Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania 2023
A-
I was able to get IMAX tickets to a preview screening the day before opening, so the theater was nearly full and enthusiastic. Even though the seats weren’t good, the movie (or the corner that I could see the best) looked and sounded great. There is a decent amount of humor, some nice character development with Ant-Man’s daughter, Wasp, and her parents, and then you get some story on Kang, the main villain. Expect to seem more of him in some form for the rest of Phase 5 (this being the first installment). I thought Ant-Man was too goofy, Ant-Man and Wasp was an improvement, and this one is also better, feeling like a full-fledged Marvel movie, albeit without any other Avengers. Jonathan Majors is great as Kang. I‘m giving this an A-, which may be overly generous due to having an enthusiastic audience, free tickets, and expectations lowered by the 50 it received at Metacritic.
spoilers
One of my big problems, especially in superhero movies, is when the superhero is faced with a choice of saving millions of people or saving one person and they choose one person. I get that it is a hard decision, but it should also be an easy decision. If evil Kang needs something in order to rule the universe, as a superhero, you should never, ever give that to him, even if it means certain death or death of a loved one. Anything else is dumb, cowardly, and entirely too dangerous. So that happens here, but I am giving it a pass.
Also, the ants save the day and carry Kang off, but they don’t kill him? They just let him return to headquarters? Then Kang gets in a big fight with Ant-Man just as the portal to the rest of the universe is closing and he sticks around long enough to keep beating up Ant-Man when if he just stopped for a second he could make a run for the portal? That didn’t make sense, especially since he would do anything to escape. I’m also not sure that Ant-Man was really needed to go get the energy source. If you just need pym particles to shrink it back down, why not just take those from him and do it yourself? You can’t really question the craziness of it all I guess.
Written: 15 Feb 2023
Owned on: Digital