ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA

Phase Five opener has its bugs

- Dave Golder

RELEASED OUT NOW!

12A | 125 minutes 

Director Peyton Reed

Cast Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors, Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Douglas, Bill Murray

“People felt like, ‘Oh, these [Ant-Man movies] are fun little palate cleansers after a gigantic Avengers movie,’” Quantumania director Payton Reed told Entertainment Weekly last year. “For this third one, I said, ‘I don’t want to be the palate cleanser anymore. I want to be the big Avengers movie.’”

And with Quantumania also kicking off Phase Five of the MCU – and being described by MCU overlord Kevin Feige as “a direct line into” Phase Six’s Avengers: The Kang Dynasty (2025) – there’s a huge weight of expectation on the shoulders of Marvel’s littlest hero. The film opens in familiar light and frothy Ant-Man mode, with Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) happy to live off his fame, and not showing much inclination to take up Avenging again – much to the disgust of his now-teenage daughter Cassie.

She’s become a social justice warrior jailbird, and in her spare time – behind dad’s back, but with the help of Hope (the Wasp) and Hank (Ant-Man Sr) – she’s built a subatomic Hubble telescope in the basement, to map the Quantum Realm. She’s got a costume now, too. Dad is not happy, but there are loads more family secrets to come – like just who Janet (Wasp Sr) was boffing in the Quantum Realm a while back.