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Let’s Talk About the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania End Credit Scenes
When it was announced that Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania would not only star Kang the Conquerer but kick off Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you had to believe not only would it have end credit scenes, but that those scenes would be bangers. And the film does not disappoint.
Who is MODOK, Marvel’s big-headed Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania villain?
Mental organism designed only for kexplaining comics lore
What you should watch before ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’
The Marvel Cinematic Universe, this epic project bringing vast interconnected narratives about magic people to the mainstream for fun and profit, is now in its 15th year, and yes, sometimes it can feel like homework.
As the MCU expands ever outward, major plot points and character development are happening not only in franchise-tentpole Avengers team-up movies, but also in smaller-scale Disney+ TV shows spanning a range of genres and the full gamut of quality — and as we all well know, there is simply Too Much Content already. It’s totally OK to play catch-up so as to maximise your knowledge before you head off to see a highly anticipated new installment like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
In Quantumania, Ant-Man, aka Scott Lang (Paul Rudd); Hope van Dyne, aka the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly); Scott’s daughter, Cassie (Kathryn Newton); and Hope’s parents, Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne, aka the original Ant-Man and Wasp (Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer) are all sucked into the Quantum Realm, a sprawling, tiny world that exists somewhere in the spaces between the matter of our own. It’s the first film in Phase 5 of the MCU and introduces audiences to our new galactic-level big bad, who’s a big bad deal in the comics — so there will be exposition. Here’s what to watch if you want a refresher before you go in.
Mandatory (not really, but you know, it’ll help a lot): Ant-Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp
Scott Lang gets arguably the best origin story movie in the MCU — at least since Captain America: The First Avenger. Peyton Reed, who’s directed all three films in the trilogy, brings cheeky action, pace, and visual flair to both the snappy first movie and the (sadly clunkier) second one. A rewatch of the first will give you a good grounding in Scott’s relationship with Cassie and Hank’s decades of ant research, as well as how the resizing power works.
Ant-Man and the Wasp zooms in on the relationships (and repressed trauma!) in the Pym-van Dyne family — and it’s worth remembering that at the end of this movie, Hank, Janet, and Hope are all victims of the Snap, and Scott was trapped in the Quantum Realm for all five years of the Blip. Like Peter Parker and his Blipped classmates, for our insect-hero squad, the events of the Thanos era are still fresh. Speaking of…
Optional: Avengers: Endgame
If you’re invested in Scott’s character arc, his key role in kicking off the Time Heist is worth revisiting — and after Ant-Man and the Wasp, this was the second film to rely on the Quantum Realm as a key plot driver.
Highly recommended: Loki, Season 1 (or at least the finale)
Credit: Disney+
If you haven’t already watched the god of mischief’s spinoff series on Disney+, you don’t actually need to smash through all six episodes before re-entering the Quantum Realm. But if you have the time, go for it! It drags a bit in the middle, but it’s still extremely smashable — and Tom Hiddleston’s crackling chemistry with Sophia Di Martino (as the Loki variant known as Sylvie) keeps things interesting even when the narrative is spinning its wheels.
If you don’t have time for anything but the briefest of refreshers, and/or don’t plan on getting invested in Loki Season 2, watch just the first, second, and sixth episodes. You’ll get a gorgeously produced introduction to the Time Variance Authority, the reality-hopping bureaucracy that oversees the proper flow of the timeline (and looks like Wes Anderson designed your local DMV… in space). The second introduces Sylvie and gives a handy illustration of how timelines “branch” — but if you’re really short on time, you can skip that.
If you watch nothing else in preparation for Quantumania, watch the finale of Loki Season 1. It’s not technically crucial backstory due to the multiversal nature of the MCU these days, but this talky, exposition-filled episode is a deeply consequential preamble for Phase 5 as a whole, and adds a whole heap of context for a character we’re still getting to know by the end of AM&TW:Q.
Ant-Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Avengers: Endgame, and Loki Season 1 are all available to stream on Disney+.
‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ review: Marvel demands too much from us
Michael Peña’s absence should have been a warning. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has grown so massive and all-consuming that it’s not enough for an Ant-Man movie to be an Ant-Man movie. There must be a flood of new characters, who are flimsy excuses for merchandise. There must be elaborate retcons to urge viewers to rewatch the movies and shows that have come before. Also required are celebrity cameos for cheap thrills and head-scratching world-building to lay the groundwork for the latest MCU phase. In all of this, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is a chaotic, woefully unfunny mess that has forgotten why its hero was such fun.
The thrill isn’t just gone, it’s been buried beneath a swarm of plot contrivances and truly hideous CGI.
What’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania about?
Credit: Marvel Studios
Master thief turned Avenger, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), is living it up in San Francisco, where he’s a local celebrity who gets high-fives and selfie requests between book signings for his self-aggrandizing autobiography. He’s reconnected with his teen daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) and his romance with superheroine/philanthropist Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) is going strong. He’s even tight with her scientist/retired-superhero parents, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer). But the lot of them are pitched into peril when Cassie’s new invention gets them sucked into the Quantum Realm.
Sure, Janet spent 30 years there. But in that time she made more enemies than friends. Specifically, she earned the ire of Kang the Conquerer (Jonathan Majors), who is deadset on breaking his way out of this tinyverse and into the wider world, which he aims to conquer. (Duh.) While combatting resident foes, reconnecting with old frenemies, making new allies, and spouting loads of Phase Five exposition, this family will try to buzz their way back to San Fran while not dooming the Quantum Realm to the continued tyranny of Kang.
Manage your expectations for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
Credit: Marvel Studios
Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp director Peyton Reed returns to the helm for the third entry in this branch of the MCU. And he seems utterly at a loss to the demands of the Marvel machine in this one. Scott’s lost his funny friends. (Peña’s energy is sorely missed, and all the tedious recap dialogue could have been fun with him in driver’s seat.) And as much of the movie is Scott racing around to protect Cassie from the small bad world, he’s more often stressed than quipping. In fact, the funniest line in the movie goes to one of his enemies! So, Paul Rudd’s ageless mug is left to oscillate between goofy grin and furrowed brow.
Also wasted is Evangeline Lilly, whose Wasp has been downgraded from lead character to plot device. She pops up for save-the-day action moments. But it’s easy to imagine a movie where Hope was at a conference while her family went on this adventure without her. Turns out the Wasp in the title actually refers to Pfeiffer’s OG version.
Flustered and fatherly, Scott is relegated to a sidekick in his own movie, while Janet is an unquestionable badass. She can slip into foreign languages, a treacherous Star Wars cantina ripoff, and showdowns with the big bad with equal elegance and radiant sex appeal. If you love her in Batman Returns, (and you should) you’ll likely relish her return to kick-butt dynamo. But this superhero sequel — which also boots its eponymous male hero to the story’s fringe — isn’t anywhere near as weird or thrilling as Tim Burton’s classic.
Part of the problem is that while Jeff Loveness’ script introduces an intriguing gang of new characters — most of them rebel freedom fighters opposing Kang — he gives them no arcs, and virtually nothing to do but be introduced. Their designs are varied and intriguing. Katy M. O’Brian is promising as she storms onscreen, a warrior princess with no patience for Scott’s dithering. There’s a goo guy, who is briefly amusing, a man with fire for a face, and The Good Place‘s William Jackson Harper as a comically annoyed telepath. (“Everyone is disgusting!“) But in a crowded field of curious Quantum Realm creatures and characters, these potentially enthralling sidekicks are little more than added flare, briefly sparkling, then forgotten.
Amid all this mess, only Pfieffer rises above, giving a performance that is grounded and moving. The rest of the cast — no matter how earnest — feels lost amid the onslaught of eyesore CGI.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is Marvel’s ugliest movie.
Credit: Marvel Studios
The Quantum Realm is a place of endless possibilities. But what Reed settled on seems to be a mash-up of Star Wars, Strange World, slime, and those Magic Eye posters that made us squint to make sense of them. That’s actually kind of fitting. The CGI settings created for Ant-Man 3 are what a migraine might look like if it were a landscape, full of fleshy pink bits, punctuated either by glossy goop or crusty yellows. But moreover, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’s action sequences are visually incoherent disasters.
Blur effects are added throughout, perhaps to suggest speed, or cover up a violent blow, or mask some of rough edges in the CGI. Whatever the reason, the result is the same: blurry sequences that undercut the suspense of the action. Making matters worse, the lighting scheme in the Quantum Realm seems straight out of the Battle of Winterfell, bestowing audiences with scenes so dark — even in IMAX — that it’s difficult to make out what is happening beneath the charging orchestral score. Yet when the lights are turned up, you might wish they weren’t.
As Reed has teased in pre-release interviews (and as is crystal clear on the movie’s IMDb page), M.O.D.O.K. (aka Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing) has come to the MCU in live-action. And what they’ve done to make the character close to his comic depictions is an actual crime against Corey Stoll’s face. To Stoll’s credit, he brings much-needed verve and humor to this overstuffed family drama, getting the biggest laughs — even with abysmal dialogue. However, Reed’s biggest visual joke in the movie is M.O.D.O.K.’s design, which is a twisted mix of metal, shiny flesh, and goop. It is funny, but it’s also distractingly repulsive.
Kang The Conqueror is a horrendously underwhelming Big Bad.
Credit: Marvel Studios
It’s confounding how the MCU has taken one of the most buzzed-about rising stars (Jonathan Majors) and made his big-screen debut a role that is suffocatingly stiff. This Kang (as opposed to the one in Loki) wears a ludicrous costume (I don’t care if that’s what it looked like in the comics), and yet has no sense of humor or whimsy.
This Kang is a stoic warlord who sure loves conquering, and will tell you that a lot, while everyone else tells you how invincible he is. The evidence of this is that Kang’s powers (based in SUPER advanced tech) are basically whatever is convenient for the script. He shoots out blue stuff that can kill people or zap superpowers or do whatever else I couldn’t make out past the blurs and darkness. While this might be intended to make him seem impossible to beat, it’s actually more annoying because there’s no ground to grip as we’re plunged into another battle of timelord nonsense versus the Ant family.
The other major issue with Kang is that following his storyline feels like work. Despite the profuse amount of recaps and exposition dumps that Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania peppers throughout its plot, the movie is frustrating to follow because it demands so much prior knowledge and previous buy-ins for its characters. It’s not enough to see all the Ant-Man movies, or all the Avengers movies. You better have watched Loki too! And not only that, you better remember all the fine points of that finale, or else Kang’s blather falls flat.
The MCU has become work to enjoy.
Credit: Marvel Studios
The MCU movies used to be fun. Whether you knew the comics or not, they used to be thrilling adventures, thoughtfully laced with humor, eye-popping action, and hard-hitting character moments. But with its 31st entry, you can no longer blithely dive in for a good time. There’ll be superficial recaps of plot points, sure. But Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has so little interest in its heroes, sidekicks, and villains that if you didn’t pre-game with the previous movies — the better movies — then this one doesn’t add up to the sum of its parts. There’s no shame in being a popcorn movie. It’s a shame Reed and company forgot that.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has big stars, quirky cameos, action sequences, world-building, and even — on rare occasions — punchlines. But it’s barely a movie, pulling threads together for a grander scheme of merchandizing and cross-promotion over character-based storytelling. In the end, with its clumsy collision of influences, star power, CGI that is often rubbery or outright ugly, and a convoluted plot that should have an Excedrin tie-in, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is like a child’s mixed media project, made of paper mache, glitter, and hunks of rotting ground meat.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania opens in theaters Feb. 17.
Evangeline Lilly Wants A Wasp Spin-Off Movie Of Her Own
During the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania press conference on Tuesday, Evangeline Lilly responded very enthusiastically to a question from a journalist about the Wasp getting her own self-titled movie without Ant-Man. But Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige didn’t exactly fan those flames when Lilly kicked the question over to him.
Lilly was practically giddy when she was asked about the possibility of a Wasp standalone movie.
“This is an excellent question. You might have asked the most important question of the day,” Lilly replied when Randall Park relayed the question to her. With a huge grin on her face, she then turned to Feige, who was sitting behind her on the stage. “And I’m going to defer this question up the line.”
The Cast of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania Touts the Film’s Impact
The first three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe were very well defined. Phase Four? Not so much. We have a feeling the same won’t be said about Phase Five, though, which kicks off next month with the release of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
David Dastmalchian Has a New Role in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
The latest trailer for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania made it very clear: this movie is quite different from the previous two films in the series. And that point has now been made even clearer as one of the funniest characters in the original films has pivoted to a new role.
Ant-Man And The Wasp Actor Returns To Quantumania, But In An Entirely Different Role
David Dastmalchian will return in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, but not as Scott Lang’s friend Kurt, rather as a new character named Veb. Any details of who this character is or what role they will play in the film is currently under wraps.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the actor will become on of a handful of actors to play multiple roles in the MCU. Other examples include Gemma Chan, who headlined The Eternals as Sersi and plays Minn-Evra in Captain Marvel, and Mahershala Ali, who played Commonmouth in Luke Cage and is set to play the title character in Blade.
Dastmalchian is a regular in the films of director Denis Villeneuve, starring in Prisoners, Blade Runner 2049, and Dune. Since his against-type role as Kurt in Ant-Man, he has continued to star in blockbuster movies like The Suicide Squad. He is also set to star in Oppenheimer and The Last Voyage of Demeter in 2023.
Movie Trailer: ‘Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania’ [Starring Jonathan Majors]
‘Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania’ flies onto the big screen in February and promises to be an unmissable affair.
The Marvel Entertainment adventure follows Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), who find themselves navigating the Quantum Realm, encountering strange new creatures, and setting sail on a journey that pushes them beyond the boundaries of what they could have ever conceived as possible.
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