What ‘Ant-Man’ Loses in the Quantum Realm

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is so vast that the many franchises within it can vary greatly in terms of tone, ambition, and quality. On the disappointing end of the spectrum are the Thor films, which, with the exception of Ragnarok, reduce the God of Thunder to a meandering himbo. Conversely, there’s the endearing Guardians of the Galaxy franchise that embraces a freewheeling spirit in line with James Gunn’s sensibilities—look no further than Warner Bros. Discovery enlisting the filmmaker to be its creative architect for the new DC Universe as evidence that his superhero movies have a high approval rating. (A third Guardians film will be released this spring before Marvel and Gunn go their separate ways.) But if there’s one franchise that’s gone underappreciated in the MCU’s 15-year existence, it’s the one—rather fittingly, and quite literally—about the little guy.

After a lengthy development process that predated the MCU, with Edgar Wright originally attached to direct, the first Ant-Man movie arrived in 2015 with minimal fanfare by Marvel standards. (To be fair, Ant-Man doesn’t have the same mainstream recognition as heroes like the Incredible Hulk or Captain America.) But that has suited the Ant-Man series just fine: The original blockbuster and its 2018 sequel, Ant-Man and the Wasp, have thrived in their own tiny corner of the MCU, with lower stakes compared to their peers. While other Marvel characters traverse the galaxy or wield mythological hammers, thief-turned-superhero Scott Lang (played by Paul Rudd) spends most of the first Ant-Man planning and executing heists before battling his nemesis in a child’s bedroom: a sequence that uses a Thomas the Tank Engine train set to incredible effect.

With so many Marvel fight scenes devolving into a mindless mishmash of CGI, the action in the Ant-Man movies stands out with its clever shifts in scale. When Ant-Man goes small, water in a bathtub flows like an unstoppable tsunami; when he goes big, he can use a truck as a makeshift skateboard through the streets of San Francisco. With Rudd’s everyman charm and a winning ensemble adept at comedy—Michael Peña’s rambling monologues as Scott’s best friend, Luis, are a work of art—the Ant-Man franchise has been a refreshing change of pace from the rest of the MCU. Unfortunately, all the little things (like Thanos, the size puns are inevitable) that make an Ant-Man film so delightful have been stripped from the latest installment in service of the greater Marvel machine.

As the first entry of the MCU’s Phase 5, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is saddled with setting up Marvel’s next major villain, who will terrorize its heroes for the foreseeable future. While one variant of Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) was already introduced in the Disney+ series Loki, under the moniker “He Who Remains,” his appearance mostly boiled down to warning the characters (and the audience) that his other selves are coming to subjugate all the multiverses. (It was a lot more entertaining than it sounds, thanks in large part to Majors’s magnetic performance.) Right on cue, Quantumania is our first taste of Kang in true conqueror mode, as this version of the villain lords over the Quantum Realm—the subatomic world where all constructs of space and time don’t exist—until the opportunity arises to escape. As for how our diminutive hero fits into the equation, Scott’s teenage daughter, Cassie (Kathryn Newton), creates a device that can send signals down to the Quantum Realm, unaware of the danger it poses until Scott and the extended Ant-Man family—Cassie, Evangeline Lilly’s Wasp, Michael Douglas’s Hank Pym, and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Janet van Dyne—get sucked into the world against their will.

The Quantum Realm isn’t a new concept for the Ant-Man franchise—it’s the place where Janet disappeared for three decades—but it’s never been used as a primary setting in the MCU. Initially, the Quantum Realm is an intriguing sci-fi landscape reminiscent of Disney’s recent animated film Strange World, filled with eccentric life-forms that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Star Wars cantina. (Bill Murray included.) But considering its closest analogue is a movie that comprehensively bombed at the box office, perhaps Quantumania was always fated to be one of the MCU’s worst projects to date.

Really, the first sign that Quantumania would be an awkward fit between its superhero and the MCU’s larger ambitions is the fact that Ant-Man’s greatest legacy with Marvel’s previous big bad was a popular internet theory claiming Ant-Man could defeat Thanos by entering his anus. (It’s a shame the Avengers never gave that plan a shot.) More seriously, when Scott’s affable persona crosses paths with Kang, a villain whom Majors imbues with impressive menace and gravitas, it creates the kind of tension that Marvel probably wasn’t banking on. These characters just don’t feel like they belong in the same movie, let alone one in which they’re billed as adversaries. (If it seems like I’m sidelining Lilly’s Wasp, who is technically the colead of the film, I’m just following Quantumania’s lead.)

A similar dilemma arises with the Quantum Realm, which doesn’t play to the strengths of the franchise’s calling card: those nimble shifts in scale. When Ant-Man is surrounded by a CGI landscape with no identifiable characteristics in relation to the real world, the hero shrinking down (or vice versa) doesn’t have the same novelty—instead, these sequences lose any sense of meaning. It’s easy to appreciate a PEZ dispenser being enlarged to obstruct some bad guys during a car chase; the same can’t be said for Scott changing size next to an otherworldly amoeba.

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Maybe it was only a matter of time until Ant-Man had to shoulder some of the universe-building burden from other Marvel heroes, especially when high-profile stars like Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. finally called it quits as Captain America and Iron Man, respectively. But in doing so, we lose one of the underrated joys of the MCU: the stand-alone Ant-Man adventures that were always lighter and more playful than their blockbuster contemporaries. If this is the direction Marvel fans should expect going forward—more projects sacrificing their singular charms at the altar of larger MCU interconnectivity—then it could accelerate the encroaching feeling of superhero fatigue.

It might seem silly to lament that Quantumania doesn’t have the same low-key, breezy vibe as the first two Ant-Man films, which are arguably some of the least consequential entries in the MCU. (That being said, I think we can all agree the complete absence of Peña’s Luis in Quantumania should be a federal crime.) But if the MCU keeps expanding its scope at the expense of what made these kinds of movies crowd-pleasers in the first place, then Marvel will come to realize it isn’t too big to fail. Hopefully, the fundamental misunderstanding of Ant-Man’s appeal in Quantumania, and the unspectacular kickoff of Phase 5, will cut the MCU down to size.