The chaotic "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" features both the best performance in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and perhaps the worst.
First, the good stuff: Jonathan Majors. He plays Kang the Conqueror and he is so quietly charismatic that, no matter how many civilizations Kang destroys, you kinda want him to win. We meet him in a prologue, set in a quantum realm. He befriends trailblazing scientist Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) whose family rescued her in the last "Ant-Man" (the Wasp is her daughter). In "Quantumania," everyone heads back to the quantum world in order to prevent Kang from escaping and taking over the universe.
Majors has been lurking on the edge of stardom for several years, giving subtle, intelligent performances in movies nobody saw ("Devotion," "The Last Black Man in San Francisco"), popular movies that weren't about his character ("The Harder They Fall") and a TV series that should have used him better ("Lovecraft Country"). "Ant-Man" is his first blockbuster, so it's making him famous just in time to gather attention for an upcoming project that wowed them at last month's Sundance Film Festival: "Magazine Dreams," in which he plays a bodybuilder — a physique you can tell he was working toward in "Ant-Man."
Since Kang will stop at nothing to conquer the world, he says lots of crazy things in "Ant-Man." Often, when actors have extremely dramatic dialogue, you see them struggle to match that drama with their delivery, but Majors does the reverse. He gets calmer the more menacing Kang becomes, delivering his vilest threats in something approaching a monotone. It's magnetic because it suggests so many questions about a character who could have been a garden-variety baddie: Is Kang soulless? Damaged? Saving his theatrics for the future movie that the movie's closing credits promise?
As the Wasp, a superhero and also the squeeze of affable Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), Evangeline Lilly doesn't make the mistake of trying to do too much, but she seems to have no idea what to do. Especially in the early scenes, the camera keeps cutting to her for a reaction that could best be described as "bemused incomprehension." Maybe it's the editors' fault — maybe they just don't like Lilly — but, four movies in, the Wasp is easily the dullest title character in the MCU.
The good news is that the Wasp, and even Rudd's wise-cracking Ant-Man, are sidepieces in "Quantumania," which brings Janet Van Dyne to the forefront. At 64, Pfeiffer is utterly convincing as both a scientist and an action hero and, if you watch her in those early scenes, you'll see what Lilly should have been doing — silently reacting to what's going on as she tries to piece together what it means, based on what her character knows that others don't.
Pfeiffer is so central to the action that it's odd she's billed so far below both title characters. Based on the fact that future Kang movies have been announced but not future "Ant-Man"s, maybe it's not too much to hope there will be a "Kang and Dr. Van Dyne" movie somewhere down the road?
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'ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA'
2.5 stars (out of 4)
Rated: PG-13 (for violence/action, and language)
Running time: 2:05
How to watch: In theaters Friday
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