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Burryed In the Sand - Ant Man 3: Quantumania

Coming off of a dismal Phase 4, I had hopes for Ant Man 3. Not many, but I had them. I liked the first two Ant Man movies and I was almost excited to start Phase 5 and get that other garbage off my mind. Oh dear. I wish I had stayed in Phase 4.

Photo by The News Fetcher

This movie did everything in it's power to force the normal Disney tropes down your throat: The original main character isn't actually the main character of his own movie, he's now and idiot that can't do anything right. The youngest character is somehow a genius and figures out technology that even the great Hank Pym couldn't grasp really. Cassie is an absolute terrible character now. When we saw her briefly in End Game, she was emotional, but stable. Happy to see her father and seemingly fitting into the "normal" family being built with Wasp and Ant Man. In this movie, she needs to fit the Disney archetype of "If you're a female, you need to be better than everyone at everything for no reason." She doesn't come from a family of geniuses; she magically inherited her intelligence off screen between movies. She designs an interdimensional telecommunication device, in a basement, with no funding, no teachings and got it correct (seemingly) the first time as there is no montage of her testing, developing, daydreaming, writing, talking or anything ever until she's just like "Look what I made!" as simply as a 4th grader bringing home her noodle artwork from school. This is also not to mention that apparently things have changed in the quantum realm, because now they don't require suits or breathing devices or anything for them all to be sucked into the realm and, you know, survive the trip and then actually be able to breath. Miraculously, the suits no longer matter down there, oh and of course, let's not forget that they've always said the quantum realm was as small as you could go, yet they shrink and enlarge down there just like on earth. Cassie's not friendly, not familiar from past movies and the worst part, she's very unrelatable. She's now a protester for unknown reasons as there was no time to talk about why Cassie is the way she is. We're just supposed to buy it and move on.

Photo by Small Screen

Now let's talk about the real demise of the movie: Janet Van Dyne. Janet is a genius by all accounts. Having helped Hank make the original Ant Man suits, she is an authority on the quantum realm.  After all, she spent 30 years down there, she definitely knows a thing or two about it. But, before going into here downfall, I need to ask the easy question: do the people at Marvel just not know how to do math? So, in End Game, Scott Lang went into the quantum realm and then the blip happened. Five years passed, and then a rat let him out. Scott says for him it was 5 hours in the quantum realm, but 5 years in the real time. Ok, so by that equation, 1 hour in the quantum realm equals 1 year in real time. So.....how did Janet stay in the quantum realm for 30 years real time AND quantum realm time? Well, you could say she didn't, she only spent 30 hours. Ok. So according to the story Ant Man 3 tells, Janet helped Kang fix  his ship, lead a rebellion, had an affair, fought in a war and many other things. Likely not in 30 hours. Conviently, MCU explained this by saying "Time dilation effects different people differently in the quantum realm", and I might buy that a little bit, but 30 years compared to 5 hours? Maybe I don't buy it THAT much. But, I digress.

Photo by Screen Rant

The real issue with Janet is that she's a mute for most of the movie. The entire plot of the movie could have been avoided if Janet at any point since she's been back home from the quantum realm had just said "Oh by the way, there's an evil overlord living down there and we should probably not mess with the quantum realm anymore." But no, that would be too easy. She doesn't mention Kang, the war, her rebellion, her affair, nothing, that is until she absolutely needs to because she's face-to-face with the truth anyways. And what was with that scene where she basically admits to her affair in front of her husband and he's basically like "Meh". Are you kidding me?

I could go on and on about how terrible most things are in the movie, but I need to end with one of the worst things I've seen in movies since the "redemption" of Kylo Ren in Rise of Skywalker. MODOK is an evil killing machine in the quantum realm made or enhanced rather by Kang. I liked the tie-in from Ant Man 1 where Darren at the end of the movie was shrank down into (presumably) the quantum realm. I liked that he hated Ant Man and Cassie for deserting him down there all alone and that Kang took that anger and hatred and bread a weapon out of him. The CGI was atrocious on MODOK, just terrible, but the worst part was his redemption arc. He's evil, he hates, he fights....until Cassie just says "Don't be a dick". Really? Oh I never thought of that. I literally laughed my ass off. That is really his arc? Don't be a dick? And off he goes to help save the day as a now good guy. What a joke.

Photo by Forbes

Last thing I should talk about is, of course, Kang. Kang is being setup to, of course, be the next big bad that is to stand up to the likes of Thanos. And, he just doesn't. His character works well in the film, and you do get a sense that he's menacing, but not to the point of Thanos level. He really seemed like an Ant Man villain, not a villain of everyone. He was acted well, and his costume was really great comparing to the comics, however, how am I supposed to take him seriously as "Kang the Conqueror" and destroyer of entire timelines, when he couldn't even beat Ant Man. In fact, he couldn't even beat the ants! Overall, he wasn't a bad villain for the movie, but I have a hard time believing he'll be the villain for all of Phases 5 and 6.


Overall score: 1 out of 10 stars

Pros:
- Kang was decent for the movie alone (Not for phases 5 & 6).
- The little creature with a canon for a head was cute.

Cons:
- Laughable plot that makes no in life or in universe sense. 
- Terrible writing and plot movement.
- The CGI is so prevalent that I'm not sure there's a real set in the movie. It begins to strain your eyes at points from there being just so much over-the-top animation. 

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