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Gladiator II doesn't do enough to set itself apart from the original. It justifies its existence but could have been better.
Posted in: Marvel Studios, Movies, Review | Tagged: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, disney, Kang, Marvel Studios, mcu
Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania Is A Great Star Wars Film {Review}
Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania is huge in scale and importance for the MCU, but is that really a good thing?
Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania is a massive film in both scale and importance to the MCU, as Phase Five is officially underway. The problem is that they have bitten off more than they can chew. Ant-Man was always that little funny adventure side quest we got to go on to take a breather from the bigger picture, and like most of Phase Four, that is not the case anymore. Everything has to be bigger and louder, and the film and characters suffer for it. Nobody does a bad job, and Jonathan Majors certainly chews his share of scenery, but gone are the days of the mini-franchises in the MCU feeling like little pockets we can check in on. And that is sad.
Quantumania Is Stolen By MODOK
Ant-Man and The Wasp were never the strongest characters in the overall MCU, but the one thing you can say about Scott Lang is that he cares about his daughter's well-being above all. Every decision he made came with the question, "How will this affect Cassie?" It made Paul Rudd's performance endearing. So you would excuse the audience for finding it jarring right from the start that he basically has no idea what is going on in Cassie's life. He has no clue she's been heroing, gone to jail, or working on science stuff with Hank. What a betrayal right off the bat. We don't spend much time at all seeing why their dynamics have changed so drastically because we are hurled right into the Quantum Realm. And Scott is the one who suffers most because of it, almost sidelining him in his own movie. Ditto for Wasp; you may forget that Evangeline Lilly is in the film.
And with that early trip into the Quantum Realm, it becomes a Star Wars film. However, a prequel trilogy-era Star Wars film is full of CGI nonsense that screams, " We have a higher budget," which serves no greater purpose. The story is stitched together by yet another situation that could have been solved with one five-minute conversation that is instead dragged out for almost an hour of run time. When that becomes your MO, it may be time to switch it up. Where they earn points is in creature design and the effects. While way more bombastic than the film needed, they pop on screen and really are some of the best in the last couple of years of MCU offerings. And that includes the star of the show, really, MODOK. Not only is the MCU design pretty perfect, but the backstory and how he was shifted into the film are also handled well and lead to some of the funniest moments in the whole thing. There is one joke especially that will have comic fans rolling.
Ant-Man is also upstaged in Quantumania by almost all of the supporting cast. Michelle Pfeiffer is great as Janet here, as is Michael Douglas. Can we get them in their own movie, please? Kathryn Newton is good as Cassie as well, though her future appearances might be more interesting. There were some interesting roads they could have gone down with her and Kang, but they opted not to. Speaking of, Kang makes his grand entrance to a mixed bag. The quieter moments Majors gets to cook with Pfeifer especially are great and reminiscent of He Who Remains in Loki. When he is forced to fight, all that goes out the window, and he feels like a cartoon character.
Quantumania feels like a cartoon more than anything, maybe the epic Star Wars cartoon that we always should have gotten back in the day. By the end, you feel like you enjoyed the time spent with it, but as you think about it, the film unravels fast. Nothing here is terrible, but it isn't memorable. Disposable is not something I thought the MCU would become this fast, but they are getting dangerously close.
Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania
6.5/10
Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania is not a bad film, but it takes further steps away from keeping the smaller franchises feeding into the Avengers from being more intimate and genre specific. MODOK steals the show from Kang, which may also be a problem for the new big bad going forward.
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