Oh dear God…Marvel has done it again. They made one of the superhero movies ever.
Before I go on, I must warn you that there are some spoilers ahead – not too many to ruin the “viewing experience” (if there is any), but just enough to give my review some context. If you intend to watch the film in theaters and you want to keep everything a surprise, skip ahead to the last few paragraphs. Otherwise, keep reading.
Let’s just jump straight into it. If you’ve watched all the trailers, you can probably piece together what’s going on. The Pyms, the Langs, and Hope van Dyne get sucked into the Quantum Realm, and they have to get back to Earth. A man, Kang the Conqueror, offers to help them for a price, but Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfieffer) warns the rest against trusting him. And…that’s it. That’s all you need to know for this movie, if you’re uninterested in all the worldbuilding and whatnot.
If you can’t tell already, I can’t say many positive things about this movie. The scriptwriting, for example. That was some of the cheesiest dialogue I’ve ever heard in a long time. It seriously rivals “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness” and “Thor: Love and Thunder” for some of Marvel’s worst lines. Hell, some of the script is gloriously ambiguous, perfectly ripe for the picking of fresh memes. That’s either good or bad, depending on who you are. On the other side of the scriptwriting spectrum, the characters are bland. Where did Scott Lang’s signature sarcasm go? His soul must have been bled dry by being “the little guy” for the past few years, which the movie makes an annoying point of. Either that, or the team working on creating Quantumania’s plot sucked the life out of Lang, whichever one it is. Oh, yeah, and Cassie’s unadmirably irritating, which makes us care nothing for her whenever she gets in danger.
Speaking of scriptwriting, let’s turn to the plot. Actually, some of the bigger ideas and stories were handled somewhat well. The problem concerns some of the smaller story beats throughout the film. Some of the emotional points were curbed back way too far, probably as an attempt to keep the movie going. Meanwhile, the new characters (and yes, there are other new characters) that help out the lost team feel lifeless, nothing more than limp plot devices. And some scenes just barely made any sense – as in, why include them? (I would give you specific examples, but I’d be spoiling too much). All of these give Quantumania a rough, unfinished feel, like the filmmakers were in a hurry to get this film completed. If the movie had an extra 30 to 45 minutes (it’s 2 hours and five minutes, including credits), it could have easily addressed these issues head-on. But no. We’re stuck with another Marvel epic that stumbles and crashes to the ground.
Let me just harp on another aspect of Quantumania. You know how some movies just seem to copy another film’s style or looks? Well, that’s Quantumania for you. Like its original main character, it doesn’t seem to have any qualms about stealing, and if you watch it, you’ll find that many elements bear a strange resemblance to some of the tropes in Star Wars. Flying ships. A vast army whose troops hold laser blasters and look exactly the same. Strange aliens and droids. A bar scene. Desert garb. An actual desert. A chanting tribe. A ragtag group of rebels. Glowing blue holograms. Oh, yeah, and Kang has Force powers, including Force choke. Yup. Shameless stealing there. Shameless.
I could drone on and on, but being the merciful guy I am, I’ll hold back and get to the good stuff, which there is not a lot of.
The clear breakout star was Jonathan Majors, who played all of the Kangs. (Yes, there are multiple Kangs – watch the mid- and post-credit scenes.) He played it to a tee, and was the only character who had dimension among the main cast of characters. God, I can’t wait to see him in future Marvel projects – especially the upcoming “Avengers: The Kang Dynasty,” which is releasing on May 2, 2025. He makes the villain deathly intimidating, especially in the final climax where he…oh wait, I shouldn’t spoil the only good scene in the movie for you. But seriously, if you’re going to watch Quantumania, watch it for Jonathan Majors, the climax, and the post-credit scenes.
Read after this line for a spoiler-free review
So what does Quantumania do right? One word: Kang. Marvel had to stick the landing on getting Kang right. They needed to make sure that they would at least hint that Kang was going to be far more powerful and frightening than Thanos – otherwise, audiences wouldn’t care about Kang in future MCU installments. They handled that perfectly by bringing in Jonathan Majors for the role.
What does Quantumania do wrong? Two words: everything else. The CGI was janky (though Marvel does constantly update their CGI post-release), the characters don’t have legs (figuratively speaking), and the story is not fully fleshed out. I was laughing at this movie along with my friend, not because it was actually funny, but because it was just so bad. Seriously – some great memes are going to come out of this movie.
Quantumania falls into the current MCU trend of horrible movies that audiences and critics make fun of when they exit the theater. Unlike those other movies, however, Quantumania did the thing it was supposed to do right: establish Kang as the true threat to the MCU for the next few phases or so. However, that was clearly the bare minimum; Marvel met that minimum, but did not exceed it. They created an actually scary villain at the cost of a good storyline.
As to whether you should go and see this film, I’ll leave it up to you. If you want to be able to say years from now that you saw the birth of the MCU’s second big baddie on the big screen, then knock yourself out. The only advice I will give you is, if you have a Disney+ subscription, wait and save yourself a few bucks. You might just be glad that you did.
Final Verdict: 3.5/10
