Ant-Man’s back, baby! Or at least that’s what he tells himself in his internal monologue as the theme song to Welcome Back, Kotter plays in the background. The film really wants you to believe that Ant-Man is really and truly “back”. Unfortunately, Quantumania is as much an Ant-Man movie as Civil War is a Captain America movie with it’s need to bridge the gap between the other, bigger events in the MCU, and it causes Scott Lang/Ant-Man to shrink down to microscopic levels in his own title in order to make room for one very interesting villain and two very uninteresting side characters.

Let’s start with the good: Jonathan Majors – a still-on-the-rise star who is talented enough to fill the Thanos-shaped hole in Marvel’s overarching villain department as Kang the Conqueror. Kang is menacing and seemingly powerful until he gets trapped in a Marvel third act, where he is devolved into a hard-hitting boxer that has difficulty getting his opponent to stay down (maybe this was preparation for his upcoming role in Creed III). I realize the reason Kang is so terrifying is because there’s an infinite number of him, all more evil than the last, but it’s difficult to see him as such a threat when he’s been defeated rather easily twice now (If you missed Loki, or any other Disney+ MCU content, I can hardly blame you). Majors does a remarkable job with what he’s given, as does the ever-charismatic Paul Rudd, but to the film’s detriment, they are both given very little.

On to the bad: Besides trying to setup the next two phases of the MCU, Quantumania has to try and give us a reason for it’s own existence. To do this, they give the majority of the screentime to Michelle Pfeiffer’s Janet Van Dyne (not a problem under different circumstances) and Kathryn Newton’s Cassie Lang. Janet gets to spend the majority of the film in fear of the inevitable third act and talking incessantly about how there’s no time to talk. I guess explanations of her time in the Quantum Realm would make several of the movie’s events unnecessary and would shave off significant runtime – an alternative I would have greatly appreciated. The greater offense, however, belongs to the new Cassie. She’s a rebellious, teenage ne’er-do-well who has to be bailed out of prison for…helping homeless people. Her only real crime is caring too much and spouting off self-righteous and clunky dialogue (“Just because it’s not happening to you doesn’t mean it’s not happening”). She also gets to wash her hands of her own actions because her dad wasn’t around for the five-year “Blip”. Just because it’s eye-rolling in order to set up a mediocre father-daughter reconciliation doesn’t mean it’s not eye-rolling.

Now, for the ugly: I realize there’s a lot of talk lately about the working conditions of visual effects artists, especially ones working on Disney content, but the CGI in Quantumania is absolutely horrendous and cannot be left unmentioned. The Quantum Realm backdrop is incredibly dark and looks like a Jackson Pollock made with only the dullest of browns, violets and reds, but the real offender here is our live-action M.O.D.O.K. Corey Stoll returns after nearly seven years since the first Ant-Man to play the now-deformed Darren Cross, who has been reconstructed by Kang into a pathetic and goofy metal Igor that looks eerily similar to George Lopez’s Mr. Electric in The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D. It’s a pointless addition to an unnecessarily jam-packed movie, and the laughs M.O.D.O.K. brings aren’t the laughs the creators are going for. The ones they are going for fall flat, like an attempt to redeem him at the last minute (“I got to be an Avenger”).

The bottom line is that Ant-Man has come a long way from the exciting fight aboard a toy Thomas the Tank-Engine, but unfortunately, it’s in the wrong direction. Long gone are the contained adventures of the littlest Avenger and his quirky sidekicks (the absence of Luis is particularly felt), and here to stay are high-stakes battles for all humanity and lifeless characters here to punch their way into your hearts. Those who still go to the first showing for each formulaic Marvel showstopper off the production line will enjoy this one and what it sets up for the future, but for the rest of us, even a Bill Murray cameo can’t salvage this one.

Rating: 3/10