A ChucksConnection Film Review

Kathryn Newton wears purple high top Converse “Chuck Taylor” All Stars in the film.

 

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

 

by Marcus Angulo

Scott and Cassie are sucked into the Quantum Realm.

 

Many people felt that after Avengers: Endgame, the MCU should have ended. You can easily see why many felt this way, the one-two punch of Infinity War and Endgame really felt like the perfect close to the ten years of storytelling that Marvel had put together. However, that was just the first volume of the MCU, and the story is far from over. Now four years later, there have been some bumps in the road but also some real highlights. New heroes have been introduced and there is a youth wave as heroes like Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, America Chavez, and Kate Bishop take center stage. One of the old guards sticking around though is Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man. After being a key part of bringing everyone snapped by Thanos back, how does the former thief turned superhero move forward? Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is the final film in the Ant-Man trilogy. It stars Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Jonathan Majors, Kathryn Newton, David Dastmalchian, Katy O'Brian, William Jackson Harper, Bill Murray, Michelle Pfeiffer, Corey Stoll, and Michael Douglas, and was released in theaters on February 17th, 2023.

Cassie’s super suit uses purple and black chucks as the footwear of choice.

The film opens with a wide shot inside the Quantum Realm. We see a lone, masked settler camping out around some weird-looking wildlife. Suddenly a ship crashes into the distance and the settler is revealed to be Janet Van Dyne (Pfeiffer) back when she was trapped in the Quantum Realm. She rushes in to help the crash victim and we first meet Kang (Majors). In current-day San Francisco, Scott Lang is living his best life. He wrote a best-selling book about his time as a hero and his time saving the universe with The Avengers, and being one of the few living members left on Earth, he’s in high demand. He’s happily in love with Hope (Lilly) still, and everything is going great! Everything except things with his daughter Cassie (Newton), who gets arrested for the second time. Scott is more or less retired from super heroing and Cassie thinks he’s wasting his life away even though he literally helped save the universe.

 

Scott catches Cassie and saves her like he always does.

 

Trying to bond with Cassie, Scott takes a look at her and Hank’s (Douglas) newest invention: a deep quantum satellite. She wants to map out the Quantum Realm, but Janet tells her to shut it down when she hears that it is sending a signal down there. Before she can though, the five are sucked down into the Quantum Realm. Hope, Janet, and Hank are separated from Scott and Cassie. The two parties attempt to find each other in the vast wasteland, but along the way, they learn that there is a whole society living down there. Scott and Cassie meet some natives who are rebelling against a ruthless ruler, and the others meet with Lord Krylar (Murray), a former ally of Janet’s, who reveals that things have changed since she left. This ruthless ruler is actually Kang, now known as the Conqueror. He is the one who received their signal and brought them all here. We see what happened after Janet saved Jang all those years ago. As she repaired his ship’s core, she saw its memory and it showed her a vision of Kang conquering and destroying entire timelines. Kang revealed that he was exiled by a council of his multiversal variants as they feared his extremism. Janet is able to destroy his ship before he can return to the surface world, but not before he regains his powers. He would use these powers to conquer the Realm and now he has brought Janet back so he can return to the surface world and finish what he started. Now, it’s on Scott to save the multiverse and keep Kang from returning.

The residents of the Quantum Realm intercept our heroes.

The hot take that the MCU is “over” is really played out at this point. In the post-Endgame world that we’re in, the universe has to establish what it’s going to be going forward, and that is going to include some less-than-A+ stories as the studio tries to figure out where to go next and how to get there. Just because Quantumania was a mixed bag doesn’t mean the MCU is dead. The performances from Rudd and Pfeifer are really good. Rudd is able to take Scott in a different direction than in previous Ant-Man films and he really nails the emotional scenes. This makes some of the story choices more baffling though, especially the ending which seems to be setting up for something darker but then pivots completely to a happy ending. That’s the stuff that keeps this film from working one hundred percent and it just feels like there was a battle creatively about where to take this story. Here’s hoping that the studio figures it out going forward.

Best Chucks Scene

Cassie is hung up by Kang.

 

Cassie Lang gets her own super suit in this film, and her shoe of choice is a pair of purple Chuck Taylors. This fits really well with her character as these are the shoes she wears in her civilian outfit, and her dad doesn’t know about her super suit so not having to change footwear makes a lot of sense. They also fit with her rebellious attitude and younger mentality. The best chucks scene is the first scene where we really get to see Cassie in her suit. She and Scott are with the Quantum Realm rebels when Kang’s forces capture them. During the kerfuffle, Cassie first shows off her suit and tries to fight but its clear that shes not a pro like Scott or Hope. They get captured and are integrated by M.O.D.O.K. aka Darren Cross the former Yellowjacket. After the events of the first Ant-Man, he was trapped in the Quantum Realm and turned himself into the “ultimate weapon”. Cassie and Scott poke fun at his baby legs but things get serious when Kang steps into the dungeon. His conversation with them is tense and menacing, and he references his past meet-ups with other versions of the Avengers. He threatens Cassie in order to get Scott to steal something for him, and Scott reluctantly agrees. A great scene that shows how much of a threat Kang truly is.

Locked up for the third time now.

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