Ant Man and The Wasp: Quantumania review: This predictable multiverse tale will cure your insomnia

 

Ant Man and The Wasp: Quantumania review: This predictable multiverse tale will cure your insomnia

What: Ant Man and The Wasp: Quantumania – this MCU phase 5 is a yawn fest rants Grouch on the Couch.

Ant Man and The Wasp: Quantumania review

My biggest disappointment first: Paul Rudd is no longer cute. No, the Sun hasn’t risen in the West, it’s just that the writers think that Scott Lang has to continue being the same ole overprotective dad that he was years and years ago, while everyone else has grown up or simply outgrown their roles: his wife is head of the Corporation and the Wasp, his daughter Cassie has grown up and creates a device to send a signal to the quantum universe, his mentor Hank Van Dyne and his wife Janet Van Dyne are creating new things too. But Ant Man? He’s just sitting on his laurels… So, he’s boring.

That gorgeous Paul Rudd, who made our hearts skip several heartbeats when he showed up in Clueless, is just annoying in this film. How can a hero not want to help good aliens who are being attacked by mean aliens? How can he just want to save his daughter and no one else?

 

The story is simple:

Cassie (Kathryn Newton) makes a device that sends signals to the quantum universe and though the family watches the signal with fascination, Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) is terrified.

But before she can tell what and why, the whole family is sucked into the quantum universe. How they fight the fearful Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) and save the good aliens is the story. Even the villain’s name ‘Kang’ is a horrid copy of Star Trek’s fearsome Kahn!

But Marvel has done this so often, you just sit back and watch (someone sitting behind me was snoring gently), a little bored of this seriously tiresome quantum universe that looks like fantasy wallpapers of bad underwater scenes. How does Marvel even think that they can compete with the stunningly beautiful aquatic scenes of James Cameron’s Avatar 2: Way Of The Water? Nothing visualised here seems original. Even the alien creatures trying to joke seem forced. To see Katy M. O’Brian (the Comms officer from The Mandalorian) was the fierce rebel leader - named Jentorra - was fun, but then there was a mind reader that mildly distracted us.

 

Meanwhile, Michelle Pfeiffer’s Janet and Micheal Douglas’ Hank and the Wasp, Evangeline Lily have been separated from Scott Lang (Ant Man, Paul Rudd) and his daughter Cassie. Janet says she can get help from someone who can reunite the family. And you don’t have to be a Marvel fan to predict where they will meet this help: a bar filled with interesting looking aliens. It’s so predictable you begin to wish you could fall asleep in the movie theatre like the person behind me…

The villain turns out to be a man who can travel through time killing everything and everybody and has an army of stormtrooper type army. He behaves like a 70s Bollywood villain: tumhari beti hamare paas hai, energy core mere paas laao. Why on Earth can’t he send his murdering machine, you ask? Don’t bother. The movie isn’t that interesting. The rebels and stormtroopers fight in the end and the best part of the whole film comes from the mind reader popping in and getting a password. 

---

---