out of the movie – which ONLY grossed $474 million worldwide – before anyone can watch it for “free.” Good news, though: The movie is now finally available to stream on Disney+. The third movie focused on Paul Rudd’s goofy Ant-Man character is notable for launching Phase Five of the MCU, and introducing the new big bad, Kang the Conqueror, who’ll wreak havoc across the Marvel multiverse for the next few years’ worth of movies and TV series (and is played by Jonathan Majors, whose future in the role appears to be in question after recent domestic assault charges prompted him to be dropped by his management and publicity agencies). Quantumania is tied with Eternals as the MCU’s worst-reviewed movie (47 percent on the Tomatometer), heavily criticized for its arglebargle plot and relentless CGI onslaught. But maybe it functions better under lower-pressure viewing at home.  

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The setting: The Quantum Realm, a subatomic inner-space world. You know, the place where Michelle Pfeiffer’s character Janet van Dyne, wife of Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and mother of Hope van Dyne/the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), was trapped for 30 years, something you should remember from the previous Ant-Man movies, but in case you forgot, it’s sorta recapped here. Anyway, Janet meanders the weirdscape and ends up meeting and befriending and fighting monsters with a guy who we already know is Kang (Majors), but importantly, she doesn’t yet know he’s a multidimensional genocidal maniac who’s murdered entire timelines of life in the multiverse, so he seems like a decent fellow at first. We’ll eventually learn it’s her fault that Kang is trapped in the Quantum Realm – she busted his doohickey, no, not that one, but a different one that’s not attached – and now squashing its denizens under his fascist thumb. 

But Janet isn’t there anymore. She’s back on Earth, where Scott Lang (Rudd) uses his celeb-Avenger status to hawk his corny memoir, titled Look Out for the Little Guy. His heroism has rubbed off on teen daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton), who’s a social activist who’s not afraid to get arrested for protesting injustices. The two of them are having dinner with Janet and Hank and Hope, during which Janet reveals nothing, because she just won’t talk about what happened in the Quantum Realm; someone call Dr. Melfi, please? Cassie reveals that she’s been fiddling around with quantum-this and -that, and even has her own Ant-Man-style suit, and before Scott can get all parental and object to such dangerous things, kerfloosh, they’re all sucked into the Quantum Realm, because someone apparently pressed the wrong thingamajig. Don’t you HATE it when that happens? You should!

Note that from here on out, the whole movie is basically a CGI version of the cantina scene from Star Wars, which was great because it was full of strange and colorful aliens, and also because it doesn’t wear us out by being, like, 100 minutes long. When our five principals land, they’re split up. Scott and Cassie encounter a group of rebels resisting Kang’s rule; their leader is the warrior Jentorra (Katy O’Brian, who you’ll recognize from The Mandalorian). Janet, Hank and Hope meet up with Janet’s apparent former flame, Krylar (Bill Murray), who fills them in on all the horrible crap that’s been happening since she went back home. Turns out that the shrink-o tech Hank invented is just what Kang needs to repair his doohickey, cuz it just so happens that the reverse-shrink-o tech is what Janet used to destroy it. So Kang gonna get it – preferably the shrink-o tech, although anyone invested in this blither hopes Kang gets it before he has a chance to get it, if you catch my drift. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: How Quantumania scored lower with critics than drab crudfest Thor: The Dark World (or even the irritating Thor: Love and Thunder) is beyond me. Not that it’s terrible – it’s like a more poorly visually and comedically calculated Guardians of the Galaxy. And for a minute there I wondered if Osmosis Jones might be a surprise new MCU character, since he’s pretty small too, and he also finds himself in a reality that’s a wacky-ass cartoon. I guess they’re different realities, though. 

Performance Worth Watching: Majors shows some serious gravitas as a villain who’s even worse than Thanos; we’ll see if he keeps his job in the wake of the current controversy, though.  

Memorable Dialogue: A line I never thought I’d hear Michael Douglas deliver: “Holy shit! That guy looks like broccoli!”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: MCU fatigue is real – we’re on movie no. 31, you know – and even if you haven’t felt it yet, Quantumania may inspire its emergence. It’s easy to admire director Peyton Reed’s attempt to whole-cloth concoct a batshit strange-but-beautiful alien reality, but it’s such an overwhelming and all-encompassing CGI onslaught, it’s a struggle to find the visual reference points we need to stave off disorientation. And yet, the general color-drenched too-muchness of it all might be tolerable if the plot wasn’t such a by-the-numbers slog, alternating hyperkinetic action sequences with draggy recitations of exposition – you get the sense that Pfeiffer, ever the pro, is all but reciting deadly, leaden lines like “through the void and subatomica, a place outside time and space, it’s a secret universe beneath ours” phonetically. 

And even then, if the comedy was more hit than whiff, we’d forgive the movie for its stumbles. Bill Murray does his Bill Murray thing, his usual enthusiasm seemingly dampened by his assimilation into the MCU Borg. Rudd smirks earnestly as he did in previous Ant-Mans, but the light touch of those movies is buried in the rubble here. And then there’s the MODOK character, a floating head with tiny arms and legs (played by Corey Stoll) who’s Kang’s right-hand man, and pegs the Ant-Man movies’ goofy quotient so deeply into the realm of eyeball-exploding uncanny-valley abominations, we can only shake our heads at its bewildering stupidity.

I understand the need to balance the dramatic weight of the introduction of a villain who’s slaughtered TRILLIONS of life forms with insane shit like MODOK, but such forced peculiarity is just as burdensome as Kang’s dull-ass speeches. Hats off to Majors for finding a way to leaven the character with some charisma, even though the movie doesn’t have much room for such things; he’s got to do something of import, lest this villain not have the desired ripple effect necessary to build drama for MCU movies to come. Then again, when Kang inevitably faces off against Ant-Man at the end, it’s essentially a boxing match, yet another reason why the ungainly and annoying Quantumania pretty much sucks. 

Our Call: THE MCU BORG OBLIGATES YOU TO WATCH ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA LEST YOU FALL INTO A CONTINUITY HOLE, NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN. But I’m here to remind you that you needn’t fall victim to such psychological manipulations. SKIP IT and you’ll be fine, promise!

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.