c/o IGN

Warning: This article contains spoilers for “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania”

I hated, hated, hated this movie. Is it the worst movie I’ve ever seen? No. That title still goes to “The Kissing Booth 2.” I think the best way to describe this absolute catastrophe of a feature would be with a long and contemplative sigh. I enjoyed it a little while I was in the theater, but the more I thought about it afterward, the more I internalized how absolutely lifeless it was.

The story follows Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and an evil blue dude named Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors). I kid you not, I cannot remember a single objective that the main villain, Kang, wants to accomplish. The way he is portrayed is so unbearably convoluted and passive that I genuinely don’t know what the writers wanted me to think of him. However, he was my favorite part of the film, if I had to pick one. Majors is a great actor, but his character was awfully shallow and given jack shit to do.

I wish I could say the whole cast was giving it their all, but I’d be lying. Kathryn Newton, who plays Scott’s now-grown daughter Cassie, gives a performance that is equivalent to a two-hour-long surprised Pikachu face. The fact that Emma Furhmann—who originally played Cassie in “Avengers: Endgame”—showed more emotion in five seconds of screen time than Newton did in this entire movie is depressing. That said, every other actor was trying their best, especially Majors. Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Evangeline Lilly didn’t phone it in, but, like Majors, their characters were not given much to work with. For a movie titled “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania,” you’d expect The Wasp to be in the story for over fifteen minutes.

The film’s plot as well as its dialogue are the most cookie-cutter and boring of all the Marvel Universe movies. I bet that early-2000s Craig Mazin (who used to write crappy parody movies before writing HBO’s “Chernobyl” and “The Last of Us”) could write a better script than this. With lines such as “There’s something I should have told you long ago,” this movie includes nearly every corporate dialogue cliché that exists. Thank God there’s no mention of “He’s right behind me, isn’t he?” because that seriously would have lowered this film’s score even further than it already was. 

Then there’s the writer, Jeff Loveness. He’s had such a dog-shit start to his film career; it’s laughable how he even got this job in the first place when he doesn’t have a single film writing credit to his name. Let me repeat that. He does not have a single significant screenwriting credit, aside from a handful of “Rick and Morty” episodes. If Marvel has already given him enough money to live comfortably, I’m fine with him never getting a screenwriting job again. In fact, I’d prefer that he doesn’t. Oh wait, never mind, because he’s already signed on to write the next “Avengers” movie, so screw that I guess. I think ChatGPT could write a script 500 times better than this steaming pile of diarrhea.

Then there’s the CGI, which, surprisingly, wasn’t bad. The creature designs were cool, and I could tell that the art department had a field day creating different and interesting quantum aliens from all over the universe. I definitely liked seeing all the varying and creative ways the animators made up new species and did world-building on the fly, and that’s probably the reason I found some momentary enjoyment in the film. I also enjoyed William Jackson-Harper’s (known for playing Chidi Anagonye on “The Good Place”) five-minute appearance. He stood out to me more than most, though that may be because I’m a fan of his. 

Oh, and we haven’t even gotten to M.O.D.O.K. yet. Who is M.O.D.O.K., you ask? He is unintentionally the funniest thing Marvel has ever made. M.O.D.O.K. (Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing) is a Marvel Comics villain who is quite literally a giant floating head with teeny arms and legs. In the past, he’s been ridiculous and campy, but it’s possible for him to be menacing due to his uncanny appearance and freakish voice. This film’s version of M.O.D.O.K., however, is a regular dude’s face stretched and pasted onto a tiny robot body who resembles Mr. Electric from “Sharkboy and Lavagirl” more than anything. This is a character who was legitimately more intimidating in the “Phineas & Ferb: Mission Marvel” crossover.

The funniest part about this whole movie is that the heroes don’t defeat the villain by the end. They don’t even get close to him until a deus ex machina in the form of a hyper-intelligent ant army swarms him instead. The villain is defeated by fucking ants. Sure, the movie is about Ant-Man, but that doesn’t mean the titular insects can just cop out the entire conflict.

Overall, I’d rate this movie 3/10; I don’t recommend it. Don’t make the mistake I did and pay money to watch this movie. It’ll only encourage Marvel to make more like it. I hope that Jeff Loveness never works in Hollywood again and instead finds his true calling doing woodworking or something, anything but this. Somebody has to stop him before he kills more franchises and allows for more terrible writing at this level of the industry.
Nate Wheeler can be reached at nwheeler@wesleyan.edu.