Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania Parent Guide

As the incredible Ant-Man, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) was instrumental in helping the Avengers save the world from Thanos, and even in restoring the people he “snapped” out of existence with the Infinity Gauntlet. Since then, Scott has been resting on his laurels. Mostly he’s been promoting his new book about his life as an Avenger and trying to catch up on all the time he’s missed with his daughter, Cassie (Kathryn Newton).

Cassie has her own projects: Along with Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), inventor of the incredible technologies that make Ant-Man’s powers possible, and his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lily), Cassie has been investigating the Quantum Realm. It’s an area of existence smaller than subatomic particles, and Scott and Hope only recently managed to retrieve Hank’s wife, Janet (Michelle Pfiefer).

Unbeknownst to them, beaming information in and out of the Quantum Realm has attracted the attention of Kang (Jonathan Majors), a powerful being who has been trapped in the Quantum Realm for decades. Somehow, Cassie’s equipment opens a portal which sucks them all down to the Quantum Realm, and forces them to confront the powers Kang has amassed – and which he hopes to use to conquer the rest of the multiverse.

I wish I got paid every time I had to type the words “Quantum Realm”, because it sure comes up a lot. I’m pretty sure the screenwriter did, though, because it shows up in dialogue constantly. I’ve heard it so much recently that the phrase has stopped sounding like real language, it’s just weird, meaningless sounds. And the overfamiliarity doesn’t stop there.

Marvel has been so consistent as a brand that new films don’t even feel new. Every new Marvel movie I’ve seen since Endgame has, with the exception of Spider-Man: No Way Home, been either unwatchable or so familiar as to be completely uninteresting. The studio wanted to supersaturate the market with superheroes, and they succeeded. In fact, I’ve had to sit through so many of these things that I think I’m starting to show symptoms of acute overexposure. Boredom, fatigue, headaches, and increasing irascibility are all signs that you too may be suffering from superhero toxicity. I think if I’d bothered to loiter around the theater for the mid- and post-credits scenes, I’d probably be dead by now. Thankfully, I’ve lost any ability to care, and more to the point, you can read detailed descriptions of them all over the internet.

That consistency also means parents know pretty much exactly what to expect. Some over-the-top computer-generated slugfests between faceless enemies and larger-than-life heroes (literally, in this case) and a little bit of profanity. That’s about all you ever get out of these movies. People get beat up, thrown around, shot with lasers, blown up, and in some cases disintegrated, but the only blood you’re going to see will be small amounts artfully applied to a character’s dirty face after a fight.

I know I’m dumping on this movie, but it’s not actually awful. It’s just so lethally mediocre that watching it means giving yourself vague déjà vu for two hours. I somehow forgot where I’d been when I was driving home from the theater, if we’re being completely honest. But the movie is reasonably well paced and considerably less irritating than, say, The Eternals, so it’s not all bad. My opinions aside, I’m sure the devoted hordes of Marvel fans will readily adopt this sad little middle child into their assortment of brightly-colored cinematic misadventures. They seem to be a pretty accepting bunch as far as unoriginal filmmaking goes. Otherwise, how does Marvel still make enough money to keep churning these out?