Not too long ago, I was a staunch Marvel fan, always eagerly anticipating the next movie or series to be released. However, since then, the Marvel fatigue has begun to set in and I’ve found myself looking forward to the new content less and less, exacerbated by the MCU’s poor track record last year. So, when Ant-Man 3 came out, I’ll admit that I wasn’t all that interested in it and the reviews I was hearing online didn’t make me anymore interested. I wish I could say that watching the movie changed my mind, but I can’t.
I think it’s almost universally agreed that Kang (played by Jonathan Majors) is the best part of the movie. With Kang being marketed as the next Thanos, there’s a lot of pressure on the character and I wanted to get the first glimpse of the next big villain in the MCU. I’m going to go into some details that contain some spoilers later, but for now I can say a couple of things about Kang. First of all, he’s one of the MCU’s better villains, beating out many of the one-off villains we’ve seen over the years that only the super fans such as myself can even name. That being said, he doesn’t live up to Thanos (though I’d argue that’s basically an impossible task). The other thing I’ll say about Kang is that, as good as he is, he barely has any connection to Scott Lang (Ant-Man). He’s more of a villain to Scott’s girlfriend’s mother, Janet Van Dyne. While Scott and Kang do fight, the only share a couple of scenes and there’s not any type of connection forged between the two that elevates that conflict into being something more interesting.
Aside from Kang, the movie is exactly what I thought it would be and what I think most people have come to expect. The heroes spend maybe five minutes on earth at the start of the movie before being trapped inside the Quantum Realm, a CGI landscape populated by monsters, weird tech and aliens (many of whom look like discount versions of Star Wars aliens). There’s a few throwaway side characters whose only personality boils down to one character trait (which is used almost exclusively for comedy), but none of them really matter. I’m not trying to sound overly negative, but I honestly can’t muster much enthusiasm for 80% of this movie, and it seems like I’m not the only one based on what I’ve read online. The movie just feels like a cookie cutter outline that’s been used for almost every recent Marvel movie.
With that out of the way, let’s talk a little bit about some Kang spoilers.
(Spoilers Begin)
So, with Kang being marketed as the next Thanos, he needs to feel like a threat, needs to be a three dimensional threat and needs to be someone we want to see more of. For the most part, the film checks those boxes. While the multiversal aspects of Kang’s motivations are explained poorly, I mostly liked his motivations and he felt like a threat for most of this film. Here’s the problem: we see Kang get defeated in this movie. In an Ant-Man movie.
So, if Ant-Man and friends can defeat Kang how in the world is Kang going to pose a threat to people like Dr. Strange, Captain Marvel and Black Panther? At first, they’re doing a great job and we see Kang fighting off the rebels in the Quantum Realm almost single-handedly after they rout his army, and then he takes on Ant-Man and the Wasp…
And then an army of giant, scientifically advanced, socialist ants arrive and swarm over Kang’s army, before attacking Kang and dragging him off.
So, in the sense that a lot of Phase 4 seemed to be dedicated to undercutting how powerful Thanos was after they’d spent three phases hyping him up, I guess Kang’s like Thanos in that sense, because he is really powerful and menacing… until he’s taken out by a mob of ants.
Now, in all fairness, Kang does survive and he shows up just as most of the heroes have escaped and returned home. Scott stays behind to fight him off and it looks like he’s going to have to sacrifice himself to trap Kang in the Quantum Realm. This fight works fairly well because it does have a visceral quality that most of the MCU fights lack, as it’s just two guys beating on each other in hand-to-hand combat. The choreography/stunt-work is just ok, and ultimately I’m still more interested in seeing Jonathan Majors play a villain who gets into a brutal fist-fight with the hero in Creed 3 in a couple of weeks.
However, Scott makes it home and Kang… maybe dies? He might have just gotten shrunk down or trapped in some other dimension, but this film ends making the audience think that this version of Kang is dead and that other variants (such as classic Marvel villains Immortus or Pharoah Rama-Tut that no one but me has ever heard of) will be the main villains moving forward.
So, either a) Kang will be the big bad in which case he’s already been undercut because we’ve seen him get whipped in his very first movie, or b) an entirely different version of Kang will be the big bad, in which case this movie introducing him doesn’t advance the plot at all as Loki Season 1 already left off with a version of Kang being killed before promising his more evil variants would arrive and wreak havoc. Either way, they kind of dropped the ball on establishing him as the next big bad, as much as I did like his character.
(End of Spoilers)
Characters: 5.5/10 (x2)
It’s only this high because Paul Rudd is a likeable protagonist and Kang is awesome. No one has a character arc in this film. Cassie starts out angry at Scott because he only ever looks after her instead of being a superhero, and just… stops being mad at him when he focuses on looking after her instead of stopping Kang and there’s no visible turning point for either character to explain why. Also, MODOK is awful.
Plot: 5/10 (x2)
The heroes want to escape from the Quantum Realm… and so does Kang. That’s it. There’s no plot beyond that. We don’t even really know why the Quantum Realm hates Kang. Is he a cruel dictator? Did he subjugate them? I mean, he’s called the Conqueror so I guess he probably did, but beyond that the movie gives us no information about any of this.
Action: 4/10
Aside from a couple of okay fights with Kang, this movie had no good action. The Wasp can just one-shot spaces ships with the laser gauntlet that she uses to shoot criminals? Not to mention, it ends with another massive battle waged between a couple of faceless armies we don’t care about. Using these types of epic battle sequences for the main films (or when we actually care about the armies and understand why they’re fighting like in Black Panther) works, but lately it’s like that’s just how every Marvel film has to end.
Tone: 5/10
I heard this movie had the problem most of the recent MCU films had with really forced comedy that undercut the tension for no reason… and it does. Some of the aliens keep making the same jokes over and over again and I don’t know how many laughs they thought they could get out of the audience by showing us an alien with a head made out of broccoli three different times and that did annoy me, but Kang is never used as a punchline and that is something. When Kang’s giving Scott a brutal beatdown or torturing his daughter, the movie allows itself to be dark… at least for a couple of minutes.
Pacing: 4/10
For most of the movie, I was just waiting for Kang to show up while getting increasingly annoyed that Janet would never tell Hank or Hope anything about what they were running from or why she was so freak out at being back in the quantum realm. And then, when she finally does, it shows us flashbacks of her and Kang literally two minutes before Scott meets him, so that Kang’s introduction is in flashbacks, and not when Scott sees him, driving home the point that Scott really doesn’t matter to this movie. Honestly, no one in this movie but Kang really matters.
Dialogue: 5/10
Forced jokes and forced (and unnecessary) family drama arguments aside, there’s a couple of good lines, mostly from Kang. Most of the dialogue, though, is just meaningless and doesn’t develop any characters or advance any plot-points.
Creativity: 5/10
Even though this 100% just a cookie cutter Marvel film that might as well have been made following a textbook formula, there are a couple of interesting scenes and some of the camerawork (especially some tracking shots to show where different characters are in relation to each other during the massive final battle) was surprisingly good. The movie’s not creative, but it did feel like the director was trying to put his own stamp on the film and do something with it, though that was mostly washed out by everything else happening in the film.
Visuals/Design: 5/10
Kang’s design, and even the design of the people in the post-credits scene, was actually really good. I liked the golem in the resistance with what looked like a spotlight for a head that could fire lasers; he actually looked cool. Other than that, it’s just generic CGI effects and sci-fi designs we’ve seen a hundred times. I honestly was wondering if there was going to be a backstory behind Kang’s stormtroopers having copies of Star Lord’s pistols because they looked almost identical.
Final Score: 49/100
There’s nothing more that really needs to be said: this movie’s just more of the same formula that’s been producing weaker and weaker results lately that I’m just really burned out. I wish I wasn’t because I don’t want to be some cynical hater bashing a franchise he used to love just because it’s changed from what he grew up with, but I just do not like this film. It’s better than some of the Phase 4 films, but much worse than some others.
My final recommendation doesn’t matter here, because if you’re a Marvel super-fan, you’ll go see this anyway and if you’re not, there was no way you were ever going to see it. But, just for the sake of consistency…
Final Recommendation: Don’t Watch
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