With Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania this week the new phase of the Marvel universe is inaugurated . After a long advertising campaign, the film can now be seen in all theaters, and according to what we have heard from Kevin Feige and company, it is the most important Marvel film since Avengers: Endgame .
We are introduced to the lovable Scott Lang ( Paul, Rudd ), better known as Ant-Man , living a laid-back life, away from the daily conflicts of any superhero. He has even taken the time to write a book where he recounts his experience alongside The Avengers and how he allegedly saved the day. However, his time with Hope (Evangeline Lilly) , Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) is interrupted by his teenage daughter, Cassie (Kathryn Newton) , who keeps getting into trouble with the law for his work as an activist.
Cassie , who is also an engineering genius, has been experimenting with the Quantum Realm and created a device capable of “mapping” the underworld. With that device she planned to rescue her father when he was lost. However, Janet , who spent years in that space, recognizes that this device is dangerous, and just as she turns it off, the entire family, including a group of ants, are reduced to a quantum level and sent to that world where they they will find the greatest threat that has ever existed: Kang the Conqueror ( Jonathan Majors ).
There is no doubt that Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quatumania will become a blockbuster for Marvel due to its great cast, the colorful special effects and that familiar tone full of jokes and cameos that pleases all fans. To this we must add the statements of Kevin Feige , director and CEO of Marvel , who have sold the film, putting it at the same level as Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Kang at the level of Thanos . With this background, fans of the Marvel Universe come to the room with very high expectations. And that is where the problem is: nothing is delivered that was promised .
The story of Quantumania takes place in the Quantum Realm , a world that looks like a cross between a Star Wars -type space odyssey combined with an inner world like the one in Fantastic Voyage , full of colorful characters that look like the aliens from the bar. Mos Eisley . The creation of this world is a long and inconsistent environment created entirely in CGI , so unreal that it ceases to be interesting within the first few minutes of starting the film. The photography of the legend Bill Pope , who worked beautifully in The Matrix and other works by Sam Raimi and Edgar Wright, it gets lost in the texture, as the whole environment looks like something out of a 3D image library .
In this context, we are presented with a story full of shoehorned characters , abusive coincidences, clichés and jokes that add nothing to the story and that seem like various recycled sequences from other Marvel movies , but not from the best.
Because they add a lot of new faces, character development is nil . At times the film is only responsible for presenting one after the other in the hope that each one is more incredible than the last, but it is not. Where this flaw is most noticeable is in Kang ‘s character : he’s the bad guy, he’s strong, he’s a genius who wants to get out of the Quantum Realm and that’s all we know about him.
On the acting side, Paul Rudd does his thing and saves a good part of the movie along with the other great actors who accompany him, but there isn’t much drama where they can show off their range or romance to make it click with Evangeline . The other actor who stands out is Jonathan Majors , who proves that if he was put in a non- PG-13 movie like this, he would manage to be totally terrifying and make Thanos himself tremble .
Following the Marvel formula , obviously everything will be defined in a great battle between CGI characters , where everything explodes and disintegrates while the “good” people scream and fight to save their universe.
