The key thing that the adventures of Ant-Man, either as part of the big Avengers picture or in his solo side excursions, has been the lack of pretentiousness that has at times threatened to overwhelm its brethren in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While those others films were burdened with increasingly convoluted backstories and the need to ensure that everything tied into everything else, the Ant-Man stories were looser and buoyed by a nice sense of humor, the irresistible charm of lead Paul Rudd and the relative lack of import about them—they were less concerned with world building than in simply providing a couple of hours of escapist fare and were all the better for it. For the third solo Ant-Man exercise, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Marvel has decided to go in a decidedly different direction by using it as the foundation for the MCU’s fifth phase of storytelling by establishing the big villain that will presumably dominate the proceedings for the next few films. This brings an added amount of dramatic weight to the proceedings that the film is not unable to support and this, along with its attempts to balance the usual looseness with a more self-serious approach results, results in a tonal mishmash that has a few bright moments amidst a whole lot of dead air.
As the film opens, Ant-Man, a.k.a. Scott Lang (Rudd), is basking in his celebrity as an Avenger, even going so far as to publish his autobiography. This is somewhat to the consternation of his firebrand activist daughter, Cassie (Kathryn Newton), who thinks that he should still be using his powers to fight for good even if there is no big imminent worldwide threat to be had at the moment. In her downtime, Cassie has invented a new device capable of sending a signal to the Quantum Realm as a way of mapping it but her test back fires winds up sucking her, Scott and the Pyns—Hank (Michael Douglas), Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Hope, a.k.a. The Wasp (Evangeline Lily)—into the minuscule universe, where Scott and Cassie are separated from the others. While most of them are fascinated by the various bits of undistinguished CGI flotsam and jetsam floating about, Janet—who had spent 30 years trapped there—knows that they are all in danger and need to get out of there as soon as possible, though she tends to be maddeningly reticent when it comes to explaining exactly what it is she is so afraid of encountering, one of the most irritating aspects of the fairly lazy and overly familiar screenplay.
That turns out to be Kang (Jonathan Majors), who Janet encountered during her previous stay in the Quantum Realm. At first, he seemed friendly enough but just at the point when they had fixed his ship to allow them to finally escape, she discovered his true nature as an all-powerful conqueror who used his powers to destroy entire timelines in the multiverse until he was banished to the Quantum Realm on the basis that he could never escape there. After being foiled by Janet, he began running amok down there, amassing an army to conquer and destroy all the civilizations while always seeking a chance to finally escape and wreak havoc on the multiverse once again. As it turns out, Scott holds the key to allow Kang his freedom and with the life of Cassie in the balance, he is forced to comply. Meanwhile, Hank, Janet and Lily try to reach them and stop Kang before he escapes and dooms the lives of trillions of people throughout the multiverse.
This is obviously a darker, heavier and more complex story than we have seen in the previous solo Ant-Man adventures but the shift in tone just does not quite work in this case. Instead of reveling in its own intrinsic silliness and giving viewers a couple of hours of heedless fun, returning director Peyton Reed is stuck with setting up a whole series of films to come while establishing the bonafides of its chief villain even as it keeps key details about his past and his powers vague so that they can be revealed more fully in those subsequent stories. Majors is a strong presence, to be sure, but since so much of him is kept in the dark from use (though apparently those who come into the film having watched the Loki series may have a better handle on him), he doesn’t really come across as a particularly memorable bad guy. Likewise, all the dramatic foundation pouring on display may wind up paying off at some point down the line but here comes across as fairly tedious—the glimpses of the Quantum world and its residents are odd, to be sure, but none of them really stick in the mind afterwards and the big action beats are noisy and flashy enough but mostly generic in their execution.
There are times when Quantumania strives to emulate the goofy nature of its predecessors—most notably during a sequence featuring a brief appearance by Bill Murray as the treacherous Lord Krylar—but they feel more forced this time around and clash uneasily with the more overtly self-serious tone. By keeping the main characters separated for much of the running time, the film keeps the engaging byplay between the main characters to an absolute minimum with dire results. Douglas and Pfeiffer are both kind of wasted here—the latter proving to be a source of narrative frustration due to her character’s inexplicable refusal to explain what is going on to anyone for no other reason than to keep the plot going—and Lily factors so little in the proceedings that you wonder why they bothered leaving her character’s name in the title since she is barely in it. As Ant-Man, Rudd is still good but, like the film as a whole, is too often relegated to a more serious-minded approach that keeps his offbeat charms to the side. As the other newcomer to the fold, Newton is okay but after establishing a potentially intriguing position for her character—challenging her father on his reluctant to use his power and prestige to take a stand regarding real-life concerns—that all gets shoved to the side so that she can go about punching weird Quantum creatures and such.
Practically right from the start, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania practically announces that it is nothing more than an extended prologue for the events that will unfold on television and the big screen for the next year or so. This may be enough for the hardcore fans but since it means that none of the story being told is going to be concluded in a satisfactory manner, those merely looking for an entertaining film along the lines of the first two stand-alone entries will probably come away from it feeling disappointment. If it had focused on other MCU characters, I wouldn’t have minded or cared that much but by using the Ant-Man series as its entry point, it largely eradicates the charms of those films and turns it into just another Avengers movie and not a particularly interesting one at that.