Having debuted nationwide on February 17, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has now been in theaters for over two months. Marvel Studios’ promotional efforts have since shifted to advertising Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, coming May 5. But in light of Quantumania’s recent availability to purchase digitally, and in advance of its upcoming availability on Disney+ on May 17, it seemed appropriate to revisit and reconsider the third Ant-Man film, now that the dust has settled. Here I will analyze several of the film’s components in greater detail than a typical review would allow for, to grapple with why the film is the way it is, what worked, what didn’t, and what it all may mean for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Naturally, there are spoilers ahead.
The Plot
To edify those who have not seen the film and to refresh those who have, here is a brief summary of its plot.
During her years in the Quantum Realm, Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeifer) meets Kang (Jonathan Majors), who, like herself, comes from the macroscopic world. He arrives in a ship designed to traverse space, time, and the multiverse, now broken. (In the comics upon which the Marvel Cinematic Universe is based, this ship is called the Time Chair; and though it is never called that in the film, I will henceforth refer to it as such.) Janet helps Kang repair the ship but in doing so discovers the truth: Kang the Conqueror is a multiversal tyrant who has destroyed countless timelines and innumerable lives and has been banished to the Quantum Realm to keep him from further conquest. In horror at Kang’s brutality, Janet uses Pym Particles to enlarge the Time Chair’s power core, rendering the ship inoperable once more.
In the present, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) enjoys life as a famous and respected superhero. His daughter, Cassie (Kathryn Newton), has been researching the Quantum Realm with Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), having taken an interest in the mysterious realm when her father was trapped within it.
(If you’ll pardon a brief aside, the above raises questions: How did young Cassie know about the Quantum Realm? Did Cassie know her father was helping Hank and his family collect energy therefrom, as seen in the mid-credits sequence from Ant-Man and the Wasp [2018]? If she did, did she believe that her father was trapped in the Quantum Realm for five years, despite his name being listed on a monument for victims of the Blip in Avengers: Endgame, seemingly reflecting a belief among authorities that he was among those who vanished? How would she have been able to research the Quantum Realm? Did she meet Hank and Janet at some point before the aforementioned mid-credits sequence?)
Hank and Cassie demonstrate a machine that sends signals into the Quantum Realm, but then they, Scott, Janet, and Hope (Evangeline Lilly) are pulled into it. The Langs are separated from Hank, Janet, and Hope, so the two groups search for each other and for a means of returning home.
The Langs encounter Quantum Realm resident Jentorra (Katy O’Brian) and her Freedom Fighters, but Scott and Cassie are captured by Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), who survived his seeming demise in Ant-Man (2015) but has been transformed into a new form known as M.O.D.O.K. (Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing). He takes them to Kang, who threatens Cassie in order to coerce Scott into using his Pym Particles to shrink the Time Chair’s power core back to its original size. Scott does this, but Kang breaks his promise and does not free Cassie, instead reclaiming the power core and capturing Janet. Cassie, however, escapes prison with the help of Jentorra, who had become her fellow prisoner, and they use Kang’s broadcast technology to prompt an uprising against the Conqueror and his forces.
Together, Scott, Cassie, Hank, Hope, and the Freedom Fighters seize Kang’s capital city, with help from Hank’s ants, who were also pulled into the Quantum Realm and have evolved into a technologically advanced society. From Kang’s throne room, Janet generates a portal back to Earth, which the principal heroes use to return—but not before a final melee between Kang and Scott, the latter later assisted by Hope, which concludes with Kang’s seeming death as he is pulled into his power core, which was damaged during the fight and imploded. Scott and Hope return to Earth, and their lives return to normal, though Scott worries about the consequences of the death of Kang, who, for all his murderous ways, believed only he could prevent an even worse fate from befalling the multiverse.
In the mighty Marvel manner, Quantumania has two extra scenes—one during the credits, another at the credits’ end—both concerning Kang, or, more precisely, his variants.
The mid-credits scene introduces the Council of Kangs, a meeting of Kang’s variants from across the multiverse. The logic of this scene is intriguing: As we discover in Janet’s flashbacks, the council banished Kang the Conqueror—i.e., the specific variant of Kang who serves as the film’s antagonist—to the Quantum Realm because he sought to oppose their ends. And in this scene, the council learns of the Conqueror’s death at the hands of Ant-Man and the Wasp. They express their concerns that “they” are becoming too involved in the affairs of the multiverse and resolve to do something about it. Who exactly “they” are is not specified: are “they” the Avengers, the human race, the denizens of Earth-616 more generally (or Earth-199999, if the trailer for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is to be believed, rather than Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness)? Had Scott, Hope, et al. not traveled to the Quantum Realm in this film, would Kang the Conqueror have lived out the rest of his days imprisoned there? If so, would the Council of Kangs have been unconcerned about the aforementioned “they”? Or is the nature of their overall plan such that “they” would have come to the council’s attention one way or another? Whatever the case, it is safe to assume that the superheroes of the MCU are on a collision course with Kang’s variants.
The post-credits scene features Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) attending a presentation on time by Victor Timely (Jonathan Majors), a Kang variant. This is presumably also a scene from the upcoming second season of Loki. (Though it is nice to see Loki and Mobius together on the big screen, the revelation of one new variant of Kang is less impactful than that of the countless variants in the previous scene. Still, it is interesting that Marvel Studios chose to have a film lead into a Disney+ series, which they had not done before, presumably operating under the assumption that its theatrical films garner a broad audience less invested in the MCU’s multimedia presence and less interested in seeing connective tissue between films and Disney+ series.)
Dramatis Personae
Having summarized the plot, let’s turn to the film’s characters, beginning with Ant-Man himself, Scott Lang.
Scott Lang remains as likable as ever, with Paul Rudd turning in another charming performance. Quantumania is Scott Lang’s fifth cinematic appearance, and tracking Scott’s portrayal over the five films shows the ways in which Marvel Studios has negotiated his status as a comedic superhero.
Scott spends much of Ant-Man (2015) learning how to use his newfound powers—a common motif for a superhero’s cinematic debut. Captain America: Civil War (2016) takes place soon after, and Scott’s involvement in the film is small but memorable. From there, Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) portrays Scott as a less capable superhero than Hope. This was arguably justified by the film’s plot, as Scott has been under house arrest for two years at the beginning of the film before participating in the film’s ensuing adventure, so he was out of practice, and it seems he had not been Ant-Man for particularly long before being arrested in Civil War, whereas Hope had presumably been operating as the Wasp for those two years. This portrayal of Scott may also have been chosen to (a) afford Hope more instances of superheroics and (b) continue the motif of Scott being or seeming out of his depth relative to other superheroes. Scott appears next in Avengers: Endgame (2019), in which, after emerging from the Quantum Realm, he joins the Avengers in their efforts to pull off a “time heist,” Scott’s idea, to bring back the victims of the Blip. Again, Scott is portrayed more comedically than many of the other heroes, who seem not to respect him particularly.
But Quantumania does not lean too heavily into the motif of Scott being a put-upon, unappreciated superhero. Sure, Ruben the coffee shop attendant confuses Scott for Spider-Man in the film’s beginning—a mistake he realizes by the movie’s end—but the film’s opening portrays people being genuinely excited to meet him: Scott sees a child wearing an Ant-Man backpack, Scott has written a bestselling memoir, and his public readings of the book draw crowds. In other words, Scott now lives in a world that more or less takes him seriously for the first time, which precludes certain kinds of humor prevalent in his prior appearances but which makes narrative sense and avoids reducing Scott to a one-note joke character. He has been allowed to evolve.
But Scott’s concern for his daughter, Cassie, remains as strong as ever. Quantumania devotes more time to Scott’s relationship with Cassie than with Hope or Hank, whose complicated relationships with Scott figured heavily in the first two Ant-Man films. Understandably enough, given that Cassie is now much older than she was in those films, she is a much different character this time around. She is also played by a new actress, Kathryn Newton, replacing Abby Ryder Fortson from Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp and Emma Fuhrmann from Avengers: Endgame, the former due to age differences, though I do not know why Fuhrmann did not reprise her role. Nevertheless, Newton’s performance, and Cassie’s role in the film, gives new dimensions to the character, giving her a spunkier and more rebellious personality than in her earlier appearances.
The film introduces this new iteration of Cassie when Scott discovers she has been apprehended by police for her participation in a protest. This characterization of Cassie introduces an interesting dynamic between her and her father: Scott remains as intent on caring for his daughter as he has always been, that being his most constant motivation throughout his MCU appearances. In her political activism, Cassie has taken after her father, who was arrested for burgling VistaCorp, which had been systematically stealing money from its customers. Cassie comes by her establishment-bucking, activist ways naturally, but this concerns Scott. This wrinkle in their relationship adds depth, demonstrates Cassie’s growth and maturation, and causes some internal conflict for Scott: it is somewhat hypocritical for Scott to be critical of Cassie’s doing things that he himself has proudly done, yet it is natural and proper for him as her father to be concerned for her safety and wellbeing. The film exploits this wrinkle in their relationship for conflict, but this is treated fairly naturalistically, not devolving into overwrought, soapy excess. Scott and Cassie’s relationship serves as the emotional backbone for the plot and mirrors its themes, though whether the film satisfactorily pays off this dynamic is another matter, which I shall address later.
Surprisingly enough for a film whose supertitle is Ant-Man and the Wasp, the relationship between the current holders of those monikers, Scott Lang and Hope van Dyne, is not given much emphasis. The two are separated for much of the film’s duration, so they share little screen time. And of the film’s central cast of five heroes (Scott, Cassie, Hank, Janet, and Hope), Hope has the fewest memorable moments. Because Janet has lived in the Quantum Realm, she understands it in a way the other visitors from the macroscopic world do not; as such, Janet very much takes charge of her group (consisting of herself, Hank, and Hope). So while Quantumania is not a bad outing for Hope, per se, it features her least prominently of the three Ant-Man films.
However, the former Wasp, Janet van Dyne, gets a great deal of emphasis and screen time, which is nice to see given her justifiably limited presence in the first two films. Janet’s working knowledge of the Quantum Realm and its society makes her a capable guide for Hank and Hope. But viewers may take issue with Janet’s initial refusal to discuss her time in the Quantum Realm, as this would have altered the story on some points. The film addresses this early on when Hope asks Janet about her time in the Quantum Realm, and Janet refuses to elaborate upon it, saying that, after spending many years trapped in the Quantum Realm, she is keen to move beyond it and live in the here and now, making up for lost time with her family. This is understandable and a believable motivation for her reticence to discuss the Quantum Realm, but given that her silence on Quantum Realm matters undergirds much of the film’s premise, this motivation does more heavy lifting than some viewers, myself included, may feel it can truly hold.
As the film progresses, Janet divulges more information concerning her time in the Quantum Realm, which can be divided into three stages: her initial, seemingly quiet life subsisting in the Quantum Realm, which is interrupted by the arrival of Kang in his Time Chair; her working with Kang to repair said chair; and her life as a Freedom Fighter, resisting Kang’s imperial expansion. Of these three stages, we see, through the prologue and flashbacks, a little of the first, a fair amount of the second, and none of the third. That the second phase would be most prominent is sensible: it provides the context for most of Janet’s motivations in the film, and it allows the audience to learn more about the film’s antagonist, Kang. That there are no flashbacks to Janet’s stint as a Freedom Fighter, the film instead establishing this through dialogue and implication, is somewhat curious. While the film is long enough that more flashbacks would have disrupted its pace, this does give a sense that an important part of the history of the Quantum Realm and its “Quantum People,” as Cassie calls them, has been skipped over.
Hank Pym returns in Quantumania, as well. As with the other returning characters, he has grown since his earlier appearances. Up to this point, Hank has been a rather caustic character, estranged from his daughter, mourning the loss of his wife, and forced by circumstance to partner with Scott despite his reservations about the ex-con’s capabilities. But after reconciling with Hope in Ant-Man and rescuing Janet in Ant-Man and the Wasp, Hank has mellowed out. His misgivings about Scott seem to have largely subsided, and he has adopted a grandfatherly role to Cassie, who refers to him as “Grandpa Hank.” Hank is likely the happiest he has ever been in his life, certainly in the era of his life to which we viewers have been most privy. Accordingly, Michael Douglas plays a warmer, more playful iteration of Hank, which provides long-time MCU viewers with a gratifying sense of character development.
Much of the hype around Quantumania concerned Kang, and whether viewers find the film an important chapter in the ongoing history of the MCU will ride upon their feelings on his depiction here. Majors played a variant of the character, called He Who Remains, in the first season of the Disney+ series Loki. As such, viewers familiar with that series may have some preconceptions of the character and his motivations; I certainly did. But I was pleasantly surprised with how different Kang feels from He Who Remains. The latter was a talkative and charming fellow, who manipulated events from behind the scenes. Kang, however, is different: reserved and contemplative while calm, explosive and dangerous while angry. This suits his role as an imperial conqueror; whereas He Who Remains kept to the shadows, manipulating others behind their backs, the Quantum People are under no delusions as to whose thumb they are under. Majors characterizes Kang accordingly, and Kang comes across as a grander, remoter villain than He Who Remains. The notion of multiple variants of Kang appearing across several Marvel Studios works has become more exciting to me knowing that each variant will be characterized differently, allowing Majors to turn in very different performances for each one—assuming that Majors will return to the MCU, which is not obvious given the controversy around him since Quantumania‘s release.
To properly introduce Kang and his variants in an Ant-Man film—the appearance of He Who Remains in Loki being more of a teaser than an introduction—was a bold move, for multiple reasons. First, Kang belongs to a much different class of supervillain than Darren Cross, aka Yellowjacket, from Ant-Man or Ava Starr, aka Ghost, from Ant-Man and the Wasp—both terrestrial, relatively grounded villains compared to the MCU’s more mythological or extraterrestrial adversaries, such as Loki or Ronan the Accuser. In designating Kang the primary antagonist of “The Multiverse Saga,” Marvel Studios has positioned him as being of a comparable dramatic stature to Thanos, the Big Bad of “The Infinity Saga,” who stands among the MCU’s most compelling villains. Whereas Thanos’s influence spread across space, Kang poses a similarly existential threat as Thanos but instead traverses and transcends time. Kang’s role in Quantumania, then, broadens the scope and scale of the Ant-Man series and creates a sense of peril, as Ant-Man hardly seems the optimal choice of superhero to oppose the Conqueror. At one point, Kang alludes to having defeated variants of the Avengers countless times before, making Scott’s triumph over him seem unlikely and therefore more satisfying when it finally occurs.
The other major antagonist in Quantumania is M.O.D.O.K., who, as with Kang, is a surprising choice of supervillain for an Ant-Man film, the character having no particular association with Ant-Man in the comics, at least as far as I am aware, instead usually being classed as an adversary of Captain America. Nor does the origin for M.O.D.O.K. provided in this film bear much resemblance to his origin in the mainstream Marvel Comics continuity. Nor has M.O.D.O.K. historically been a subordinate of Kang the Conqueror in other media.
M.O.D.O.K. is an innately odd character, his memorably grotesque design earning him a place in Marvel Comics’ cache of supervillains but making him difficult to translate into live-action. Yet Quantumania attempts it, and the result is—perhaps suitably—strange, essentially being actor Corey Stoll’s head stretched and altered with CGI. Perhaps Marvel Studios had long intended to include M.O.D.O.K. in a live-action work and chose this film due to its fanciful setting; he certainly looks less out of place among the denizens of the Quantum Realm than he would have done in the Captain America film series, which has established itself as one of the MCU’s more grounded and subdued components. Still, one might ask whether M.O.D.O.K. ought to have appeared in any live-action works, as his design does not lend itself to the medium.
Quantumania’s depiction of M.O.D.O.K. differs from his appearances elsewhere in that here M.O.D.O.K. is revealed to be Darren Cross, the antagonist from the first Ant-Man film. Cross was one of the MCU’s less memorable villains, but his return serves Quantumania well, for two reasons: 1) it follows up on the events of the first film, detailing what became of Cross after his defeat, which entailed his being shrunk down to a microscopic size as his Yellowjacket suit imploded due to Scott’s interference with it—a defeat that raised the question of how Cross’s fate interacted with the Quantum Realm, a question this film answers—and 2) in following up on this plot point, Cross’s presence links this newer, stranger iteration of the Ant-Man series to its past installments. Indeed, the revelation that M.O.D.O.K. is Darren Cross gave me a similar if lesser thrill to the surprise appearance of the Red Skull in Avengers: Infinity War, both providing pleasing bits of continuity, making the MCU more cohesive. However, the aforementioned benefits of Cross’s appearance in Quantumania could also have been attained without having Darren Cross become M.O.D.O.K., which would have avoided having to use M.O.D.O.K.’s outlandish design. But since this iteration of M.O.D.O.K. resembles his comics counterpart in little more than his design, using this design seems to have been the express point of having Cross become M.O.D.O.K. And since there is no clear reason to include M.O.D.O.K. in an Ant-Man film about traversing the Quantum Realm, I am left wondering why using M.O.D.O.K.’s design in this film—or, indeed, any MCU film—was so important to whoever greenlit his inclusion.
Nevertheless, I appreciate Cross’s reappearance. The film allows actor Corey Stoll to bring some levity to the character that was largely absent in Ant-Man, which instead positioned Cross as a fairly serious and menacing villain in an otherwise comical and lighthearted movie. Of M.O.D.O.K.’s comical moments, my favorite is his delivering his dying words after his heroic turn and sacrifice, believing that his actions had somehow made him an Avenger, which does not make much sense, and telling Scott that he had always been like a brother to him, an amusing thing to say given how little Scott Lang and Darren Cross actually interact in Ant-Man. Less funny and less successful is a scene which precedes and facilitates it, in which Cassie tells M.O.D.O.K., with a comical seriousness, that “It’s never too late to stop being a dick.” This is funny enough as a moment unto itself, but it feels tonally dissonant with the rest of the film and somewhat at odds with the film’s portrayal of Cassie, who, up to this point, has not been in the habit of delivering cheesy yet evidently sincere one-liners of this sort.
Up to this point, I have been analyzing the returning characters—or, in Kang’s case, a new variant of an established character. But how do the new characters in Quantumania fare? Not that well. The film introduces various denizens of the Quantum Realm, and while the less humanoid among them evince a pleasing variety of form, a gift to and from the film’s character designers, they are all, with one exception, one-note. Most of these new characters, at least those with names, are Freedom Fighters, people forced from their homes by Kang’s conquest. Their leader is Jentorra, a warrior who seems to lead her people effectively but about whom there is little else to say. Other Freedom Fighters include a telepath named Quaz (William Jackson Harper), as well as Veb (voiced by David Dastmalchian, who played Kurt in the previous Ant-Man films), a gelatinous being obsessed with holes. These two characters are slightly more memorable than most other Quantum People and are given brief moments in the spotlight where they can be amusing, but, again, there is not much to them beyond that. The aforementioned lone exception is Lord Krylar (Bill Murray), an associate and former lover of Janet’s. Once a Freedom Fighter himself, he has since given up the fight and been awarded a lordship in Kang’s new world order. Even though Krylar’s screentime is relatively brief, the character’s complexity and Murray’s performance leave an impression, both suggesting an era in Janet’s backstory that the film does not directly depict.
The flat nature of the film’s new characters extends to its setting, as well: the Quantum Realm. Aside from Kang and his capital city, few locations appear more than once in the film. We are guided from vista to vista, each evoking whimsy and awe, but before we can learn much about it, we are conveyed to the next set piece. This keeps the film’s otherworldly visuals lively and entertaining, but it relies more on the suggestion of an interesting world than the depiction of an interesting world. This is as true of the Quantum Realm’s creatures and cultures as of its landscapes. The eclectic nature of the Freedom Fighters suggests that there are many races and peoples in the Quantum Realm of whom we see only one representative—a style of worldbuilding that produces a setting whose pleasure stems more from its breadth than its depth. I do not fault the film for this, though: it revels in surrealism and absurdity and has enough sense to move along before each component of its setting wears out its welcome.
Indeed, the heroes’ journey through the Quantum Realm engages our eyes and imaginations throughout. But the film engages our whimsy more often than our reason, as it sees fit to play fast and loose with the logic behind its setting. The liberty with which the film plays with its setting is characteristic of the Ant-Man series, which has never been one to fret over the consistency of its fantastical or hyper-scientific elements, the physics of shrinking varying wildly from moment to moment in each of the Ant-Man films, for example.
One such wrinkle in this film is the nature of time in the Quantum Realm. This particular inconsistency is not entirely the fault of Quantumania: the premise of Avengers: Endgame relies upon the notion that time passes at a different rate in the Quantum Realm than in the macroscopic world; but in Ant-Man and the Wasp, Janet van Dyne seems to have aged the same amount inside the Quantum Realm as did those outside of it. Likewise, the exact nature of time in the Quantum Realm is unclear in Quantumania. Remarkably, the film itself draws our attention to this question but never fully answers it, because one of the reasons Scott cites to Cassie as to why they should leave the Quantum Realm as soon as possible and not get involved in its politics is his concern that years will pass on Earth in the meantime and that in staying in the Quantum Realm they would be robbing Cassie’s mother, Maggie, who does not appear in this film, of her life with her daughter. Cassie does not accept this, and the film moves on, the precise mechanics of time in the Quantum Realm not being addressed further.
Here I diverge into my own speculation, as the film never explicitly states the following, but it seems to me that time passes differently in the world—i.e., the landmasses, the cities, the societies—within the Quantum Realm than it does for those drifting untethered through it. In the world at the bottom, so to speak, of the Quantum Realm, time passes at approximately the same rate as on Earth. But for those who drift through the Quantum Realm and never arrive anywhere specific, time passes differently. If this is true, it would make sense of why, in Ant-Man and the Wasp and Avengers: Endgame and the period between the two, Scott is trapped in the Quantum Realm for five hours while five years pass on Earth, but Janet ages at the same rate as her family during her years in the Quantum Realm, because she spent most of her time there in Kang’s empire.
All of this is further complicated by a development later in the film. Early on, we discover that Hank has been keeping an ant farm in the laboratory where he and Cassie have been researching the Quantum Realm. These ants have been building some kind of technology, though the film does not elaborate on this, and when Hank is asked about it, he simply states that the ants are very intelligent. This is a strange and underdeveloped point as is, and it is unclear why this was included in the film. But when the heroes are pulled into the Quantum Realm, so are these ants. Hank eventually re-establishes contact with them and discovers that they have experienced time differently and have lived in the Quantum Realm for such a long time that they evolved into an extremely intelligent and technologically advanced society. While this is an amusing, even delightful plot point, it further muddies the waters concerning the passage of time in the Quantum Realm, as there is no explanation given as to why the ants experienced such a vast stretch of time compared to the human heroes, who entered the Quantum Realm in the same event. So in order to best appreciate the nature of the Quantum Realm in Quantumania, one must adopt a similar attitude to that which one must adopt in regard to the applications and workings of shrinking technology throughout the Ant-Man series—an attitude largely unconcerned with the logical coherence of these stories’ hyper-scientific elements—in the hopes that what the poetic license with which the storytellers treat their own ideas gains in variety and whimsy outweighs what it loses in logic and consistency.
Themes
Thematically, Quantumania feels incomplete. But it is unclear whether this lack of resolution is the result of carelessness or this was a conscious choice on the part of the filmmakers, asking questions for subsequent films to answer. I entertain the latter possibility because Quantumania, more than any film from Phase Four, obviously lays groundwork for later stories, though, of course, it remains to be seen exactly how the threads introduced or developed in Quantumania will reach their fulfillment later.
In any case, the thematic key to Quantumania lies in its earliest scenes, before Scott, Cassie, and their friends enter the Quantum Realm, which introduce two major elements: Scott’s aimlessness in life, and Cassie’s activism.
Scott has become a successful memoirist and, in light of his participation in the events of Avengers: Endgame, has become a famous and respected superhero. He reads his book for appreciative audiences, and he seems fulfilled by this. It is certainly an improvement over his circumstances in either of the previous Ant-Man films, which depicted him being in prison, being arrested, and struggling to find steady employment because of his criminal history. Given this, it makes sense that he finds his newfound fame, respect, and presumably money as a welcome change of pace. But Cassie criticizes him, believing he could and should be more than this, striving for a better future, rather than being content in profiting off his past achievements, however valid they may be.
Early in the film, Scott learns that Cassie has been arrested for protesting police treatment of people displaced from their homes as a result of the Blip, reflecting the difficulties society has had reintegrating those who were absent for five years as a result of Thanos’s actions, a theme touched on in Phase Four, most prominently in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. In an artful touch, this mirrors the plight in the Quantum Realm of those displaced by Kang’s imperial expansion. This parallel may have been included simply to flesh out Cassie’s character and to give her a motivation to help the Freedom Fighters, which Scott is initially unwilling to do, being more concerned with the safety of his daughter and with finding Hope and her parents and figuring out how to return home. But since Quantumania concerns the Freedom Fighters’ ultimately successful revolution against Kang, is the film foreshadowing a similar revolution of the dispossessed on Earth against apathetic authorities? And how might this thematically interact with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which depicts its heroes fighting terrorists who seek to do just that.
In terms of Scott’s aimlessness, I am not sure whether the film entirely resolved this point. To be sure, Cassie’s criticism of her father, and his internal conflict arising from this criticism, is addressed as he eventually allies himself with the Freedom Fighters to overthrow Kang. But this resolution, if it is indeed meant to be a resolution, is underwhelming, given that at the film’s end Scott returns to his life on Earth much as it was before his Quantum Realm adventure, so Cassie’s criticisms of his present life would still stand.
Indeed, because of the film’s themes, I anticipated an entirely different ending than the one the film actually provides. As Scott and Kang have their final melee, after the other Earthlings escape through the portal, I entertained the notion that Scott would sacrifice himself either by dying in combat with Kang or by being trapped in the Quantum Realm so that Kang could not escape, at which point he (and possibly Hope, who returned through the portal to assist Scott) could help the Freedom Fighters reclaim and rebuild their society. This would have been a firmer resolution to Scott’s arc, but it would perhaps have been too similar to Scott’s plight at the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp, which also saw him trapped in the Quantum Realm, and would have likely seemed less impactful than the aforementioned film, since, in this film, Hank, Janet, and Cassie would, given enough time, probably be able to construct a means to get Scott and Hope back.
Whether Scott’s experiences in the Quantum Realm have transformed him in a lasting way is not something the film’s ending addresses. I would like to believe that his experiences have made him a more proactively heroic figure than before, and I would love to see his future film appearances reflect this: perhaps this new characterization and his familiarity with and concern about Kang would equip him to adopt a more leaderly position in the Avengers in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty (slated for May 2, 2025) and Avengers: Secret Wars (May 1, 2026), as the Avengers as a team lack a clear leader after the death of Tony Stark and the retirement of Steve Rogers. Could the trio of Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America be succeeded by a trio of Thor (who Thor: Love and Thunder promised will return), Ant-Man, and Doctor Strange? I would enjoy seeing that, but at this point we do not know, because the casts for those films have not been announced. Moreover, I am not aware of any definitive statement that Ant-Man will appear again, and Quantumania concludes with the promise that “Kang will return,” not that “Ant-Man will return.”
A lover of continuity and serialized story arcs, I would prefer to believe that the seemingly unresolved points in Quantumania are seeds that will later come to fruition, rather than mere creative missteps, but this will only be evident in retrospect. It is not as though Marvel Studios is incapable of producing mediocre or underdeveloped stories; indeed, Phase Four consisted mostly of such things. But the pointedly ambivalent tone of Quantumania’s final scene (or, more specifically, the final scene before its credits), wherein Scott worries over the consequences of his actions, wondering whether his victory over Kang was even the right thing to do, suggests that Marvel Studios wants the audience to question the long-term implications of Quantumania’s story, establishing it as a touchstone for future stories.
Whether or not subsequent MCU films follow up on Quantumania’s ending(s) satisfactorily, I appreciate the tone of the final pre-credits scene. MCU films are typically feel-good popcorn fare, so I appreciate the instances when they have ended on a more downbeat note, examples being Captain America: Civil War and, even more so, Avengers: Infinity War.
Style
Whereas the first two installments of the Ant-Man series are very much in the same vein as each other, Quantumania stands apart, differing tonally and stylistically from its two predecessors on several key points. The Ant-Man series is not the MCU’s first to take a significant tonal and stylistic shift between entries: Thor seems the most obvious example of this phenomenon, shifting from the comparably straight-faced high fantasy of its two installments, Thor (2011) and Thor: The Dark World (2013), to the lighthearted and ironic camp of its two more recent, Taiki Waititi–helmed entries, Thor: Ragnarok (2017) and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022). But in these other cases, the tonal and stylistic shifts were occasioned by a change in director—not so here. Peyton Reed returns as director for Quantumania after having directed the prior two Ant-Man films, becoming the second director to direct three films in the same MCU subseries, after Jon Watts—director of Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Far from Home (2019), and No Way Home (2021)—with DC Studios’ new Co-CEO James Gunn being third with the upcoming release of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. So while Peyton Reed has retained his role as director of the Ant-Man series, Quantumania differs greatly from the series’ first two installments. And while Reed retains some of his stylistic attributes seen in the previous two films, Quantumania differs so palpably from what came before that I would have assumed the film was directed by someone else had I not already known before seeing the film that he had returned directorially. It is to Reed’s credit that he has successfully shepherded his cast of characters from the relatively smaller-scale and grounded Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp to the epic science fiction of Quantumania. Whatever failings this most recent film has do not stem from Reed’s direction.
Over the course of their journey, our heroes encounter a world at turns delightful and disturbing but always strange, and there is a joy in witnessing this all unfold. However, the film lacks emotional depth. Now, of course, the Ant-Man series up to this point has consisted of lighthearted comedies and has hardly been the stuff of high drama. But while the previous Ant-Man films were not deep, their comedy was rooted mostly in characterization, making many of the characters engaging and endearing. In de-emphasizing its comedic roots, however (for Quantumania is a less humorous movie than its predecessors), the film creates a void of interest that is filled not by drama or characterization, aside from a few impactful moments, but by ideas, worldbuilding, and visuals. Whether this is an acceptable substitution depends on one’s preferences. For me, the film evokes a sensibility often found in older sci-fi and fantasy stories, in which the setting and the ideas at play were meant to occupy the audience’s attention more than were its characters or their relationships, which, though hopefully not boring or ill-conceived, were categorically not “the point” of those stories.
Treating this idea at length would exceed the scope of this article, but it seems to me that in recent decades, speculative fiction has by and large come to place more and more emphasis on characterization. Here I think of the stylistic divide between the classic and new series of Doctor Who as an excellent example of this: the two series share most of their DNA when it comes to plot ideas, but the new series places much more emphasis on characterization than the classic series typically did; and if you want evidence for this, simply compare the care and emphasis given in the new series to character exits compared to the same in the classic series, which often felt perfunctory. I mention Doctor Who here because, in terms of its structure and even some of its ideas, Quantumania feels like a story from the classic series of Doctor Who—only with a phenomenal budget. Captures, escapes, strange creatures, the heroes triggering a revolution among the downtrodden to overthrow a despot—these are all classic Doctor Who elements. And as someone who enjoys classic Doctor Who, I do not say that disparagingly.
The Big Picture
As the Marvel Cinematic Universe has expanded and its entries have multiplied, so too have the perspectives from which any specific entry can be analyzed. Case in point, Quantumania is the third and possibly final installment of the Ant-Man film series and can be evaluated on that basis (I say “possibly final” because, as of writing this, I have seen no indication that Marvel Studios intends to produce a fourth film, but I have also seen no definitive statement that Quantumania is the final installment of its series, either). But Quantumania has also been designated the first entry in Phase Five of the MCU and so must carry with it a sense of new beginnings, a sense that a new era in the franchise’s progression has arrived. Phase Five, along with Phases Four and Six, constitute “The Multiverse Saga,” the sequel to “The Infinity Saga,” composed of the MCU’s first three phases. Given this ever-increasing serial complexity, films like Quantumania need to perform well in multiple vectors in order to succeed creatively and artistically. So how well does Quantumania do?
Judged as an Ant-Man film, I would say it fairs remarkably well, given its stylistic and tonal departures from its predecessors. As different as it is, it builds upon those earlier films, especially in regard to the characters and their relationships with each other. It is unclear to me how much time is supposed to have passed between Avengers: Endgame and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, but the relationships between Scott, Cassie, Hank, Janet, and Hope have all changed considerably since we last spent time with these characters. The romantic relationship between Scott and Hope has progressed: they seem to have become a committed couple, and their relationship is no longer characterized by the sometimes playful, sometimes acrimonious, bickering seen earlier. Quantumania does not spend much time on their relationship; but in what little screen time the two characters share, they seem a happy and functional couple, indicating that some time has passed. Likewise, the family dynamic among Hope, Hank, and Janet has changed, with the three seemingly making up for lost time and being the family they should always have been, interrupted by Janet’s entrapment in the Quantum Realm and Hank’s pursuant aloofness. The first two films depicted the gradual healing of Hope and Hank’s relationship, and Janet’s return seems to have resolved any remaining relational difficulties the family may have had. And the antagonism between Scott and Hank has subsided, as well; indeed, Hank’s admission later in the film to having read “every goddamn word” of Scott’s book is somewhat touching, given their testy relationship in prior films. The wholesomeness of these dynamics gives one the sense that time has passed since these characters’ last appearances, which provides a gratifying sense of the passage of narrative time and of character development. It serves a narrative function as well: because the plot splits its time mostly between two groups of characters (Scott and Cassie on one hand, and Hank, Janet, and Hope on the other), they spend much of the film’s runtime trying to reunite with each other, and their eventual reunion is made sweeter by the characters’ newfound affection for each other; had the characters fallen into bickering upon being reunited, our sense of joy at their reunion would have been greatly diminished. So I credit the creators of Quantumania for not deflating the sweetness of the characters’ matured relationships for the sake of easy jokes, especially given the MCU’s willingness to undermine itself in just this way, as seen most fully and frustratingly in last year’s Thor: Love and Thunder, which steadfastly refused to allow its audience to care about its characters or plot. And should Quantumania be the final Ant-Man film, it seems fitting that the series’ final installment would feature its central cast of characters interacting amicably, resolving the acrimony in which their relationships started.
But, of course, Quantumania isn’t just an Ant-Man film; it is also an installment of the larger MCU series. Shared continuity remains a prominent part of the Marvel Studios brand. Marvel Studios’ use of a shared universe for its films differentiated its output from former superhero films and has allowed them to adapt serialized storytelling tropes long prevalent in superhero comics to the cinema. The success of “The Infinity Saga” proved that this style of connected storytelling, long the delight of geeks, can be appreciated by a mainstream audience. But what Marvel Studios has yet to do, and what “The Multiverse Saga” must do to succeed, is to prove that this mainstream audience is interested in seeing them execute a years-spanning film (and now streaming) saga more than once. Is this audience interested in seeing a second, third, or fourth MCU saga? Or did “The Infinity Saga” scratch that itch so thoroughly and successfully that any attempt to repeat it is doomed to diminishing returns?
Many a commentator has opined on “franchise fatigue” and whether the general audience has grown tired of MCU content. Certainly, the sheer amount of content released in Phase Four, released in a relatively brief span, felt overwhelming: Phase Four has the double distinction of having more content than any prior phase and having the shortest release window of the phases. But these discussions consider pace more often than quality, and the latter must be considered. Serialized storytelling has long appealed to the initiated, those willing to devote the necessary time and attention to appreciate the complex ways in which stories can interweave and reinforce each other. But tracking and remembering long-running plot threads requires effort, and the longer these threads, the more time and attention is required to fully engage with them. The success of “The Infinity Saga” demonstrated that a general audience is willing to devote that time and attention given sufficiently engaging stories. But if the quality of these stories dips, and the effort required to engage with them remains constant or increases, the return on investment of the audience’s time, attention, and money dips as well. To be sure, there is some upper limit to the amount of time and attention anyone can devote to a hobby, no matter how rewarding. But it seems certain to me that MCU fatigue would be less (if not necessarily nonexistent) had the quality of Phase Four been higher.
Phase Four, despite some bright spots, seemed unfocused and aimless compared to previous phases; and it largely failed to articulate why a general audience should want more stories from the MCU after the satisfying conclusion of Avengers: Endgame. While the multiverse makes sense as subject matter for a sequel to “The Infinity Saga,” since it expands the narrative scope, “The Multiverse Saga” so far has given its audience fewer markers of narrative progress than did “The Infinity Saga.” While one could accuse “The Infinity Saga” of overreliance on MacGuffins, the story around the Infinity Stones (What are they? Where are they? Who has each of them?) gave the audience an implicit scoreboard whereby they could track where the broader story arc was going. So far “The Multiverse Saga” has introduced many characters and plot elements, but it remains unclear what narrative progress looks like within this new story arc.
Perhaps Quantumania, being the inaugural installment of Phase Five and more concerned with the broader context of its encompassing saga than most Phase Four stories, represents a turning point. To invoke Freytag’s pyramid, perhaps Phase Four was the exposition of “The Multiverse Saga,” and Quantumania, its inciting incident. My inner optimist hopes so. But the fairly negative critical response to Quantumania, as well as its underperforming at the box office, suggests that the film has not convinced filmgoers with faltering commitments to the MCU that they ought to re-up.
Conclusion
Despite the doom and gloom around Quantumania’s performance, and despite my own reservations about the film expressed above, I actually enjoyed the film quite a bit. I found it to be a fun, pulpy old-school sci-fi adventure. Granted, I have a fondness for stories of that sort, whereas popular interest in such stories has waned in recent years. The film is certainly not a masterpiece, being emotionally shallow and lacking much of the lighthearted humor of its predecessors. But it does not deserve the critical trouncing it has received from some quarters. I intend to rewatch the film once it is available on Disney+, and perhaps there it will find new life and new fans. But if you have largely checked out on the MCU, as many have, Quantumania is unlikely to change your mind.
