Hello friends, I hope everyone’s week has been going well. After watching the rangers take 5/6 points and dominate western Canada like it’s the British empire I wanted to take a breather and partake in another one of my favorite past times. As promised in my “hello” post from the other week (shout out Adele that’s my new best friend) , I plan on providing takes on the world outside of just sports and I’ve come here today to talk about the MCU’s latest venture, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

Now, if you’re anything like me you know that the MCU hasn’t been the MCU in quite some time, 2 years to be exact. And granted, it’s near impossible to follow up the perfect conclusion to the infinity saga, but I don’t think anyone expected a fall this hard from grace. Was it over saturation since we basically had new MCU content every single month between movie releases and Disney plus shows? I think that’s part of it, but I also think there was a sense of complacency there with the Disney overlords thinking we’d eat whatever slop they put on our plate, and we did but we weren’t happy about it. We’re not gonna get into the whole thing right now, but I do want to talk about Ant Man 3 (I’m not spelling out quantumania every time cmon let’s be real)

Ant Man got SLAMMED out of the gate by critics before the public even saw the movie and then once it was fully released we saw a pretty big gap between critics and audiences. First of all I just want to say, the MCU was never supposed to pump out Citizen Kane level movies, sure there’s a bunch that are very well made movies and could crack a top 25 list, but at the end of the day we’re talking about comic book stories and comics are supposed to be fun silly adventures. And guess what, that’s exactly what this movie was. As were the first 2 Ant Man movies.

I’m not going to give an entire breakdown of the movie since it’s already been beat to shit but I want to highlight the things I really liked.

I guess when rumblings come out that this is the next “civil war” (one of those movies i mentioned could crack a top 25) expectations we’re gonna be sky high, but I like to tell myself that was just a tongue in cheek reference to the fact that Scott Lang wouldn’t shut the fuck up about fighting team stark at the airport. Ok let’s start there, Paul Rudd did a great job at portraying what an every day joe would do after saving the world (even though he took the cowards way out and didn’t shrink and go up Thanos’ butt). Insufferable, but in a Paul Rudd way with a smile that you can only love. Dude wrote a book, started a podcast, went on media tours the whole nine yards and I for one loved it. I think Paul Rudd does a great job as this character every single time he’s on screen in whatever project it is. Of course with Scott Lang comes the rest of the Ant Family. Hope, Hank, Janet and (a new) Cassie all return and I definitely enjoyed the family dynamic they had going.

Another thing I want to highlight is the CGI. Recent MCU CGI has been dog shit, and if you read deeper into it, the VFX artists are apparently being worked to the bone but again different blog for a different day. Here though, I felt as if they finally got their swagger back, we are of course still talking about the same studio that made me think a talking raccoon and a sentient tree were as real as could be acting along side Chris Pratt. The Quantum Realm I thought looked incredible, the aliens or whatever you want to call them looked great, the only time things got wonky was during the probability scene (piss break if you need one, I did) and I mean what do you expect there. But all and all it was refreshing to have a return to form especially after the tough CGI in Doctor Strange 2 and whatever you wanna call the D+ shows. (No disrespect to the artists, Sunny Days in Flushing respect and love artists, we’re mad at the studio not you)

The comedy here was very MCU-ish and if you’re here you know exactly what that means. But we’re talking about an Ant Man movie and in my opinion this was on par with the first 2 very much so. Sure I missed my man Luis and it would’ve been great to get a cameo or something in the beginning, but I thought everyone especially Michael Freaking Douglas stepped up to fill the void. Ant Man was always an ultra self contained story with loose ties to the overall arch I feel like. We saw ant man and the wasp go on their own adventure and fight ghost in the 2nd one only to have the post credit scene tie everything together very well. While the stakes were definitely a bit higher here I thought they delivered a product consistent to exactly what they’ve done twice before.

And by stakes you and I both know exactly what I am talking about. Him. He who shall not be named. The conqueror. Kang. Mother fucking Kang man holy shit. Jonathan Majors once again crushed it, we saw him briefly in the Loki finale and we loved him then but now we get a much closer look. Full disclosure, I don’t know much about Kang, I have a lot to learn and it sounds very interesting especially given the first post credit scene so I am all ears.

We first see Kang in the cold open crash landing with Janet and we all know the menace behind the eyes, but then he disappears for a bit. A lot of people seem to hate this move, but I honestly thought it only made him badder. The entire first half we hear whispers of “him” but it’s never dove into it and we don’t see him. We just hear about how bad “he”is and what “he” can do. I loved it, it worked for Jaws the shark and it worked for Kang the conqueror.

And man, when Kang suited up. Jonathan majors meant business and you felt the force with every attack. I saw it in 3D so it’s possible the visuals were enhanced, but again I couldn’t help but be impressed with the on screen product for the first time in a long time. Not for nothing, but during the fights Scot Lang got some licks in, my man held his own for a fight I pretty much counted him out on.

Now as we all saw, there are a metric shit ton of kangs in this universe so the one we saw was just one of many. But I have reason to believe the one that’s gonna be the big problem is still yet to come. At least in person, I believe he was the statue from the end of Loki. And that’s another thing, the second post credit scene was great with Owen Wilson and loki seeing another version of Kang but my theater felt it wasn’t important enough to turn the lights back off and I couldn’t see shit.

All in all folks I really enjoyed this movie, is it necessarily a movie I’ll go out of my way to watch to like fall asleep? I don’t know yet it’s too early to tell, the first appearance of Kang could mean something big and there could definitely be a gnarly crumb trail we all missed that’ll make sense in like 2028 (fake year). But I definitely don’t think it’s as bad as people make it out to be. I told one of the last remaining members of my MCU old guard (shout out #2&6) that this was make or break or I’d be joining the other member on the dark side at the DCU (shout out BH), and I’ll definitely be sticking around. On to cry during guardians 3, see you on the other side.