By Keira Murphy Clinton
March 7, 2023
The newest addition to Marvel’s Ant Man trilogy, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, takes viewers along Scott Lang’s adventure into the Quantum Realm. Sparking phase five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this movie dives deeper into the ideas of the Multiverse and Quantum Realm, which Marvel has recently been developing.
The movie starts with Lang /Ant Man (Paul Rudd), walking down the street, living a seemingly normal life and contemplating what comes next for him. This seemingly normal life is soon interrupted when his daughter Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton) builds a machine with Scott’s close friend and father of his girlfriend Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) that sends signals into the Quantum Realm. Cassie’s machine has unintended consequences and it ends up trapping Cassie, Scott, Hank, Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), who is Scott’s girlfriend, and Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), who is Hope’s mother, all in the Quantum Realm. The group soon discovers that the Quantum Realm has many different creatures and people with their own conflicts and that pose new threats to their departure from the Quantum Realm and the safety of their physical world at home.
During the group's time spent in the Quantum Realm, they meet a new villain, Kang (Jonathan Majors). Marvel fans may remember Kang from the end of the Loki series, and in this movie, Kang is introduced to viewers as a menacing and dangerous villain who was exiled to the Quantum Realm for destroying and conquering many worlds and groups of people. Other than Janet, this is the group’s first time meeting Kang. Janet was trapped in the Quantum Realm for many years and she only now admits to her family that she knew about Kang and the other people in the Quantum Realm.
With friends that Scott, Cassie, Hope, Hank, and Janet meet along their journey, they fight to overcome Kang and his empire while trying to escape the Quantum Realm without allowing Kang to return to the physical world.
The actors all did a phenomenal job portraying their characters and engaging with the audience. In particular, Newton did a great job playing her confident and witty character Cassie in a way that created a good role model for girls. Also, Pfeiffer did an excellent job at portraying a woman conflicted between her love for her family and doing the right thing for the greater good of the world. And, as usual, Rudd brought his charismatic personality and ironic humor to this movie.
The visuals in this movie were spectacular, although they were a bit similar to prior Star Wars movies. Where this movie fell flat was the actual story line. Many parts of the movie were not well developed and left viewers wondering why certain things were happening and even included. For example, while Bill Murray’s cameo as Lord Krylar was humorous, it left viewers with many questions about his relevance to the Quantum Realm and Janet’s past. In addition, the giant head character of Darren Cross (now MODOK) (Corrie Stall) was a bit bizarre.
As the latest installment in the Marvel movie universe, it is definitely helpful to have watched prior Marvel movies and shows, particularly the Loki series and the past Ant Man movies, before seeing this movie. Ultimately, this movie served the purpose of introducing Kang as a villain in the Marvel world and setting the stage for the next Avengers movie, even though the storyline could have been developed in more detail to give it more impact as a standalone movie.
Meet the Writer!
Keira Murphy Clinton, class of 2025, is an Arts and Entertainment editor. She also competes as a marauder on the field hockey, basketball, and lacrosse team. In her free time she enjoys baking, skiing, shopping with her friends, and spending time with her family.
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