“Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania” is the first film to kick off the newest phase in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The movie was released on Feb. 17 with a run time of two hours and five minutes and featured notable actors such as Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly and Kathryn Newton. 

However, despite being a chance to start the highly anticipated phase five out strong, the movie still shows recurring issues that have been in Marvel films in recent years.

The plot centers around Scott Lang, also known as Ant-Man, and his family as they get trapped inside the quantum realm, in which lies a whole different universe. 

An inconsistency in the scene pacing causes the film to feel choppy. For example, one scene shows the whole group relaxing but it is immediately followed by a sudden bad decision – changing the story line completely in an abrupt manner.

This problem runs throughout the whole film as it obviously wants to introduce the main villain as soon as possible. So much time is spent hyping up the main villain, Kang the Conqueror, instead of actually fleshing out new background characters that the audience is introduced to for the first time.

Kang was hands down the best part of the movie. Jonathan Majors did a fantastic job presenting the new character as a ruthless and power-hungry villain.

The extent of positives for the movie starts and ends with Kang. The terribly rushed dialogue between characters, corny lines and blinding CGI all made the movie look OK at best.

Altogether, the movie isn’t bad. Viewers can easily pick and pull good moments throughout the film. If there was more time to work on the project, I believe a better developed execution and final product could have been possible.

As a long-time fan of the Marvel franchise, I know that they have the assets, characters and actors to make spectacular films, but they need more time to polish the small details that make good movies great. 

Marvel has a great opportunity to make Kang a spectacular villain throughout the upcoming phase five movies, but until then, the bar isn’t set all too high.

Rating: 2.75 out of 5