Ant-Man and the Wasp: No Room to Breathe in ‘Quantumania’

The X-Men movies ran into a similar issue.

I just saw Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania last night, so this might be rougher and more rambling than usual. In any case, I’ll avoid any significant spoilers (but proceed at your own risk).

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has two title characters, but the movie is hardly about either of them. It’s about setting up the next big villain for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And this exposes the main problem of trying to squeeze serialized superhero stories into an ongoing series of movies.

Superhero movie adaptations can and have worked great with origin stories, like the first Iron Man and Dr. Strange, and movies are also a great fit for hitting the big epic storylines and momentous events, like Infinity War and Endgame. But a movie series only gives us a couple of hours of story every few years for each separate franchise. The MCU has managed to increase that by having characters guest-star and team-up in other movies, but it still doesn’t leave a ton of time for smaller stories or quiet character moments. Some, yes, but not as much as the comic book structure allows.

I was thinking about this recently when rewatching some of the X-Men movies. The X-Men are one of my favorite franchises, and I loved a few of the movies (namely X2: X-Men United, X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Logan). But what really made the comics click, especially in their late ’70s–’90s heyday, were the quieter issues between the huge epic storylines. It was fun to watch this ensemble cast bounce off each other around the mansion as their respective storylines played out. We needed to spend time with these characters just acting human in order to care about the world-shaking, life-and-death storylines, and it worked wonderfully in the comics.

The movies simply didn’t have enough time to give all the characters the attention they needed. The main relationship that came into focus was the friendship/rivalry between Magneto and Professor X. Wolverine, of course, received plenty of development, and part of what made Logan such a great change of pace was that it actually was a smaller-scale movie that focused on just a few characters. But throughout the series, most of the X-Men got shortchanged, even Jean Grey, despite two attempts at the filming the Phoenix Saga.

A proper X-Men adaptation could work as a television series, provided it had the budget of Game of Thrones to pull off the special effects. A prose novel series could also work. But movies, due to time limitations, need to skip far too much, and the X-Men suffered for it.

And that’s the sense I got with the new Ant-Man movie. Ironically enough for a movie featuring Kang, it doesn’t have enough time to develop everything that needs to be developed. The first two movies, Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp, both did a good job of zeroing in on the relationship between Scott (Paul Rudd) and his daughter Cassie and also between Hope (Evangeline Lilly) and her parents, Hank (Michael Douglas) and Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), but that all feels taken for granted here.

Cassie’s older now (and played by Kathryn Newton), but we barely get a glimpse of the new family dynamic before everyone’s sucked into the Quantum Realm. Due to the events of the last Avengers movies, Scott had lost five years with his daughter. His grief about that lost time should have been the core of this movie—the gushing wound that gives this story its soul. It’s touched on, but it doesn’t get the focus it deserves. We also don’t get any real sense of how that time affected Cassie. (Was she with her mother and/or stepdad or entirely alone? Maybe I missed a line somewhere, but I can’t recall.)

When I watched the trailers, I thought Kang (Jonathan Majors) was going to try to tempt Scott by offering him a way to regain that lost time. Kang might pose as a friend for a while, but Scott would ultimately realize that getting what he wants would serve some villainous end. Scott would have to make a heartbreaking sacrifice and, along the way, learn to be grateful for the time that still lies ahead. Something like that.

But that’s not what we get.

We do learn about an interesting backstory set during the many years Janet spent lost in the Quantum Realm. I’ll avoid specifics, but basically it establishes a history between Janet and Kang. If this were a comic book series, the creative team probably would have devoted an entire issue or more to showing these two stranded together in the Quantum Realm, developing a sort of friendship as they plot their escape, until Janet discovers just how evil her new friend is and then has to make a tough decision.

As it is, the scenes between Michelle Pfeiffer and Jonathan Majors are the strongest in the movie. The backstory sounds like it would have made a better movie than the actual movie. These two characters have a connection and they matter to each other, and this should have been their story.

Scott, however, has no real connection to Kang. Sure, Kang threatens his daughter, like any halfway-decent villain would, but that’s very surface-level. It’s a conflict without any substance. Compare Ant-Man and Kang to Professor X and Magneto, and it’s no contest as to who’s got the richer conflict.

The Quantum Realm itself also doesn’t receive sufficient world-building. That’s something else that might have been addressed in a monthly comic book series or TV show. It’s all very imaginative, and we meet several colorful residents of this realm, but they’re little more than set dressing.

And poor Hope has no arc whatsoever. She’s there. She participates in the action. But you might easily forget that she’s supposed to be the co-lead.

Everyone involved in this movie is clearly talented, and I think if they weren’t tied to the grand design of the broader MCU, they could have pulled off a fun and exciting movie. But I can’t help but feel that this movie’s purpose isn’t to tell a good Ant-Man and Wasp story—it’s to sell Kang as the main threat of future movies.

On the Kang front, it succeeds. Kang indeed demonstrates the potential to be a formidable villain going forward, though of course it will depend on which specific superheroes he faces and the dynamic that forms between him and them.

However, I came to see an Ant-Man movie. I was hoping for a more character-based story about Scott trying to reconnect with his daughter after several lost years. But I guess that didn’t quite fit into our two hours in the Quantum Realm.