Ant-Man and the Wasp review: Makers lose the plot this time
Ant-Man perhaps is the most fun-loving character in the MCU. This time Director Peyton Reed and Paul Rudd are back hoping to make it a hat trick.
Published Date - 18 February 2023, 06:39 PM
Hyderabad: In the world of superheroes, especially in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), size does matter.
Unless you are Ant-Man. Ant-Man perhaps is the most fun-loving character in the MCU. This time Director Peyton Reed and Paul Rudd are back hoping to make it a hat trick.
Scott Lang aka Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) is now a successful author. He is living a content and happy life with his girlfriend Hope Van Dyne aka the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly). They survived the war against Thanos.
Lang’s 18-year-old daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) is a scientist and an activist on the wrong side of law. She has a lot of similarities with her father. After one such run in with the law, Lang bails Cassie out and together head to Hope’s parents –Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet van Dyne’s (Michelle Pfeiffer) place.
To the uninitiated, Janet has been in the Quantum Realm (QR) for 30 years. A small accident by Cassie opens a portal to the QR and the five of them are pulled into the QR. As the group try to find answers, Janet runs into her old friends –natives of the land who are rebelling against their ruler Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors). She also runs into Lord Kryler (Bill Murray) who breaks the news that he is now working for Kang.
Kang’s forces attack and leading Kang’s forces is his robotic henchman M.O.D.O.K aka Darren Cross (Corey Stoll). Yup, he survived all these years when Lang and the rest of the world thought he was dead. As luck would have it, the Langs and the rest get separated.
The Langs are taken to Kang to help him get his Multiversal Power Core back so that he can rule the multiverses. What happens, does Kang win, does Cross get his revenge, do the old and new Ant-Man and Wasp duo (quadruple actually) save the day is what the remaining story is about.
To rephrase Apple’s quote – this could be the worst MCU movie ever made. Too many things happening around to keep track of. This could very well be a very poor and bad version of Interstellar.
The action sequences are stiff. The VFX borders on average and in a few scenes fails to impress. In the earlier versions, it was Paul Rudd who carried the film on his shoulders. This time around, he has, tragically, very little. It is the responsibility of Michelle Pfeiffer to carry the film through and she does her best.
The rest of the cast have very little to do and do very little. The makers (read MCU) have lost their plot this time around. They have used the wrong platform to launch a future villain in Kang. An idea that clearly backfires. A good assembly of good actors is completely wasted. The visual palette is a murky brown and blue, and the effect is like watching an entire film shot in a dark tunnel (and not through an iPhone).
When you have Marvel creating visual treats in Thor or in Black Panther’s Wakanda, Quantumania is a huge disappointment. This is a very good example of a what ifs. Using this outing to launch Kang as the next big villain is a very bad idea.
Quantumania doesn’t quite cut it. One can definitely use the alternate reality and skip it.