Graphic by Vanessa Tran
“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” was a fun film to start Phase 5 in the Marvel saga.
While other Marvel movies begin on a more serious scale, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” offers a movie featuring a comedic hero who doesn’t have any inherent powers or isn’t considered one of the strongest heroes. It’s always a great time to see Ant-Man in battle.
“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and “Thor: Love and Thunder” were disappointments for me last year, so I didn’t expect much going into the theaters to watch Ant-Man.
The visuals came out to be much better than previous Marvel movies that had an issue with some of the backgrounds’ blatant CGI.
I came in expecting Paul Rudd to play Ant-Man in a funny comic book movie like the previous entries with some action at the end. And per usual he killed it as Ant-Man.
Rudd has starred in other great comedic films including “Role Models,” “Anchorman” and “Knocked Up.”
The movie reintroduced Lang’s daughter Cassie, now being played by Kathryn Newton, a different actress than when she was initially introduced in “Avengers: Endgame,” though I preferred the previous actress, Emma Fuhrmann, because of how similar she looked to Rudd.
Cassie owns a suit just like Ant-Man and the Wasp, but struggles to use it in combat throughout the film.
Though I wish they kept the original actor, this new Cassie is an OK version who grew on me throughout the film.
Newton gave a great performance as Cassie and I’m sure she’ll kill it later in the saga when she is brought back.
While this was the first time Newton worked with Rudd, she didn’t lose any of the chemistry that Fuhrmann had with him.
With Cassie building a device to the Quantum Realm and Janet having flashbacks about the time she was in it, Janet manages to mess up. She ends up sending the whole family stuck in the Quantum Realm.
We get a first peak of who Janet was before she escaped the Quantum Realm.
The film does an excellent job bringing up things that happened in previous movies that fans may not know much about.
This movie set up the Multiverse in a way that shows how anything is possible in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Though it was set in the Quantum Realm, the movie gave an insight for a wild future to come in the coming Marvel movies.
We finally get to see the new big bad in the MCU in Kang the Conqueror, who we last saw in the Marvel show “Loki” back in 2021.
Jonathon Majors portrayed Kang very well in this film as he seemed to come off slow at first, but when you see how powerful he really is, you know shit is about to go down.
I waited forever for him to appear in the MCU again because of how huge of a threat he’ll be to every hero he has to encounter.
The film is mainly based in the Quantum Realm and is portrayed using CGI, which wasn’t a problem for me.
I’m sure Rotten Tomatoes had a field day with the CGI, but I thought it made the film unique and different.
With this film, we got to learn more about how Kang became himself- where he was from and why he was stuck in the Quantum Realm.
Kang is just as large of a threat as Thanos was in the previous Marvel movies.
“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” portrays him just like how he is in the comics. Though we have yet to see what he’s really capable of in this film, I have a feeling that once he’s seen more, he will kill some of our favorite heroes.
This film was a great showcase to see what the future holds for the rest of Phase 5.
We get enough action throughout the film and get to see Ant-Man actually be a hero for his daughter.
The biggest let down was not having any of his friends from the previous movie, like his best friend Luis, played by Michael Peña, having to explain everything that went down in a funny way.
The best part of the movie was seeing how Kang will handle the rest of the Marvel Universe to come with all of himself uniting to build something more sinister.
With many twists and turns throughout the film, I honestly thought it was going to go some other route, but I’m glad it ended how it did.
This won’t be the last time we see either Ant-Man, the Wasp or Kang the Conqueror. This is only the beginning.
The amount of hate this film has been receiving before it even came out is ridiculous. Go grab some popcorn, a drink and watch the film because it’s definitely worth watching until the end.