When it comes to fan complaints about the post-Endgame MCU projects, the lack of a bigger, interconnected narrative has been atop the list. It's not a secret that The Multiverse will ultimately serve as the road map for this chapter of the Marvel saga, but outside of Loki and some sproadic usage in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, this ambitious timeline-hopping concept has been more of a looming future threat than a materialized plan thus far. Kevin Feige and co. decided that the Ant-Man franchise-which had previously served as a "palette cleanser" between the MCU's higher stakes entries -would be responsible for accelerating the development of the Multiverse and well, that plan didn't exactly go well.
As depicted in the trailer, Quantumania focuses on an unplanned trip to the Quantum Realm that is initiated when aspiring scientist Cassie Lang-who has aged about 12 years since Endgame for some reason and is now played by Kathryn Newton-shows off a satellite that can make contact with this magical world that everybody from her father (Paul Rudd) to his current girlfriend (Evangeline Lilly) and her parents (Michelle Phiffer, Michael Douglas) have a long history with. Once Cassie escalates this show and tell by turning the power button on, it's only a matter of moments before the whole damn family gets sucked down into the Quantum Realm and are forced to battle the dangerous tyrant Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) that presides over this weird, dangerous little galaxy if they want to make it back home alive.
Once this Quantum Realm vacation occurs around the 15-minute mark of the movie, it becomes immediately apparent that the comedy-centric team of director Peyton Reed (Bring It On, the previous two Ant-Man movies) and writer Jeff Loveness (Rick and Morty, Jimmy Kimmel Live!) have no clue how to handle material that requires them to table their goofiness. This sprawling world full of unusual creatures, landscapes and people is so visually plain and nondescript in character that it feels as mundane as any boring place on Earth. Despite the massive implications this film is going to have on the broader MCU, there's such a lack of urgency and clarity behind the story (the amount of plot points that are introduced only to be promptly discarded is staggering) that it makes all of the events feel strangely weightless. The closest thing Quantumania has to coherent storytelling is another series of expositional monologue dumps about the rules of the Multiverse-which is both completely unnecessary following Loki doing the exact same thing for 6 hours and pretty insulting to the viewer's intelligence as Disney thinks people need 8+ hours of handholding to properly explain a concept that really isn't all that difficult to comprehend. After a promising sequence at the start of the second act that details the past relationship between them, Majors' imposing Kang and Phiffer's vulnerable badass Janet van Dym aren't given nearly enough to do as the film decides to pivot to rapidly cycling through about 65 more of the aforementioned grossly underdeveloped subplots before pulling out the old Marvel staple of a big monotonous action finale where CGI people slam into each other until the good guys win. To put as mildly as possible, it would be a questionable choice to hire Reed or Loveness to handle another project like this again in the future (given how poorly received Quantumania has been for a Marvel title, it wouldn't be a shock if Loveness got replaced as the writer for Avengers: The Kang Dynasty)
It's equally disheartening, head-scratching and ridiculous that a film that is so valuable to the MCU canon could be so bland and poorly made. This is the type of joyless, sterile mess that could promptly derail a would-be franchise in its infancy, not something constructed by a well-oiled machine that has been the envy of all of Hollywood for the past 15 years. I'm not going to pull out the "oh shit, Marvel is in trouble!!!" like some people have after watching this, but they should absolutely treat the embarrassing ineptitude of Quantumania as a lesson in why hiring individuals that have the right vision and passion to make a given movie work will be crucial to keeping this gravy train from flying off the rails.
Grade: D+
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