Where do I even begin? They somehow made a movie that's even worse and more uninteresting than the second Ant-Man movie. I haven't been this uninvested in an MCU movie since Thor 4 and Captain Marvel. Like another reviewer said, who even cares anymore?
First of all, the first act of this movie is probably the worst first act of any MCU movie I've seen in a while. It's also artificially made boring and uninteresting because they do this stupidest trope of one character hiding something from the others and not telling them until the middle of the movie and their explanation for it is "I wanted to protect you". Protect her from what? An angry guy with the size of an atom in the Quantum Realm? Not telling your family of "scientists" about the actual dangers of Quantum Realm and then getting mad when they eff with it is protecting them? I hate this trope so much because there's no point to it. The only reason they did that was to postpone introducing Kang and showing his flashbacks till the second act.
The first act is completely boring but it gets just a little better and more interesting when they introduce Kang. But the movie gets boring and uninteresting as it goes anyway.
There is no character arc in this movie. Marvel, or rather the writers they hire have forgotten how to write scripts anymore. They don't even care enough to have character arcs, so it's no surprise they don't do any characterization for the new characters either.
Remember the first Doctor Strange movie? Remember his memorable character arc throughout his first movie? Remember when MCU writers had an iota of an idea of how to write a movie and make the audience actually care about the characters and have interesting characters? Remember when they actually tried? Now compare that to the second Doctor Strange movie where he doesn't even feel like the main character of his own movie, now imagine something that's somehow even worse and you get this movie.
I don't even know who's the main character of this movie. Scott Lang doesn't have a character arc in this movie. Her daughter wants to help the resistance people for some reason and Lang who is the "hero" apparently, doesn't care and doesn't even change at the end. Things just happen and they go through it and that's that, no character growth and no nothing.
They for some reason again mislead us in the trailers that Scott wants to help Kang because he missed Cassie's childhood. But this is nowhere to be found in the actual movie. Now I know about Marvel trailers and that they have misleading footage and stuff that aren't in the movie, but they aren't usually as misleading as this one. And the funny thing is, this could've worked better than whatever cliché we got in the actual film.
Also, what's with the kid genius trope we keep seeing in these movies? Why does every child of these superheroes have to be a genius scientist and inventor all of a sudden? Can't they be a normal child with normal lives for once? All of them have to invent some multiverse-bending device in their garage that even Tony Stark couldn't've made?
And speaking of the resistance people, please show me someone who actually watched this movie and cared about them or even remembers their names. The writers don't even do the bare minimum of characterizing them. You won't care about these people or their uprising and revolution when watching this movie. You won't care about any of them dying.
This movie was only made to introduce Kang and nothing else. The writers don't care about characterization or character arcs or even writing a decent plot with what they've got. Why even make this movie when we had Kang introduced in Loki? This adds nothing and is repetitive. You don't even need to see this movie if you have seen Loki. Somehow Loki gave more backstory and characterization to this next big baddie of the MCU than this movie, and he was only in the last episode of that show, so you go figure!
It's obvious that they saw the backlash and mediocre reactions to Phase 4 and decided to make Kang the villain of this movie and start Phase 5 with this to set him up as the next big villain and hype people up again, and they failed miserably at that.
MODOK's design and CGI are somehow even worse than the floating head in Thor 4. It's probably the goofiest and worst thing I've seen in a while, and his character doesn't even have a place in this movie. The design of his armor when he's not showing his face is alright, but my god what an atrocious monstrosity! I don't even know what they were thinking designing him like that. Even Marvel's Avengers game had a better design than this, and that game had the blandest and forgettable face designs ever. And the only reason he was in this movie was to have something connected to the first Ant-Man movie. He doesn't serve a purpose in this movie and they even dare thinking we would care about him.
Speaking of the first Ant-Man movie, that movie at least knew how to be a little fun movie about Scott Lang and a reasonable throwaway villain, not a giant world-ending event with a big baddie that's out of Ant-Man's league. If you've seen The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, you know that all the Avengers combined can't even defeat Kang, but here we are with Ant-Man and the Wasp and his daughter saving the world from this omnipotent god. And this omnipotent god has robot soldiers that somehow die from a paintball bullet. This is why it's tricky to have a villain that's omnipotent, because you make it harder for the audience to believe that he would be this dumb to have prison cells that can be opened if you stick a fork into their control panels and robots that die from a punch and him getting defeated at the end somehow.
And this is one of the biggest reasons Phase 4, and apparently Phase 5 now have been a huge disappointment for me, especially for the Dinsey Plus shows; the fact that each and every one of them has to end with a huge gigantic clusterfk of an ending and third act, with two Kaijus punching each other. Shang-Chi that's about this father and son? End it with a big fight in the third act with a giant Dragon. Moon Knight which is a street-level superhero? End it with two Kaijus punching each other. Black Widow? Some CGI vomit of bad action in the sky or something. Eternals? Same Kaiju fighting. Same with What If and Ms. Marvel. Just have a big battle or even a full-on war like Wakanda Forever in your third act. Just have "world-ending" "stakes" in each and every project of yours, doesn't matter how big or small the superhero is. I think pretty much most of the audience apart from the Marvel fanboys have gotten tired of this formula since a long time ago, I don't understand how the producers and writers haven't yet.
This movie is also CGI galore and I don't think there was even one real set. The actors probably still never met each other and all of them were shot separately.
I also remember when they said Ant-Man couldn't take his mask off if he's small or big, but here we are having him enlarged to the size of Kong and having his helmet off easily like it's nothing. There's no difference in pressure on his body and his head when he's large and takes his helmet off. So what's even the point of having a helmet in the first place? Just stab yourself with one of those blue enlargement pills ;) and get big or small.
I have rambled a lot, but the more I write, the more I realize I don't care about this movie and it's probably better to stop wasting more time on it and move on.
All in all, this movie is a big disappointment and fails at pretty much everything it does or tries to do. There is no characterization or character arc, there is no real tension and you won't care about anything and anybody because they don't take time to develop characters, the movie is full of tropes and clichés and all in a bad way, Kang has a better introduction in Loki, the movie is all CGI and action and is somehow on par with Eternals on how boring and uninteresting it is.
The M(id)CU continues to be mid and they are progressively getting worse with writing actual decent plots, characters, and villains, and I don't think most people care anymore about what the next MCU movie is gonna be about (apart from GOTG3) and which version of Kang we're gonna see next. The hype and excitement and investment people had MCU has significantly died down since Endgame and I don't think most people now care about what's coming in the future.
I don't even have a morsel of hope in what they're gonna do with the X-Men, Blade, Daredevil, and Fantastic Four. If they can't even think of a good story to tell for Ant-Man and Wasp and they just throw the next big baddie in there to fight, they probably will have ran out of ideas by the time they're gonna make X-Men.
First of all, the first act of this movie is probably the worst first act of any MCU movie I've seen in a while. It's also artificially made boring and uninteresting because they do this stupidest trope of one character hiding something from the others and not telling them until the middle of the movie and their explanation for it is "I wanted to protect you". Protect her from what? An angry guy with the size of an atom in the Quantum Realm? Not telling your family of "scientists" about the actual dangers of Quantum Realm and then getting mad when they eff with it is protecting them? I hate this trope so much because there's no point to it. The only reason they did that was to postpone introducing Kang and showing his flashbacks till the second act.
The first act is completely boring but it gets just a little better and more interesting when they introduce Kang. But the movie gets boring and uninteresting as it goes anyway.
There is no character arc in this movie. Marvel, or rather the writers they hire have forgotten how to write scripts anymore. They don't even care enough to have character arcs, so it's no surprise they don't do any characterization for the new characters either.
Remember the first Doctor Strange movie? Remember his memorable character arc throughout his first movie? Remember when MCU writers had an iota of an idea of how to write a movie and make the audience actually care about the characters and have interesting characters? Remember when they actually tried? Now compare that to the second Doctor Strange movie where he doesn't even feel like the main character of his own movie, now imagine something that's somehow even worse and you get this movie.
I don't even know who's the main character of this movie. Scott Lang doesn't have a character arc in this movie. Her daughter wants to help the resistance people for some reason and Lang who is the "hero" apparently, doesn't care and doesn't even change at the end. Things just happen and they go through it and that's that, no character growth and no nothing.
They for some reason again mislead us in the trailers that Scott wants to help Kang because he missed Cassie's childhood. But this is nowhere to be found in the actual movie. Now I know about Marvel trailers and that they have misleading footage and stuff that aren't in the movie, but they aren't usually as misleading as this one. And the funny thing is, this could've worked better than whatever cliché we got in the actual film.
Also, what's with the kid genius trope we keep seeing in these movies? Why does every child of these superheroes have to be a genius scientist and inventor all of a sudden? Can't they be a normal child with normal lives for once? All of them have to invent some multiverse-bending device in their garage that even Tony Stark couldn't've made?
And speaking of the resistance people, please show me someone who actually watched this movie and cared about them or even remembers their names. The writers don't even do the bare minimum of characterizing them. You won't care about these people or their uprising and revolution when watching this movie. You won't care about any of them dying.
This movie was only made to introduce Kang and nothing else. The writers don't care about characterization or character arcs or even writing a decent plot with what they've got. Why even make this movie when we had Kang introduced in Loki? This adds nothing and is repetitive. You don't even need to see this movie if you have seen Loki. Somehow Loki gave more backstory and characterization to this next big baddie of the MCU than this movie, and he was only in the last episode of that show, so you go figure!
It's obvious that they saw the backlash and mediocre reactions to Phase 4 and decided to make Kang the villain of this movie and start Phase 5 with this to set him up as the next big villain and hype people up again, and they failed miserably at that.
MODOK's design and CGI are somehow even worse than the floating head in Thor 4. It's probably the goofiest and worst thing I've seen in a while, and his character doesn't even have a place in this movie. The design of his armor when he's not showing his face is alright, but my god what an atrocious monstrosity! I don't even know what they were thinking designing him like that. Even Marvel's Avengers game had a better design than this, and that game had the blandest and forgettable face designs ever. And the only reason he was in this movie was to have something connected to the first Ant-Man movie. He doesn't serve a purpose in this movie and they even dare thinking we would care about him.
Speaking of the first Ant-Man movie, that movie at least knew how to be a little fun movie about Scott Lang and a reasonable throwaway villain, not a giant world-ending event with a big baddie that's out of Ant-Man's league. If you've seen The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, you know that all the Avengers combined can't even defeat Kang, but here we are with Ant-Man and the Wasp and his daughter saving the world from this omnipotent god. And this omnipotent god has robot soldiers that somehow die from a paintball bullet. This is why it's tricky to have a villain that's omnipotent, because you make it harder for the audience to believe that he would be this dumb to have prison cells that can be opened if you stick a fork into their control panels and robots that die from a punch and him getting defeated at the end somehow.
And this is one of the biggest reasons Phase 4, and apparently Phase 5 now have been a huge disappointment for me, especially for the Dinsey Plus shows; the fact that each and every one of them has to end with a huge gigantic clusterfk of an ending and third act, with two Kaijus punching each other. Shang-Chi that's about this father and son? End it with a big fight in the third act with a giant Dragon. Moon Knight which is a street-level superhero? End it with two Kaijus punching each other. Black Widow? Some CGI vomit of bad action in the sky or something. Eternals? Same Kaiju fighting. Same with What If and Ms. Marvel. Just have a big battle or even a full-on war like Wakanda Forever in your third act. Just have "world-ending" "stakes" in each and every project of yours, doesn't matter how big or small the superhero is. I think pretty much most of the audience apart from the Marvel fanboys have gotten tired of this formula since a long time ago, I don't understand how the producers and writers haven't yet.
This movie is also CGI galore and I don't think there was even one real set. The actors probably still never met each other and all of them were shot separately.
I also remember when they said Ant-Man couldn't take his mask off if he's small or big, but here we are having him enlarged to the size of Kong and having his helmet off easily like it's nothing. There's no difference in pressure on his body and his head when he's large and takes his helmet off. So what's even the point of having a helmet in the first place? Just stab yourself with one of those blue enlargement pills ;) and get big or small.
I have rambled a lot, but the more I write, the more I realize I don't care about this movie and it's probably better to stop wasting more time on it and move on.
All in all, this movie is a big disappointment and fails at pretty much everything it does or tries to do. There is no characterization or character arc, there is no real tension and you won't care about anything and anybody because they don't take time to develop characters, the movie is full of tropes and clichés and all in a bad way, Kang has a better introduction in Loki, the movie is all CGI and action and is somehow on par with Eternals on how boring and uninteresting it is.
The M(id)CU continues to be mid and they are progressively getting worse with writing actual decent plots, characters, and villains, and I don't think most people care anymore about what the next MCU movie is gonna be about (apart from GOTG3) and which version of Kang we're gonna see next. The hype and excitement and investment people had MCU has significantly died down since Endgame and I don't think most people now care about what's coming in the future.
I don't even have a morsel of hope in what they're gonna do with the X-Men, Blade, Daredevil, and Fantastic Four. If they can't even think of a good story to tell for Ant-Man and Wasp and they just throw the next big baddie in there to fight, they probably will have ran out of ideas by the time they're gonna make X-Men.