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A few days ago, I checked out a DVD of the film Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) at the public library (so it didn’t cost me a cent) and got around to watching it yesterday.

First of all, I miss the “Wombats” (Michael Peña as “Luis,” David Dastmalchian as “Kurt,” and Tip T.I. Harris as “Dave”). I understand there wasn’t a place in them given the story, and they weren’t as well utilized in Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) as they were in the original Ant-Man (2015), but they’re great comedy relief.

Secondly, I miss Abby Ryder Fortson as Cassie. I know the MCU blipped ahead five years so the actress (now age 15) would be too young, but she was a lot of fun. I also know that an older daughter for Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) means she can join him on his adventures, but at 26, Kathryn Newton, who replaced Emma Fuhrmann in the role after Avengers: Endgame (2019) might be a little bit too “old” (Fuhrmann is only 21 which is just about right).

Most of the movie seemed to be pretty much in the dark, which made it hard for me to tell what was going on half the time. For instance, in the opening sequence with Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) and the Traveler/Kang (Jonathan Majors), I couldn’t see their faces and had no idea what was going on until later in the film.

It’s fairly well known that the CGI budget for this movie (or most of it) went into developing Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), so this CGI heavy movie ended up looking really “muddy.”

The story was often confusing and when it wasn’t confusing, it was embarrassing. I sort of get the framing sequence at the beginning and end. Scott seems semi-retired from “Avenging” and is giving book readings and being adored by his fans in San Francisco. He’s lost his edge, the one that got him put into prison in the first place and then turned him into Ant-Man. Cassie points that out more than once in the movie, and she’s determined to pick up the mantle, shrinking and all.

Scott has to bail her out of jail where she used her shrinking abilities (why would anyone build her a suit?) to stop local police from disbanding a homeless camp (people are still homeless because of “the blip” apparently). She even miniaturized a police car.

We don’t see her Mom (Judy Greer as “Maggie”) or Step-Dad (Bobby Cannavale as “Paxton”), but since Cassie is calling Janet and Hank (Michael Douglas) “Grandma and Grandpa,” we assume that she’s integrated into the “Ant family.” She even seems to relate to Hope (Evangeline Lilly) as a “Step-Mom” although I’m pretty sure she and Scott never married.

For a woman in her early 20s, Cassie seems to be a genius on the level of Hank Pym. She built a probe that when shrunken way down in size, can explore the “Quantum Realm” without risking a person getting stuck there again. Unfortunately, she’s using some sort of radio signaling to communicate with the device which freaks Janet out.

Oh, I should mention that Hank has bred a colony of genius ants for some unknown reason. Maybe he can send them out on missions without an Ant-Man or Wasp being with them on site. Whatever.

Before Janet can explain why she’s so upset, the device peering into the quantum realm miniaturizes the lot of them and sucks them down.

During the process, Scott and Cassie are separated from Hank, Janet, and Hope. The genius Ant-Colony was also pulled down but separated from the human beings.

Now comes the part that looks a lot like Star Wars: the aliens. There are a bunch of humanoid, semi-humanoid, and non-human CGI creatures populating the whole joint. Scott and Cassie fall in with a bunch of refugees who have been displaced by the Conqueror (Majors) including telepathic Quaz (William Jackson Harper) and Jentorra (Katy O’Brian). Fortunately, drinking some ooze gives the two humans the ability to speak the alien language.

Meanwhile, Janet encounters other aliens in a desert and after a ritualistic knife fight, introduces her friends to Hank and Hope. At this point, I should say that as I’m just a hair away from turning 70, I love seeing old people kick ass in this movie. However, Pfeiffer is 65 and Douglas is 78 (the makeup people did their best, but there were times when he really did look his age) and I don’t know if they’d be that strong and agile (although in the first film, Hank did still have a mean punch).

There’s a “cantina” scene (speaking of Star Wars) where Hank and Hope drink the liquid of teaching languages (Janet already knows how) for the sake of convenience.

They meet up with a former freedom fighter/terrorist friend of Jan’s Lord Krylar (Bill Murray). I had to do a double-take, since I didn’t know Murray was in the movie. I know Ant-Man movies are action/comedy films, but I felt Murray’s time and talent were misused here. He shows up, dialog and some action happens, and he disappears again.

I admit to liking the idea that while Janet was trapped for thirty years in the quantum realm, she just wasn’t sitting around doing nothing. It makes sense that if there were other life forms around, she’d find way to interact with them. It also kind of makes sense that, given how she ended up empowering Kang in his conquering, she wouldn’t talk about it when she got back to her own reality. This time, Hope’s pissed at her Mom for not telling the truth rather than Dad, as she was in the 2015 movie.

I liked Corey Stoll as Darren Cross in the original film. He was a great bad guy and you could just see his vulnerability under the swagger. I knew M.O.D.O.K was in the movie, but I didn’t know Stoll would be playing him. I heard that Stoll wanted to work with the “Ant family” again and being a huge comic book nerd, he knew who M.O.D.O.K was. He looked ridiculous (some things in comic books never will translate to live action) and in spite of billing himself as the ultimate killing machine, he was really just another comedy element. He redeemed himself at the end after Cassie tells him “it’s never too late to stop being a dick.”

There were a number of rifts back to the original movie, including the multiple Scotts lifting him up toward a goal the way in the first movie how the fire ants lifted Scott up to a water pipe. We also see Scott in his “Baskin Robbins” persona and there are a couple of appearances of his old boss Dale (Gregg Turkington) who is played to the creepy max. In fact, it got to be a little tiresome. Enough already. I know about these people and scenes.

The film reiterated how much Scott loves Cassie to the point where I wanted to say, “Okay, I get it.” True, Kang did threaten to torture and kill her so Scott would do his bidding (toned down much more than it would be in real life for the sake of a PG-13 rating). I suppose Scott felt like he was losing Cassie because he had stopped caring about the world. Another callback to the first film when Hank had lost Hope.

Although Scott doesn’t want to get involved in helping the refugees fight Kang because it’s not their fight, Cassie says, “Just because it’s not happening to you doesn’t mean it’s not happening.” Ah, the enthusiasm of youth.

She eventually does free Jentorra and calls for a revolution to fight against Kang. It wasn’t a fraction as good as Captain America’s/Steve Rogers’ (Chris Evans’) “The price of freedom is high” speech from Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), but Cassie would have found it satisfying.

The core of the tale is that Janet helped Kang rebuild the power source to his ship, because he promised to send her home to her daughter and husband. However, she managed to tap into his mind and realized he was sent into the quantum realm in exile because of his warring ways. He was literally eliminating entire timelines, trillions and trillions of lives.

Sacrificing her freedom, she sabotaged the power source and then joined the resistance against him. But she had still originally been his friend (and it was implied they might have been lovers), so she carried a huge amount of guilt.

Repairing the power source is what Kang wants Scott to do, and with Cassie’s life in the balance, he defies the others and does it.

There’s a battle royal as you might imagine. Cassie imitates her Dad’s “Giant Man” action growing up to fight M.O.D.O.K. The adventure heals the separation between father and daughter, just like the first movie (again). But when it seems our heroes have won, they still have to contend with a really angry Kang.

Kang’s power seems to wax and wane quite a bit. He’s able to single-handedly put down the rebellion involving thousands of people/life forms but the “Ant family” manages to give him trouble.

Part of what saves the day are the ants. They had been diverted to a different area of the quantum realm where they had a thousand years to evolve, so Kang had a lot of trouble with them, enough to make it seem he was defeated.

Janet retrieves the power source, which Kang was within an inch of using to escape the realm, to open a portal, not only back to their world, but to their lab. Everyone gets out except Scott. At the last second, Kang rallies and they have a fight. Scott loses and it seems Kang will go through the portal and escape. But Scott sabotages the power source. As the portal is about to close, Hope comes through and with her Wasp powers alone, defeats Kang (supposedly). Good thing he was already weak.

But the portal closes trapping them in the realm. I read in the original script, they were supposed to stay there but that didn’t sit well with test audiences, so Cassie reopens the portal (smart kid) and they are saved.

Scott goes back to his life of adoration in San Francisco, picking up a birthday cake for Cassie from Dale at Baskin Robbins. It’s not her birthday, but Scott says he’s missed a few.

Scott has ominous thoughts about what Kang meant when he said if he didn’t get out, something worse was coming. He decides he’s overthinking things but then there are the mid-credits and end-credits scenes to deal with.

I couldn’t figure out anything until I opened up Wikipedia (I know). In the mid-credits scene, there are bunch of guys running around in pseudo-Egyptian outfits. That harkens back to the Fantastic Four’s encounter with Rama Tut in FF issue 19 in the 1960s.

During the silver age, it was theorized that Doctor Doom, Kang, Rama Tut, and Immortus were all the same person at different stages of their life.

At the end credits scene, we see Kang on stage in an apparently late 19th century production with Loki in the audience, so I guess Kang somehow survives.

According to Wikipedia:
The mid- and post-credits scenes feature the following variants of Kang:

• Rama-Tut – Kang’s original alias when he traveled back in time and conquered ancient Egypt. Introduced in Fantastic Four #19 (Oct. 1963), and retroactively identified as Kang in The Avengers #8 (Sep. 1964).
• Immortus – The future version of Kang and the ruler of Limbo. Introduced in The Avengers #10 (Nov. 1964), and retroactively identified as Kang in Giant-Size Avengers #3 (Feb. 1975).
• Scarlet Centurion – The alias assumed by Kang after his defeat by the Fantastic Four in ancient Egypt and his encounter with Doctor Doom in the 20th century. Introduced in The Avengers Annual #2 (Jul. 1968).
• Victor Timely – A version of Kang who established the town of Timely, Wisconsin in 1901 to serve as his 20th century base of operations. Introduced in The Avengers Annual #21 (Jul. 1992).
• Chronomonitor #616 – A version of Kang that works for the Time Variance Authority. Introduced in Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four #23 (Aug. 2007).

Immortus was the inspiration for He Who Remains in Loki (2021), and Victor Timely will appear in the second season.

So the “Rama Tuts” are the group that originally exiled Kang and we are seeing the Victor Timely version of Kang on stage. That all supposedly plays directly into the upcoming Avengers: The Kang Dynasty (2026). Three years is a long time to wait for all this to reach some sort of fruition.

I suppose you “have” to watch Quantumania to understand what’s coming later, but that was also said of all the shows on Disney+. I haven’t watched any of them and it seems I’m not missing much.

This movie was as bad as advertised, which is disappointing. To refresh myself, I immediately re-watched the original Ant-Man and Captain America: The Winter Soldier which are both excellent films. Since that time, Marvel has lost it’s “pizzazz” and has no more of it’s “mojo” left. So disappointing. What are the fat cats at Marvel and Disney thinking?

Then again the “Barbie” movie just passed $1 billion at the box office so I guess in the 2020s, crap sells and sells big.