Attack Heroes
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◇Excellence in Visual Arts, IGF 2015 ◇Excellence in Visual Arts, GAD 2016 ◇The best Indie game...
Beginner's Guide to Creating Manga Art: Learn to Draw, Color and Design Characters
Steven Cummings, Gonzalo Ordonez and 3DTotal Team
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Bursting with knowledge and brilliant artwork, Beginner's Guide to Creating Manga Art offers a...
The Manga Guide to Microprocessors
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Hailed as "stimulus for the next generation of scientists" by Scientific Computing, each volume in...
The Songs
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From the bestselling author of Mr Toppit, a Richard & Judy Book Club pick, comes a riotous, darkly...
Highballs for Breakfast
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"A splendid anthology". (The Times). No writer knew better than PG Wodehouse how a drink can lift...
Modern Romance
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A hilarious, eye-opening tour of the new romantic landscape, from one of America's sharpest comic...
Richard Ayoade recommended Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) in Movies (curated)
The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoy's
Shaun Simon, Gerard Way and Artist: Becky Cloonan
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'Over a decade ago a team of revolutionaries called the Killjoys lost their lives while saving a...
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Flann O'Brien's innovative metafictional work, whose unruly characters strike out their own paths in...
BankofMarquis (1832 KP) rated Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania (2023) in Movies
Mar 18, 2023
The bad news is that for casual fans – and folks that are just plain tired of the MCU – things are going to get more complex and convoluted as the MCU heads deeper into the “Comic Bookiness” of their source material.
Such is the case with ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA, the 3rd standalone Ant Man film starring Paul Ruud, Evangeline Lilly and Michael Douglas. It is a very “Comic Bookie” film in that it takes the audience to the “Quantum Realm” and all the quirky characters and locations therein.
Director Peyton Reed (who helmed the previous 2 Ant-Man films) leans into this “Comic Bookieness” in that he accents the weird and bizarre and creates comic-book-like panels on the images on the screen. Consequently, this makes the film interesting to look at, but for the most part, there is not much substance under the surface.
For their part, Ruud, Lilly, Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer (returning from the 2nd Ant-Man film) and newcomer Kathryn Newton (taking over the role of Ruud’s daughter, Cassie) are game in what they are asked to work with and react to (mostly to a green screen with CGI filled in later) and they all are winning (enough) presences on screen to spend a very enjoyable time with.
Jonathan Majors is on-board as Kang the Conqueror (a version of him was seen at the end of the first season of the Disney+ series LOKI) and he brings his considerable acting chops, gravitas and weight to the proceedings. He is a force to be reckoned with which was apparent from almost the first time he commanded the screen in this film. It will be interesting to see where he takes things from here.
The problem with this film is that it is (mostly) style with very little substance. Necessarily, the plot drives a more dramatic, darker theme to this Ant-Man film than in previous outings and the film suffers because of it. One of the charms of the Ant-Man films is that Director Reed was able to lean into the inherent goofiness of Paul Ruud and the absurd idea of him being able to shrink. That quirkiness and sense of fun is gone – as are regular characters played in the past 2 films by the likes of Bobby Canavale, Judy Greer, Randall Park (who has a blink or you’ll miss him cameo) and (most egregiously) Michael Pena.
What they are replaced by are some quirky “Quantum Realm” characters – most of whom are CGI and are voiced by some very good voice performers – it just doesn’t hit the same, since the overall theme is darker. Katy M. O’Brian and William Jackson Harper (who is rounding into a very intriguing performer) bring gusto to their roles as a few members of the Quantum realm, which helps pick up the sagginess of this film, but not enough. Not even a Bill Murray appearance can elevate this film to something funner than it is.
All in all a “fine” entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – and one that will remind you very much that you are watching a film based on Comic Book characters – but it falls squarely in the middle of the MCU entries...a catalogue of which is becoming very deep (maybe too deep), indeed.
Letter Grade: B
7 stars (out of 10) and you can take that to the Bank(ofMarquis)