More dreary and bombastic than outlandishly spirited fun is the first film in the latest phase of the MCU.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania stars Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Douglas, and Kathryn Newton as it sprays comedy within the heavy-handedness through drama and science-fiction.
Mostly, this third installment again from Peyton Reed is caught up in the aura or scale from a subatomic world that any whimsical leanings can’t offset. Rudd does his best smugly appealing way with the title character given that the script has a ‘forceful’ influence from a hugely profitable Disney enterprise . Even with Pfeiffer and Newton dealing with their characters’ fractured past as Janet Van Dyke and daughter Cassie or ‘Peanut’ to likeable effect.
Yet, what stands out in a tale that has a strange hallucinatory quality about it with inhabitants in a way that could be a cousin to Guardians of the Galaxy (a sequel is coming later this year) is the imposing grace of the antagonist who’s appeared in the studio’s small-screen “Loki” has quite the pull on inner space in ways that is reminiscent of a Thanos.
Consequently, Jonathan Majors of the upcoming Creed III offers some creditable means into Kang the Conqueror though the sensory power of Quantumania reveals growing littleness of the output from what can offer more intriguingly coherent realms and conflict. If one considers Spider-Man No Way Home or Avengers: Endgame as the ultimate confrontation likely looms much further down the road.