The MCU has gotten pretty big. Even with a lot of 10 year long running threads wrapped up into End Game with the end of Phase 3 and all Phases before it coming into Phase 5 we have had 7 films and 8 Disney+ series in barely the space of 2 years. Now with Quantumania bringing in the official start to Phase 5 Marvel wants you to remember to look out for the little guy.
IF you aren’t familiar with Ant-Man or the MCU then we are going to start with this might not be where to start with Quantumania being the 3rd film in the Ant-Man franchise and the 30th MCU film there is a lot to catch up on. And while Quantomania does not have a Luis recap we are going to give you our best. But, let us tell you that Scott has been through some stuff.
In the 1970s Hank Pym, scientist and professional Gordon Gekko impersonator, invested the Pym Particle – a molecule that was capable of reducing the space between atoms. Using this molecule Hank built a suit for himself that let him shrink to the size of an Ant and his wife Janet the size of a Wasp (complete with wings). Working as Agents of then SHIELD Janet did not return from a mission after disabling her regulator to defuse a bomb (the regulator being the doohickey in her and Jack Colton’s suits that stop them from continually shrinking until they go subatomic.
Fast forward a bit past Tony Stark getting blown up, getting a suit, fighting AIM (the one lead by the fake Mandarin not the one lead by the giant headed in a floating chair MODOK – Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing… the F is silent), keep fast forwarding past creating Ultron aaaaand stop just after dropping Sokovia out of the sky. And we jump to San Francisco where a much older Hank Pym who has had his company taken over by a less scrupulous individual Darren Cross.
Hank, no longer a young man and able to wear the Ant-Man suit himself recruits/frames and then breaks out of jail a recently released from jail for another reason Scott Lang. Scott becomes the new Ant-Man, defeats Darren Cross who built his own Ant-Man suit but called the Yellowjacket (not like the Yellowjacket suit for Hank Pym in the comics but like how Marvel movies will take 2 characters and sort of blend them together to make something new). Scott beats Darren by disabling his regulator and sends him shrinking until he hits sub-atomic after Scott himself goes sub-atomic entering the quantum realm and is able to return making him the first person to do so.
Ok we might need to go a bit faster now as Scott goes to Germany to fight with Captain America after Captain America doesn’t sign the Sokovia Accords that were created due to that whole dropping a city thing. Scott being an ex-con already gets house arrest for using unlicensed technology aka Pym Particles. While under house arrest Hank Pym and his daughter Hope are on the run for using the same technology but due to Scott entering and returning from the Quantum Realm, the pair are using them to search for Hopes mum Selina Kyle.
Using Scott who has a connection to the Quantum realm still they retrieve Janet just in time for Scott to be released from House arrest where he continues to work with the Pym’s by becoming an astronaut (sorta) into the Quantum Realm until he gets stuck there when Thanos snaps all the Pyms out of existence while he was deep diving. Scott is retrieved from the Quantum realm by a rat 5 years later but being in the quantum realm time moves differently and only 5 hours had past. Using that the Avengers with Scott travel through time (which might have actually been travelling to alternate timelines) to unsnap everyone from existence and defeating Thanos.
Phew. Ok that is you caught up. Mostly. With the exception of the alternate timelines mentioned were previously being kept in check by an agency called the TVA (Time Variance Authority) but when the Avengers travelled in time they created a variant for Loki who joined the agency that resulted in the death of the head of the Agency known as He Who Remains.
So Quantumania (or QuANTuMANia) joins Scott now having saved the world giving no credit to the rat as a published author and known world wide as the bug related Avenger who returned everyone. Hope leads her own company using Pym Particles to change the world, and being 5 years on Scott’s daughter Cassie is more grown and some might say a totally different person to who she was in End Game.
Learning from Hank Cassie has been doing science stuff and has been developing technology to map the Quantum Realm which Janey having spent so much time there is not ok with resulting in all 5 of them being sucked into the Quantum Realm. While every instalment of the Ant-Man franchise having pretty great special effects with objects growing and shrinking Quantumania goes hard into the Marvel special effects with almost every short once entering the Quantum Realm having that heavy special effect feel to it.
If Ant-Man is a heist movie and Ant-Man and the Wasp was a getaway movie then Quantumania is a Marvel movie with the bulk of the film dealing with what occurred and the fallout from Janet’s time in the Quantum Realm, specifically her part in helping someone else who fell into the realm named Kang who is much more of a force in the second part of the film. Kang aka a variant of He Who Remains aka better known as a Fantastic Four/Avengers villain who is a time traveller and appears out of order to the ongoing timeline, makes Quantumania much less an Ant-Man film and much more a solo Avenger film setting up things to come.
So should you go see it? IF you are reading this of course you are going to see it, that is just crazy talk. While the film does have mostly the original cast and director it is much more set around Scott + Cassie and Janet as the main characters filling in backstory for things to come and does not include any staples you might expect from a Ant-Man film like a rapid fire recap. But welcome to Phase 5, things are probably going to start coming at you pretty fast so you might want to start rewatching the MCU from the start now to brush up.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is in cinemas across Australia right now
