Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania wants to psych you up about the launch of "Phase Five" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a corporate entity that's now 15 years old and starting to look a little winded. Phase Five will naturally be a multimedia delivery system, hauling out the third Guardians of the Galaxy movie, a pair of sequels (Captain Marvel, Captain America), and a bunch of Disney+ TV stuff. Let the endless cross-promoting begin. But not yet.
The first two Ant-Man movies derived most of their charm from Paul Rudd, whose small-scale, nice-guy warmth in the role of Scott Lang/Ant-Man was a welcome downshift from Marvel's usual action-fantasy megalomania. Unfortunately, Rudd is swamped by this third film, which is a boiling neon tsunami of towering blob creatures, walking broccoli stalks, big chrome spiders, Avatar-style hanging sky islands, and much, much more, quite a bit of it either on fire or in the process of being detonated at any given moment.
