BEWARE! This review contains spoilers.

Unravelling History

Time Travel. Is there anything more comic-bookish? Sure, superheroes were born in the medium and still loom large over the printed medium as well as screens both large and small. While the concept of timetravel is associated first with science-fiction, the very nature of serialized superhero comics necessitates its eventual use in-story and perpetual use meta-textually.

Consider the MCU’s first superhero IRONMAN (2008). In the comics, he was visiting Vietnam when he caught that bit of shrapnel. In the movie, the location is Afghanistan. One might wonder, if Ironman was remade today, would the setting instead be the Ukraine? That’s a kind of time travel all comics do with their stories and the characters which populate them. It’s what is commonly called a ‘sliding timeline’ and it’s what allows Bruce Wayne to remain in peak fighting form while his growing crew of Robins reach adulthood each in turn.

The dilemma with that form of storytelling is, like Robins, they gather up. Look at most any superhero title’s growing library of stories and you’ll notice that similar quirk. That’s why it’s taken so long for Peter Parker to graduate high school… or college. So many events take place, so many battles are fought, and so many new foes are introduced that occasionally some form of pruning must be done. Within shared-universe superhero comics, this has been historically done with a hard reset of the publishing timeline (that‘sliding’ one mentioned above) or the discovery of an alternate earth where all these stories are being told again for the first time.

This need to update a story’s timeline has only recently become a concern within the shared universe of Marvel Studios. But examples of this sort of franchise sustaining solution can also be found in the digital renders of Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Lea in ROGUE ONE (2016). And, if its trailer is any indication, this summer’s forthcoming THE FLASH movie is explicitly setting out to jumpstart the reset of their own mostly struggling cinematic universe.

ANT-MAN & THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA heralds the launch of Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Are we ready to press that reset button?

Under a Magnifying Glass

In ANT-MAN& THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA, Marvel studios is looking to use Phase 5 to literally prune their in-story timeline while simultaneously freeing themselves from the superhero tropes that were once considered immutable rules for that genre: secret-identities, simplistic moralities, death (the lack thereof), parenthood or orphanhood. All are inessential or actively inverted by today’s superhero.

Lookback at the debut of ANT-MAN (2015) with an eye for timelines and one will recognize not just the work of CGI but the establishment of generational superheroes. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), the original Ant-Man hands his heroic persona and the related gear to Scott Langplayed by everyone’s pal Paul Rudd. Then its sequel did similar, ANT-MAN & THE WASP doubled down on the newer of superhero tropes with the wholly original Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) taking her mother Janet’s (Michelle Pfeiffer) persona of The Wasp.

By providing Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne the active retirement they deserve,Marvel studios has turned the Ant-Man franchise into the MCU’s first family. That’s a moniker originally used for Marvel Comics’ first published superheroes,the Fantastic Four. But after four failed attempts at a movie adaptation of the Fantastic Four by other studios (1994, 2005, 2007, 2015) Marvel Studios has them scheduled for a St. Valentine’s Day release in 2025. So until then, it’s both appropriate and inspired that one of the Fantastic Four’s early antagonists invades the Ant-Man universe with the entirety of his story-timeline in tow.

Kang!

Kang the Conqueror would not use that title until after a couple of appearances. He originally appeared as the Pharaoh Rama-Tut, a time-traveler from the distant future, lording his advanced technology over the people of ancient Egypt. The fact that he was originallywhite in the comics made the character an inadvertently sharp metaphor for colonialism. When the character migrated from antagonizing the Fantastic Four to The Avengers in 1964, he did so in the persona of Kang, then with blue skin and the green and purple ensemble so gloriously brought to life on screen in QUANTUMANIA.

As a Conqueror, Kang became the iconic cautionary tale for timetravel. Using technology from the distant future, Kang travels to the near future to recruit troops he will use to conquer the present or even distant past. Along the way, he’s broken time and made enemies with himself; past, present, and future. The result, as with most wars of conquest, also includes unforeseen surprises.

For Kang, at least within the pages of Marvel Comics, one of those surprises includes a younger, more idealistic, self who runs off to join or even found his own group of Avengers - the Young Avengers. Several of them have already appeared on the small screen, but Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton) is the first of the movie members to don their super suit (though watchers of DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS (2022) might have noticed that super suits aren’t as universally required as they once were).

QUANTUMANIA marks the third MCU Cassie. Abby Ryder Fortson played Scott’s daughter in the two Ant-Man films, and then Emma Fuhrmann adopted the role for AVENGERS: ENDGAME (2019). In QUANTUMANIA, Kathryn Newton takes over from Fuhrmann, and it’s the best Cassie so far because she’s now evolving into a superheroine of her own. In the comics, Cassie becomes Stature as a member of the Young Avengers, and later takes after the Pym matriarchy with the superheroine name of Stinger.

But back to Kang. Despite that lack of quantifiable motivation, the casting of Jonathan Majors as Kang is perfect. Majors brings an intensely villainous slow burn to his role, a seething hatred that is percolating for Phase 5 installments to come. The attention to Kang’s super suit surpasses all others.It’s accurate to the comics and its meticulous detail will give cosplayers a serious challenge. QUANTUMANIA even tweaks the Wasp’s super suit to finally become comic accurate, but it occasionally comes off as looking ill-fitted or a little haphazardly designed. All of that piping and texture was going to sting someone in the end. And while Evangeline Lilly remains badass as the Wasp, the character is more often better realized in Tinker Bell mode. Beyond the initial rush of some very toy-etic designs,the supporting characters which populate the Quantum Realm, though some are beautiful, end up looking like generic freedom fighters who walked over from some of the Star Wars sets. The Quantum Realm is populated by a wild assortment of CGI beings, an echo of the iconic cantina scene in STAR WARS: EPISODE IV – A NEW HOPE (1977)

A Miniature Star Wars

Quantum has become a misused term in fiction and perhaps the TV show QUANTUM LEAP (1989-1993 reboot 2022) is to blame. That show was also about time travel, which factors into QUANTUMANIA, or is alluded to with regards to Kang. By definition, a quantum is the smallest discrete unit of a phenomena. It is the theoretical basis of the nature and behavior of matter and energy at the atomic and subatomic level. However, within the MCU, the Quantum Realm is an entirely new dimension. It’s not the smallest unit at all. It’s a whole other realm. 

The multiverse is trending in fiction right now, not only within the MCU as seen in the Disney+ series LOKI (2021) and SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME but also EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE. And peeping at the latest trailer, it looks like DC is headed there too with THE FLASH. For the MCU, the Quantum Realm is just another alternate universe, a way for Marvel to dazzle and visually overwhelm audiences with a CGI-driven world akin to AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER (2022) and STRANGE WORLD (2022) do.

However, the MCU’s Quantum Realm begs some baffling questions. Does every variant in the multiverse have its own unique Quantum Realm? Are there variant Quantum Realms? Best not to dwell on the theoretical details if this Phase 5 launch is to be enjoyed. By establishing that the Quantum Realm is not the smallest discreet unit – it’s a complex space with even smaller units – the MCU writes a blank check for writers to cash in however they please whilst world building. 

But before there was an MCU Quantum Realm, there was a Microverse. The concept is the same but as with most comic-science, it’s made up. It’s imagined by creative writers with varying interest and knowledge of current developments in science but the desire to make the lingo as plausible sounding as it is entertaining. The undisputed master of this technobabble is the Star Trek franchise.

But there’s another reason for Quantum-anything, though Scott Lang’s own questioning about putting Quantum in front of everything was perfectly inline with the movie’s self-aware dad jokes. It’s a direct contrast to the grief which suffused THOR: LOVE & THUNDER (2022). Another concept introduced in the pages of the Fantastic Four, the setting took on a life of its own when Marvel launched a comic-series based on the license to a toy line.

The Micronauts comic was published in January of 1979. Based on the toys of the same name, this title was among the first of Marvel’s forays into licensed comic adaptation and arguably among the best. The competition is steep in comparison to G.I.Joe, The Transformers and Star Wars. But writer Bill Mantlo crafted an epic space opera on par with the Star Wars films which were dominating pop culture at the time.

It was the boom of Star Wars action figures onto the toy market that heralded the demise of the higher quality but more expensive line of interchangeable toys. But the success of the comic series outlasted that of the toy-line by six years. The characters proved so popular that the title crossedover with the X-Men in a dedicated miniseries and encountered many of Marvel’s mainstay characters, including Howard the Duck. Throughout most of those adventures, the Micronauts stayed action-figure-sized benefited from an exceptional line-up of artists, many of whom would go on yo achieve considerable renown.

Since then, the license to the Micronauts has been picked up by other publishers, mostly for nostalgia purposes. Those new iterations have never lasted long and though briefly re-issued as a high-endcollectors toy-lines, the Micronauts really only live on in their descendants - the much more popular and longlasting line of toys known as the Transformers. But readers of those original comics will recognize the spirit of that comic series in much of the plot, set, environment and monster design.

Fast Forward to the Fight Scenes

At this point, loyal readers may peruse this review and wonder ‘where’s the Kung Fu?’ There’s a moment when Scott (Paul Rudd) tries to teach his daughter how to throw a punch that lands with some impact when she reduces her size. It’s something that has come up in the previous Ant-Man films in passing, more of a way to wave off any analysis of how that might work. We know that ants are immensely strong proportionally speaking. Some ants can carry 10-50 times their own weight. However, even at that strength, if an ant weighs 1-5 mg, being hit by 50-250 mg isn’t that much. We also know that when an object is shrunk, its weight changes proportionally too. Otherwise, there would be no way anyone could lift any of the vehicles when they are shrunk to matchbox size. So how would Ant-Man, his daughter, or the Wasp be able to deliver a knockdown punch when shrunk? A Kung Fu person might ponder the notion of light qigong (and conversely, heavy qigong), the generation of explosive power (fajin 發勁), and the yin yang notion of emptiness and fullness. But to go there is another theoretic rabbit hole like pondering the physics of the Quantum Realm.

The Fight Coordinator isMark Stanton-Kelly whose career in stunts goes back to 2012 and has worked on ROGUE ONE, GAME OF THRONES (2019), ANDOR (2022), and many others. QUANTUMANIA marks his first time in the Fight Coordinator chair, soon to be followed by his second film in that role THE MEG 2: THE TRENCH coming out later this year.

Truth be told, there’s very little Kung Fu here. The fight scenes are more reliant upon some unexplained blasters that exist in the Quantum Realm and magical qi blasts that Kang can generate without explanation. The fisticuffs are overshadowed by fantastic superhero stuff. However, it is worthy of note that the finale fight pits Kang and Ant-Man, and it reverts to something mano-a-mano. It’s somewhat reassuring to know that even in the Quantum Realm, no matter what superpowers you might have, it’s still more satisfying to punch your nemesis in the nose.

Into Phase 5

Setting up ANT-MAN & THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA as the launch of Phase 5 feels too big for the diminutive Ant-Man. The first two films were charmingly funny. Ant-Man has always been a bit of a joke. The first live depiction of Ant-Man was with the original cast of Saturday Night Live in a sketch called ‘Superhero Party.’ Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane in the Superman films of the late 70s, was the host. She reprises her role for the sketch with Bill Murray as Superman (which is almost meta here given Murray’s QUANTUMANIA cameo). They host a party for superheroes with some brilliant casting of Not Ready for Prime Time Players like John Belushi as the Hulk, Dan Ackroyd as the Flash, and Garrett Morris as Ant-Man. The Flash and the Hulk mercilessly mock Ant-Man’s superpowers, and it’s the best part of the sketch (except perhaps the Hulk bombing the bathroom ‘it doesn’t smell like roses, come on!’). In a brilliantly meta tribute, Morris has a cameoin the original MCU ANT-MAN as a cab driver. That humor infests the first two Ant-Man films.

QUANTUMANIA tries to replicate that sense of humor, but the witty quips are lost in the eye-popping spectacle of the Quantum Realm. Sorely missed are the X-Con Security Consultants: Luis (Michael Peña), Dave (T.I.), and Kurt Goreshter (David Dastmalchian). In the first two Ant-Man installments, they provided a comedic counterpoint to Rudd’s self-effacing happy-go-lucky humor. They were the comedic anchor to the earlier films, bringing some necessary perspective to the absurdity of it all.

Looking back on the previous MCU phase launchers, QUANTUMANIApales in terms of story to IRON MAN (2008, Phase 1), IRON MAN 3 (2013, Phase 2), and CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR (2016, Phase 3). How well it stands up against BLACK WIDOW (2021, Phase 4) is debatable.

If QUANTUMANIA is to be the cinematic introduction to Kang the Conqueror, it fails at that. Kang’s powers and origin are poorly defined. While it makes sense to anyone well read in the comics, Kang’s motivations and supervillain abilities are never clarified or explained on screen. He’s just a bad dude jockeying to be the Thanos of Phase 5. Beyond the bombastic CGI visuals, QUANTUMANIA is a soft launch to Phase 5, and all the teasers are in those signature Marvel end credit scenes.Notably, the end credit scene says that Kang will return instead of Ant-Man or the Wasp.