'Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania' Is Lost in the Multiverse
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This review contains spoilers for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
In comic books, a multiverse event—usually characterized by infinite timelines and worlds colliding at once—foreshadows a return to the basics. It may seem counterintuitive: why complicate the story if you want to, at the very end, simplify it? Well, some accidents require complex solutions. Maybe a writer made a choice that fans grew to hate. Remember when Marvel split up Peter Parker and Mary Jane? How about the time Captain America was a Nazi? Whoops! Cue the hero going on a quest through the multiverse, meeting all of their various variants, leading to the moment when they press the magic button that makes their life normal again. (Looking at you, No Way Home.) Tabula rasa. Clean slate.
So you can understand why a realm of zero consequences is so appealing to Marvel Studios. The multiverse allows Marvel to twist and turn in whatever way the box office dictates. If something works, great. If not? Magic reset button. You had the feeling that Marvel's screwing around with the idea of a zillion-odd universes would, you know, start to hurt the story. Enter Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, in theaters this Friday. The third installment in director Peyton Reed's Ant-Man franchise is so confused about where it fits into the Marvel Cinematic Universe that it begins to lose all meaning. The first two Ant-Man films succeeded because they kept—pun slightly intended—a relatively small scope. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) was just a tiny hero who shrinks down and talks to ants! Now, the little guy has to introduce the MCU's "Multiverse Saga." Sure, ants can carry 20 times their own body weight—but the fate of the multiverse is too heavy a lift for Rudd and his crew.
Kang Makes a Bang
After a cameo in Loki, Quantumania reintroduces us to Kang the Conquerer (Jonathan Majors)—a villain with so many variants throughout the multiverse that he can constantly fall like sandcastles and be resurrected anew. The studio is starting to demand that you keep up with your viewing homework—so yes, it takes the collective might of 30-plus Marvel films to understand Quantumania. Maybe it's just me, but I would love to see the ant guy just chill with some caterpillars for a bit. Maybe even run from a big beetle. That's all the action that Ant-Man requires. But no. The bug boy must fight God.
Combining elements of Avengers #8: "Kang the Conqueror" and Fantastic Four #76: "Stranded in Sub-Atomica!," our ant family is quickly thrust into the Quantum Realm for a massive adventure. Cassie (Kathryn Newton) does what's very likely the dumbest thing we've seen since Thor didn’t strike Thanos in the brain: shecreate a device that accidentally sends her, Scott Lang (Rudd), Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), back to the place of their nightmares. Immediately, we’re introduced to far too many creatures and characters. There's a weird blob who is obsessed with the amount of holes that humans have! And a robot-like being with a laser cannon for a head! Fun. The Quantum Realm is described as a tiny world beneath our world, and that’s the best explanation we’re going to get. But I have questions. How did all so many aliens and creatures get here? What kinds of beings are the humanoid cameo characters played by Bill Murray and William Jackson Harper?
In fact, Quantumania never stops throwing new things at you. Say what you will about Avatar: The Way of Water, but at least we swam with the alien whales for longer than a minute. At one point in Quantumania, our heroes board a stingray-like amoeba to a Star Wars-looking city—and the amoeba parks itself, as if it knew that it was functionally just a bus for transport. Still, Quantumania does have a few bright spots. The brawl between Kang and Ant-Man near the end of the film is by far the best scene—as in Majors's performance as Marvel's big bad. When the CGI onslaught finally takes a breather during their one-and-one fight, you truly feel every right hook and broken rib. But one good scene can't fix a film overloaded with so much plot—and so many characters—that you'll actually wish everyone slowed down to tell their corny jokes.
Where Does Marvel's Multiverse Saga Go From Here?
There's only one way to explain the exiled Kang the Conqueror: if Thanos wanted to kill half of all life to prevent the universe from running out of resources, Kang wants to kill half of all universes to prevent the resource of time from running out. Why? Because the universes throughout the multiverse are inexplicably colliding with one another—which is an idea we've hardly touched on in the MCU so far, despite likely being the new doomsday scenario the Avengers will have to stop next. Still confused? Well, it's only going to get more complicated as each film bleeds into the next.
As we learn in the end-credits scene, Quantumania's Kang was just one variant of the villain throughout the multiverse. Audiences were treated to a whole Council of Kangs (Kangses?) large enough to fill a stadium—including incredibly silly variants that I couldn't believe were actually put on screen, like Pharaoh Rama-Tut and the big-helmeted Immortus. If you're worried about trying to keep up with all this for the next three years, just know that they're basically all the exact same guy. Or you could put your pencils down for this next chapter of Marvel films and just enjoy the ride.
Superhero movies used to go something like: a man who became part-spider saves his girlfriend from a part-octopus man. Or, man dresses up as a bat to intimidate a city full of criminals who are even crazier than him. But this? Whatever the MCU is setting up for its next Avengers film, 2025's Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, will take another thousand-some words to explain. Avid Marvel comics readers may have an idea about what’s to come if they’ve read Secret Wars—but how it’ll play out on screen over the the next three years is solely up to K.E.V.I.N. Maybe there's an audience willing to dissect every sentence that Kang speaks, but these films shouldn't turn me into a guy who talks about the MCU the same way that some people obsess over JFK assassination conspiracies. Call me a doctor, because I've got Quantumania.
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