‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ with largest opening day of 2023 so far

‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ opened to stellar box office numbers, bringing in $46 million for Thursday and Friday screenings. This makes it the biggest opening day for a film in 2023 thus far.

‘Quantumania’ is also the highest grossing out of all the ‘Ant-Man’ films when it comes to opening days. The first ‘Ant-Man’ (2015) garnered approximately $22.6 million while ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ (2018) achieved approximately $33 million.

High numbers, low reviews

Despite the film’s success in numbers, ‘Quantumania’ has opened to poor reviews from both critics and viewers alike.

Rotten Tomatoes currently has the film scored at a low 48 percent from critics. CinemaScore gave the movie a “B” according to audience ratings, which makes it one of the lowest-scoring MCU films to date.

For reference, ‘Eternals’, which is widely regarded as the worst MCU movie, sits at 47 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and is also ranked a “B” on CinemaScore.

MCU Phase Five

Phase Four amassed mixed reviews with the main criticism being that Marvel seems to be focusing more on quantity than quality. However, according to Cosmic Circus, Marvel has promised to prioritize quality for Phases Five and Six.

‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ serves as the introduction to Phase 5 of the MCU and follows Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) as they explore the Quantum Realm and push the limits of what they originally thought was possible.

One of the highlights of this film is that it ushers in Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), the new big bad who supposedly poses an even bigger threat to humanity than Thanos did.

Following ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ phase 5 will continue with ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3′ (May 2023), ‘The Marvels’ (November 2023), ‘Captain America: New World Order’ (May 2024), ‘Thunderbolts’ (July 2024) and ‘Blade’ (September 2024).