You know what? It’s probably fine. Like I said, life doesn’t make any sense. So maybe stop asking so many questions, Scott. Stop overthinking it.
I’ve been overall a fan of the energy Paul Rudd has brought to the MCU with Ant-Man, a kind of scruffy, but warm humanity. I’ve liked the way Rudd’s Ant-Man bounces off the other MCU heroes and I was also a big fan of the first Ant-Man film. I was not sold on Ant-Man & the Wasp, a movie that barely hung together as more than a loose-limbed hang-out movie. It didn’t really have a villain or energy or any sense of stakes, one of the most ephemeral movies of the MCU. With Quantumania, the creative team behind this trilogy set out to correct all of those things by giving us a charismatic villain, stakes that threaten the entirety of the multiverse and an epic adventure. It is only sporadically successful.
I’m going to be completely conventional here and say that the one thing that really works here is Jonathan Majors as Kang. Kang is a well-written character, I think, but Majors’ performance is really wonderful. Even when the words he’s saying are megalomaniacal boilerplate, Majors has a stillness and a certainty that make him genuinely unsettling. He dominates a screen filled with CGI creatures and explosions and wacky pratfalls simply by finding quietness and control. He’s more arresting than he would be if he were stomping around screaming; the threat is all the more frightening because he’s so collected and in control and you can’t help but fear the moment he loses that control. I have no idea what the MCU is going to do with Majors and Kang going forward, but whatever happens, I’m glad we got this performance as it is genuinely fantastic.
As for the rest, well, Paul Rudd remains a charming and affable guy to hang around with. Michelle Pfeiffer gets more to do than she did in either of her prior appearances and she gets some nice moments. Kathryn Newton is good as Cassie Lang. Other than that, it’s kind of a mess. The Quantum Realm is simultaneously too silly and not weird enough, managing to thread a a needle I wasn’t really sure existed. I saw in an interview that Michael Douglas talked about how Hank Pym was more “relaxed” in this movie than in the previous ones and I think what he’s referring to is how he doesn’t really care to be in these movies anymore and can hardly be bothered to give any sort of a performance. Evangeline Lilly, I think, would LIKE to give a performance, but she’s even more sidelined here than she was in Ant-Man & the Wasp and they’ve given her an even worse haircut to boot. There’s a lot of superficial silliness in the Quantum Realm, but not a lot of actual humor and nowhere is that more obvious than in the single scene cameo by Bill Murray who shows up and stands there in a weird costume, but can’t be bothered to actually have any jokes. MODOK? I’m not even going there. As a long-time defender of Darren Cross from the first Ant-Man as one of the MCU’s most underrated villains, I’m just not going there. Except to say that, yes, the special effects are terrible and I was hoping that was intentional, but I guess it wasn’t, so. I have no idea how this movie played in 3D because I’ve never seen effects that were THIS 2D, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, it’s kind of interesting putting this up against Ant-Man & the Wasp. Ant-Man & the Wasp was the first MCU film that I’d given a straight-up recommendation against watching, but I’d watch that one again before I’d watch Quantumania. Ant-Man & the Wasp at least had a grasp on using the growing and shrinking mechanics in some creative ways and was genuinely funny at times; weirdly, in a movie entirely predicated on shrinking to the Quantum Level, this movie really doesn’t utilize those mechanics much at all. But there’s no denying that Quantumania has that one central virtue of Majors’ great performance as a great character. I suppose they’re both best watched on YouTube in clipreels or something. Phase 4 of the MCU was an admitted rollercoaster in terms of quality, whipsawing from absolute brilliance like Multiverse of Madness to absolute trash like Love & Thunder. Moving into Phase 5, they’ve managed to pack the rollercoaster into just the very first movie; when Majors is on screen, you feel like you’re watching a real movie and a good one too, but when he isn’t, the movie feels unfinished and you kind of start to think it should have been. 2 ½ stars.
tl;dr – half-hearted & mostly uninspired, Quantumania does boast a genuinely excellent performance from Jonathan Majors as a fascinating villain; other than that, it’s hard to care. 2 ½ stars.