Editor’s Note: This review will contain spoilers, so read with caution or watch the film and come back later.

“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” kicks off phase five doing what Marvel does best  – giving audiences a thrill-seeking adventure while teasing the chaos that is to come.

The film is the third installment in the Ant-Man trilogy and the first movie of Marvel’s phase five. The MCU’s movies and TV shows are broken up into phases. Phase five will focus on the multiverse and traveling between universes. 

Since fighting Thanos in “Avengers: Endgame,” Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), also known as Ant-Man, and his partner Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), the Wasp, have returned to living a mundane life. Lang is focused on spending time with his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton).

Life seems to be going great for Scott and Hope until Cassie shows them what she’s been secretly working on – a device that dispatches a signal down to the quantum realm. This is when the chaos begins. 

During Cassie’s presentation, Hope’s mother Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) and father Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) are there as well. Upon hearing that Cassie is sending a signal down to the quantum realm, Janet gets distressed and tries to shut it down. What happens next is predictable but anticipated. Janet pushes a wrong button and instead of the device turning off, a portal is opened and the family gets sucked into the unknown. 

The quantum realm has been discussed and shown in recent Marvel movies, but never in depth. Hank and Janet are experts on this realm and know how dangerous it is for a human to be there. What is the quantum realm really? Hank describes it as a subatomic universe beneath our own that exists outside of space and time. 

While being in this universe unknown, a human’s body matter shrinks to the size of an ant. Going into the quantum realm with no definite way out can get one stuck, so the character’s end goal is obvious to the audience. Time works differently within the quantum realm which makes the film fast-paced, as the characters are trying to get back to Earth before years or even centuries have passed, all unbeknownst to them. 

The movie was very action packed, as the characters are thrust into a situation pretty early on in the film. Although the script kept each character’s dynamics the same from recent Marvel films, Scott and Cassie Lang were the only characters that seemed to have any development. Another noticeable weakness was the film’s CGI. The quantum realm introduced a lot of strange, unworldly characters, but didn’t put much effort into how they would be configured on screen. It was quite obvious to the viewer that their CGI was lacking, but the newly introduced characters made up for it by making people laugh. 

The villain of the movie was introduced to Marvel fans way back in the summer of 2021 in the Disney+ series “Loki.” Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), or just simply Kang, is determined to get out of the quantum realm, where he’s been exiled. Kang is all-knowing, and can manipulate time and see the future of all the universe’s timelines. 

Majors gave an outstanding performance as a life-threatening villain. While on screen, viewers will struggle with whether they want him to die or be saved in the end. Acting with an eerily patient demeanor, Majors blends comedy with haunting lines to deliver a spectacular performance. 

Kang poses a dangerous threat to the future of the multiverse, which is what Marvel is focusing on in phases five and six. Throughout the film, Kang mentions multiple times that he sees the end of Scott’s timeline, and that there is an impending doom looming closer and closer that will destroy the universe he lives in. The possibility of another Ant-Man movie hasn’t been confirmed or denied yet by Marvel producer Kevin Feige.