 What you're privy to today is an Ant-Man in the Wasp Quantamania rant. Not a review, it's a little bit of a recap, mostly an airing of grievances. So if you liked Ant-Man in the Wasp, Ant-Man 3, Quantamania, maybe don't watch this. Or if you're open to other people's thoughts, ideas, critiques, stick around. It's gonna be some fun. As you may have guessed, based on the shirt I'm wearing, I'm not that serious of a person. I have serious thoughts and ideas from time to time, but for the most part I just want to have fun, talk movies, get out, get entertained. Ant-Man in the Wasp Quantamania certainly can do that for people. Some people that haven't seen 35 Marvel movies already like myself in TV shows and whatever spin-off crap that's come out. For people that go to movies once in a while, this is a fine little film. For someone like me though that's kind of sick of the Marvel shtick, kind of sick of being treated like an idiot, kind of sick of the half-assery coming out of the Disney conveyor belt. I was not impressed in the slightest to put it lightly, to put it mildly. I should point out, although I think it's probably pretty obvious, this is a spoiler video. There is a spoiler-free review on my channel, Adam Does Movies. Please subscribe. Please stick around. I'd love to have you. We're gonna break things down. We're gonna go a little bit in depth as much as I can remember. My brain was already on the floor by the time the credits rolled, so retaining the information that I saw is gonna be hard. And honestly, we have limited space up in this hard drive. I prefer not to have Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantamania plot points filling up the very small amount of room I have left. Speaking of small, this is Ant-Man. Why was there hardly any Ant-Stop? I mean, there were literal ants, of course, but I felt like the other films were far more creative when it came to shrinking things down and growing things and having fun with that technology. Maybe it was the fact that it was said in the real world that made it a little bit more fun, you know, seeing a giant pez go down the street, seeing him run up a gun. That was awesome. Or just escaping from a bathtub scenario where water is splashing down like the Niagara Falls. But now we have everything set in the quantum realm. And when nothing's real, then, I mean, what are we looking at here? A bunch of nonsense. That's what. The plot of Ant-Man 3 is the plot of No Way Home Again. We have a dumb-ass decision which leads to cataclysmic events. Let's break that down. Let's really expand on that premise. We see Scott Lang when this movie starts kind of on Cloud 9. I think that's the expression. Everything seems to be going his way. He saved the galaxy. Everyone looks up to him. He's a hero. Sometimes they confuse him with Spider-Man, maybe because they read the script and they're like, oh, this is Spider-Man No Way Home Again. No, it's Ant-Man. It's Scott Lang. His daughter, Cassie, is not impressed with him. She's kind of garbage in this. I'm going to be honest. Both acting wise, terrible. And just the way she's written is kind of obnoxious. She doesn't really look highly on her dad, which is ironic because he would do anything for her. He would do anything for the spoiled little shit. He was gone a lot in her life. And the time that he was away, because, you know, the blip and everything, she was actually building technology that would take them into the quantum realm. She's just as smart as the old man. Fine, whatever. Shenanigans is going on there. Grandpa Pym took her under his wing, showed her the ropes, showed her how to communicate with ants, showed her how to build quantum things, I guess. It's a comic book movie. We'll let a little of it slide, right? What I won't let slide is just the poor setup, the poor premise of this. So we are to believe that all the years that have gone by where mommy Pym, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, who's still smoking hot, she has decided to forego telling everyone in her family about what happened in the quantum realm. Seems a little out of character for Dr. Hank, not to really prod, not to look for details from his wife, considering how meticulous he is with everything else. I mean, look at the ropes he made Scott jump through in the first movie just to see if he was the guy he wanted, the master burglar. Now he, I guess, doesn't have conversations with his wife. His estranged love, who's been gone from him for many, many years, only to return with a massive molar of a secret. An entirely different life, a second life in the quantum realm, where she apparently bedded a few other gentlemen. She has needs, she says. I have needs too. For Marvel to get off their ass and write something that's a little bit compelling, at least. So while I compare this to No Way Home, while the answer is simple, nothing would go wrong if our heroes weren't screwing around with things they know nothing about. So Cass, he's in the laboratory, or laboratory, if you will, and she's tinkering around with this way to do a communication with people on the other side. She doesn't know who she's talking to, she just sends a message out into the ether. Whole family gathers around the Christmas tree, as this thing lights up like the 4th of July. We have different metaphors going on here, it's confusing, I understand that, but let's keep going. It pulls them in after mom is like, unplug this thing! Scott's mom, not Cassie, sorry. Let's keep going. They unplug it, but it's too late. I mean, they did unplug it, yet somehow it was too late. So I don't really understand technology, and I don't think the writers of this do either. Something comes out of this machine, and it pulls the Swiss family Robinson in, and now they have to get out alive in one piece from the mess they caused themselves. It's how they ice-runk the kids in 2023, except for not near as good as that. The rest of the movie takes place in front of a green screen. I've been criticized for this several times. That's fair, you can criticize a critic. I'm open to suggestions, I'm open to recommendations all the time. But they say, Adam, how are you supposed to make a quantum realm if you don't use a green screen in CG? I'm old enough to remember movie sets. I'm old enough to remember that you can actually build things with your bare hands. You can make extrav- Have you seen Willy Wonka? That movie's not new. I mean, there's the Johnny Depp one. Regardless, both of them use practical effects to build a fantastical world. A tapestry of rich colors, vibrant setting, and characters that you didn't even need a computer generate. You just had to find some little people and spray paint them orange for an afternoon, and you're done. Here, though, we're back on the MCU train where everything has to be CG. And it's come a long way, and yet it's gone backwards in a lot of ways. If we look at Jurassic Park as an example, you take your whole, Adam, how are they supposed to build it when these things don't exist? Well, guess what? We don't have dinosaurs. We don't have dinosaurs last time I checked. Yet Jurassic Park, which came out in the 90s, built big-ass dinosaurs. And yes, there was CG mixed in too, but they were wise with it. They were smart with it. They put them in the shadows, behind leaves, in the dark. There's rarely a scene in that first film where it's broad daylight, and when it is, they may damn sure it worked. They may damn sure they framed it up. Contrast that with Ant-Man and the Wasp, Quantamania. You have characters standing clearly on green sound stages. The ground looks completely fake. The fucking ground looks fake. It's fantasy, right? You know, it's not real. Well, it matters because you already lose. You're already disconnected from that world and from the struggles these people are facing. I need my brain to be convinced. I need my eyeballs to be convinced that what I'm looking at is actually a threat. I need to know that these people are in some sort of danger, otherwise it's just noise. And that can only be exciting for so long. If you're just going to throw garbage at the screen, loud effects, make the movie an hour and a half. Let me get in and out of here. Don't push over two hours. That's a waste of everyone's time. I like plenty of dumbass hour and a half movies because they know they're dumb, and so they get in and out fast. There's a sequence which I think opens the film up. It's a little rocky when it comes to the action department. We see Janet shooting these CG dog alien creatures. Rough choreography, to say the least. But there it actually looked like she was on a soundstage and they made a nice little set. And they go back to that set later when she's communicating with Kang. That's the only time I felt that I was involved in a scene. Where I knew, or at least they convinced me, that she was there with Kang. We can go the other direction with it too. If you look at a movie like Avatar 2, which maybe Avatar 1 would be better because I liked Avatar 1. Avatar 2, I did not care for the story. I thought it was terrible. However, the visuals and that world are rich. They're inviting. And because everything has a consistent look, you are invited in. You can be part of that much like an animated film. But these newer Marvel movies don't have that at all. It really genuinely feels like half the time they're just standing in place looking around in awe. And the animators do their best to build up these cool worlds. But nothing's being done with them. There's just shits blowing up. That's it. Stuff's blowing up. People are like, whoa, boom, boom, boom. This is a movie. I am disappointed we don't see the Ant-Man crew in this one either. Michael Pena's gone. That whole like robbery crew. We don't see the ex-wife or the fiance. They might be married at this point. I'm not sure. Regardless, they're not in there. And that's a shame because those were the fun characters that brought the Ant-Man world to life. I can't overstress this enough. The reason Ant-Man one and two work so well is because they were smaller scale. Because of the Ant stuff. But also just the story in general. It was lighter. It was, it was sillier. Now we put him in such a high stakes scenario and all the little charm is gone. And what's left is a family acting against backdrops. And once in a while, Kang shows up who's supposed to be this big bad new threat. I felt nothing about him. He did not impress me in the slightest in this. He had a cool factor, sure. But you need more than that. Thanos worked so well because he was this looming threat. You got him in end credit scenes. He showed up in Guardians of the Galaxy. He was always there. There was always the little whispers of him. So they really built him up. Like they built up John Wick in that first movie. Everybody knows who that Sandman is. You know, that guy that's gonna take you out. Baba Yaga. Is it Baba Yaga? We're gonna go with that. Baba something. Okay, he hunts you down. Everybody fears him. But we just are introduced to Kang with one of the Lamer Avengers and he's going toe to toe with him. And I think Kang's already been taken out once before in Loki. So I just, what are we doing here with this guy? You're not set in a good standard. You're not making me fear him at all. I digress. They get to the quantum realm. Janet eventually tells the whole family that, yeah, I'm a big deal down here. Everyone knows who I am. I pissed off the wrong people. I went against Kang. I destroyed his ship so that he could jump through time and space and kill a bunch more Avengers and destroy universes. This guy's the real deal. He wants to break shit. He wants to blow stuff up. Not entirely sure why. It doesn't matter. That's just what a conqueror does, I guess. And her family's like, oh, why didn't you tell us? And she's like, I was ashamed. I was too scared of Kang. Yeah, no, no, I'm sorry. What? I'm sorry. What? That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard in my life. If you were that scared, you would say, hey, let's not toy with the quantum realm anymore. Let's not go back in there and collect bumblebees or fireflies or whatever the hell he was doing at the end of Ant-Man 2. Remember the uncredited scene where he's off collecting and then the snap happens and everyone goes away? Why didn't she say anything then? She didn't seem too concerned when she was sitting there overlooking the whole thing? She didn't seem too concerned then? Oh, dumb. We find out that Kang has been imprisoned and he's only one of many versions of Kang, of course, because everybody has different variants. Which, much like the green screen, disconnects people even more from any sort of stakes taking place. Because, yeah, sure, Iron Man made the ultimate sacrifice, snapped and killed himself, but there's other Iron Men. There's other Robert Downey's potentially that could come back to this character. Sure, it's not that one, right? But it kind of still is that one. I just, it loses its luster, it loses its magic, and I just don't care anymore. Since Kang has had a lot of time on his hands, he's amassed himself quite the army down there, quite the reputation, short for reputation. He has humans down there too. Where did they come from? Who are these people? I didn't understand that. Like, why are they humans? There's Broccoli Guy, Broccoli Joe. There's all sorts of people down here. No one really makes a comment about where these people came from. It's never, maybe it's mentioned. Maybe it's mentioned. I should maybe not count that as a negative, but I was sitting there thinking, where did these civilizations of people like spawn from? Let's get to the elephant in the room, at least when it comes to the size of the head, and that's Modoc. M-O-D-O-K based off a comic book character that people seem to really like. The only thing I know about Modoc is he was in that terrible Avengers video game, and he also had a show. I think it was done by the robot chicken crew. It was kind of that claymation stop motion style voiced by Patton Oswald. I tried like one episode. I wasn't really into it. Maybe it got better. He's a more goofy character in that. I don't really know how his real personality is. Just that he's like a super genius thing. Here he's played by that honey crisp guy from the first Ant-Man, who we thought died, but it turns out survived, and they humped, he dumped his ass back together. We get a nice tasteful butt shot as they put the helmet on. They don't really explain why the head got so large, or the rest of him got so small, but whatever, right? Nothing's explained anymore. It's all just silly. It's popcorn, laugh, love, live. Don't worry about things making sense. We don't. He was dumb, but entertaining. He was funny. I'm out of place. Just weirdly inconsistent whenever he showed up. He's cracking jokes. He has one of the cringiest back and forth conversations, one of the cringiest exchanges I've ever seen in my entire existence, and I've seen a lot of movies. I shit you not. This is like top 10 worst dialogue exchange ever. Cassie takes him out, right? And he's like, how do I get better? How do I change? I don't want to be bad, which also bizarre character arc for this guy. He's got like all this advanced killing machinery. He's like top of his game, and he's like, but I really want to be good. Why? You're always an asshole. Why do you suddenly want to be good? Whatever. Cassie looks down at him and says, stop being a dick. And he's like, what? Stop being a dick. That's all. Yeah, just stop being a dick. Terrible. Terrible writing. Terrible performance there too. All around. All around just miserable. Why was that in the film? Cut that out. Even if you enjoyed this movie, please at least get on my side when it comes to how poor that was. How bad that was. I didn't like to look at this movie either. Looked like Power Rangers. It looked like Spy Kids 3D. And I like some of the Spy Kids movies. I don't like 3D. I don't like that one. And that's got Sylvester Stallone in it. So I'm kind of half on board, but it lost me. Lost me with the look. Lost me with the terrible effects. Why is this so bad? I'm sorry. We're so many movies in now. These should be getting better, not worse. But phase four was miserable, and phase five is not off to a good start. It really isn't. It's just such dumb down kitty crap. And if that's what they're going for, fine. If you're going for the like 10 year olds or the young teenagers, that's cool. If that's what we're doing, right? That's gotta be. But I remember being a teenager and watching movies like Fight Club and Seven and thinking, man, these are freaking awesome. And even treading into like Donnie Darko and Mulholland Drive and being like, that's insane. But this, really? This is what you're watching and thinking, this was awesome. I just don't know if I can get on board with it. And the other thing that I've noticed that Marvel has done such a brilliant job of doing is with these stupid and credit scenes, coaxing people into not even really caring so much about the movie itself, but more what's to come in the future. Because now it's like an episode of a show. It's a two hour episode of a TV show and you're waiting for the cliffhanger so that you can salivate and want more. And here we get two really pathetic cliffhangers, one of them featuring Kang and his different variants. The variants, by the way, awful, awful versions. I'm Kang. We can't wait to see what we have in store next. His voice, his performance. What the fuck was that? Oh, it's gonna be grand. This is so bad. I forgot what the second one was. Oh, it's Loki. Loki season two. Cool. Loki was fine. Loki was fine. This wasn't fine for me. This was bad. The final fight between Ant-Man and Kang. Again, no real stakes. I was so checked out. Oh, is Scott Lang gonna die? Probably not. And he didn't, which fine, whatever. He kind of seemed different in this movie anyways. Paul Rudd loved him to death. Didn't seem very into it this time around. And maybe it's because it was a more serious character for him to play, not the jovial, more fun loving guy. Here he's, you know, yelling for his daughter constantly. I just, this thing was such a shit show. It really was. And Kang, he gets his ass kicked by ants, by intelligent ants that Dr. Pym communicated with. They're building a civilization over there. Kang, I guess just doesn't care. He's got superpowers where he can Darth Vader people's asses around. Like, I can kill you whenever I want, except for he doesn't use it when it's useful. There's armies of people. Why can't he just pick them up and throw them? Can he pick up buildings and smash them down? I feel like this is a very underutilized ability. And it was also unclear as to how it worked. Was it part of his suit? Because I don't think he has any powers himself. It was just a lot. A lot of noise, a lot of spectacle, but nothing was that spectacular. I'm running very hot on this video. I understand that. I'm just kind of sick of it. I guess is the bottom line. There are so many movies that come out every year that are far better than this. Yet these are the ones everyone sees still. These are the popular ones that people go out and watch. When I put a review out on one of these, it does so much better than everything else I talk about. And that's kind of depressing. But also it's kind of pathetic that Disney spends $300 million on these things. And this is the final product. Where is the money going to? Pretty background wallpaper? And again, it's entertaining to watch pretty colors move around the screen. I would get lost for hours. Watching a Windows screensaver where there's just different colored pipes going around. Hours of my life have been wasted watching that. But I see the laziness in the story department. And that bothers me. And quite frankly, I don't need to praise it. I don't need to pretend to like something I don't like. I don't need to convince myself that what I'm watching is good. Because when I'm in the theater and I'm checked out thinking about other things I could be doing with my time, that means the movie didn't do its job. And so I have to do mine and talk about it. Alright, those are my thoughts on Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantamania. I probably missed something that you might be wanting me to talk about. I apologize if I did. Let me know in the comments what those are. Like the video if you had some fun. Again, please subscribe to the channel. Love to have you stick around. I post new movie content every single week here. It's a good time. Alright, thanks again for watching. Hopefully I see you next time. Take care.