PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*
"My whole life happened because I messed up. The only thing I didn't mess up is you."
I quote this forgettable quote from the middle of QUANTUMANIA because it's a good distillation of the MCU's still-reigning "girl boss" dynamic. In the scene, Ant-Man's teenaged daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) admits that she's got herself and her whole family in trouble because of conducting quantum-universe experiments on the sly. But this rare admission of wrongdoing by a female MCU character must immediately be minimized. And so Scott "Ant Man" Lang (Paul Rudd) tries to make his grown daughter feel better by beating up on himself for past misdeeds.
As with the previous two films, the scripts always call for Lang to be something of the "lovable loser." He starts out the first film about to be released from prison, though first he has to get beat up by a big black inmate who has nothing to do with the story. Then he gets whaled on by Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), adult daughter of Henry and Janet Pym, the former Ant Man and Wasp (Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer), because she wanted her to follow in her daddy's size-changing footsteps. In the sequel, Ant Man is constantly ragged on by both his female partner and his prospective father-in-law, while the majority of the story centers upon the character of a "sympathetic girl boss villain." So, now Scott's daughter Cassie, grown to young womanhood, creates a conduit that sucks her, Scott, Hope and Hope's parents into the same quantum universe in which Janet Van Dyne spent a thirty-year exile. But hey, it's SCOTT who needs to apologize.
Incidentally, the movie starts out with Scott having to bail Cassie out of jail because she shrunk a cop's police car. Her reason for doing so? Oh, the cops were both forcing homeless people out of some area, and tear-gassing "peaceful protesters." The movie gives Cassie an out for all of her actions-- which are admittedly not as bad as those of the Valkyrie character from THOR RAGNAROK-- so it's mildly amazing that she even gets to proffer an apology.
But in truth Cassie herself is mostly a conduit to throw the emphasis upon the elder Ms. Van Dyne, who in her thirty year exile made contact with the inhabitants of the quantum realm, trying to help them overthrow the tyrannical Conqueror and, in her off hours, apparently sleeping with one of the rebels (played by a poofy Bill Murray). "I had needs," Janet explains to her husband, who responds by stating that he tried to date someone else after Janet's apparent death, but he just couldn't do it because Janet too was so awesome.
Some time before her rescue, Janet managed to seal off the tyrant from access to the higher realms, and once she's back in the quantum realm, Kang the Conqueror wants out. Most of the plot feels like a reprise of an old LOST IN SPACE episode (alien entity attempting to escape his confinement), crossbred with an even moldier "overthrow the local tyrant" plotline. Both plotlines are rendered nugatory in that the Conqueror Also Known as Kang (Jonathan Majors) is the dullest MCU villain of all time. But just so the MCU can have another impotent male to kick around, Kang at some point came across the near dead body of Darren Cross, the villain from the first film, and turns him into an unreasonable facsimile of the comics-villain Modok. He contributes cheap laughs rather than menace, though I supposed viewers with a giantess-fetish may like the scene where Cassie Lang (with no prior training, BTW) turns herself into a giant in order to thrash the pathetic super-stooge.
This third ANT-MAN outing is directed by the same fellow who helmed the first two, Peyton Reed. But where the first one was a mildly entertaining confection, and the second a boring action-flick, QUANTUMANIA may be the ugliest MCU film of all time, though I suppose Reed's not responsible for the ghastly design of the micro-world and its denizens. Reed shows no talent for all these high-octane adventures in the sub-atomic world, and the script by Jeff Loveness is just one long cliche with bad jokes. Rudd and Douglas soldier on through all the nonsense, Lilly has almost nothing to do, and Pfeiffer gives a dull and uncommitted performance. Strangely, though I despised the Cassie character, Kathryn Newton gives a lively performance, and may have a bright future ahead of her, once people forget this awful flick.
There's the usual hype for more MCU crap in the credits sequence.
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