Is ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ the worst Marvel movie yet?

Marvel Studio’s latest offering ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ is set to hit theaters Friday, but the movie reviews have already started piling in and the news is not good.

Publications across the United States, Canada, and the UK have already released reports that it is the worst Marvel movie yet. Though many critics praise the acting, the script and special effects, those weren’t enough and they were left wanting.

‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ is directed by Peyton Reed, with Paul Rudd leading as Scott Lang a.k.a. Ant-Man, and Evangelina Lilly as Wasp/Hope van Dyne.

Hope’s parents are played by Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer. Jonathan Majors plays adversary Kang the Conqueror, with the plot surrounding his entrapment in the Quantum Realm.

Major publications criticize ‘Quantumania’

CNN has reported the movie “comes up short” on every aspect other than establishing the role of villain Kang the Conqueror.

“With a vast assortment of strange characters and outlandish, otherworldly and too often murky production design. Quantumania [...] has a bad case of gigantism,” the outlet said. “The studio hasn’t felt like quite as much like a big-league player since [the pandemic].”

Meanwhile, Canada’s The Globe and Mail calls it “fit to be squashed”, declaring the effects look like they were done by a child and filmed on an early iPhone.

“’Quantumania’ mistakes multicoloured blobs and squishy floating goop for a genuinely “weird” visual style, as if a kindergartener [...] with a box of broken crayons,” they write.

“Coloured wall-to-fake-wall with cheap-looking CGI, the film looks like it was shot from inside the guts of a first-generation iPhone – there is an aesthetic emptiness to it all that is soul-crushing.”

The BBC declares ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania’ to be “the worst Marvel movie yet.”

“It’s a rule of superhero movies that they must culminate in an overlong action sequence, with bodies and weapons crashing around everywhere. Now imagine if that sequence were the whole movie, but with unsuspenseful, drab-looking action,” they reported.

Rotten Tomatoes score

Despite the all-star cast — and the fact that the movie is yet to be released in theaters — Rotten Tomatoes has deemed the script to be “undercooked”.

“There’s a lot of ground to cover and sometimes the film can move at an ant’s pace,” wrote Matt Rodriguez of Shakefire.

“Quantumania’s comedy seems to be stuck squarely in 2013, except that the jokes are delivered by dead-eyed actors tired of working opposite a blue screen,” writes Hoai-Tran Bui, of Inverse.

“None of the characters have arcs to speak of, unless you count Scott Lang making a bit more of an effort to be a better father,” said Eric Eisenberg of Cinema Blend.

‘Quantamania’ compared to ‘Star Wars’

Other critics focused on the ‘Quantamania’ likeness to ‘Star Wars’, claiming that Reed and screenwriter Jeff Loveness were going for that vibe.

“Imagine the cantina scene from Star Wars on steroids and expanded to feature length,” Frank Scheck of the Hollywood Reporter observed.

“It wants you to think it’s essentially Marvel’s new ‘Star Wars’ without doing any of the necessary groundwork to get there,” Andrew J. Salazar of Geeks of Color noted.

“The idea that this takes place in a vast intergalactic world with strange new creatures feels very Star Wars-like. In fact, there are travel instruments and devices that look straight out of The Mandalorian at times,” Jamie Broadnax of Black Girl Nerds wrote.