Ant-Man

Paul Rudd returns as the MCU's smallest Avenger (or, sometimes, the biggest) this weekend. Before Avengers: Infinity War, there were some questions around the ...

In fact, full respect to Jonathan Majors, who does help skew Kang in a new direction for the MCU. None of that is bad, but it sometimes grinds hard against the usually-very-affable comedic nature of the Ant-Man movies, which does work on a lower gear here, but still pops its head up to diffuse an otherwise enjoyably tense situation. As we all know now, Thanos ended up being one of the best and most memorable blockbuster villains of recent years, and his defeat in Avengers: Endgame did create something of a power vacuum.

How Marvel created the “dizzying” and “bonkers” Quantum Realm in the new sequel.

“It allowed us to create a wide and varied world.” The plot easily adjusted to embrace such a disparate mishmash. “He’d conquered their people, and maybe they were the last survivors, and they’ve all banded together to resist.” And there’s oppression down there.” The oppression comes courtesy of That was, conceptually, the kind of bonkers idea.” “It had to feel different than outer space in Guardians of the Galaxy or Asgard in the Thor movies. And what’s the history of this?

The Marvel Cinematic Universe film is headed for a $100 million opening. It's the MCU movie debut of Jonathan Majors' Kang the Conqueror, the next overarching ...

"Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. "Quantumania" is one of only two MCU films to generate a "rotten" rating on the review aggregator. Disney also announced Friday that it is postponing the release of "The Marvels," a film centered on Captain Marvel, Ms. The film had previous been set to debut on July 28. "Quantumania's" Thursday numbers are on pace with 2017's "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. Hype surrounding the big screen debut of Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) is likely to help drive foot traffic to theaters this weekend.

Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the third entry in the Ant-Man franchise, stars Paul Rudd, Jonathan Majors, Evangeline Lilly, Michelle Pfeiffer, ...

(It’s funny the first two times it eagerly says “holes,” but eventually you start to live in fear of another “holes” line.) The problem isn’t that such bits aren’t funny — they sometimes are — but that they reveal a noxious carelessness beneath the slipshod filmmaking. But it’s all executed with such little commitment (by otherwise talented actors) that the end result is numb alienation, which is probably not a thing you’re supposed to want from a superhero flick. At a time when MCU films seemed to be leaning further toward overarching story lines and portentous mythology (all in an effort to build up to the final Avengers pictures, at least one of which was terrific), it came like a breath of fresh air. The first Ant-Man, one of the high points of the whole Marvel cinematic project, was distinguished by its goofy humor and smaller-scale story. More importantly, it fails to make you feel anything, which is odd since part of the story involves Ant-Man’s desperate attempts to save his daughter, as ostensibly relatable and immediate a character motivation as one can imagine. You keep waiting for the menace or the grandiosity or the vengefulness to ratchet up — we’re told that Kang is a terrifying, nearly omnipotent being who needs to be prevented from ever escaping the Quantum Realm, lest he destroy the universe — but aside from a few unconvincing, late-inning battle sequences, there really doesn’t seem to be much to Kang. Quantumania makes you appreciate even more the achievement of something like the Avatar films. What does any of this have to do with Ant-Man or the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly)? Within what feels like the first 15 or so minutes of the movie, our heroes wind up getting sucked into the Quantum Realm (alongside Janet and her husband Hank Pym, played again by Michael Douglas) when Scott’s daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) begins sending signals into this world in an effort to map it. Now, she reveals that she wasn’t alone down there — that a whole universe of beings exists in the Quantum Realm, elaborate and diverse alien tribes in seemingly constant conflict. Maybe director Peyton Reed and his collaborators thought they were making a Star Wars movie; the protagonists’ adventures in the Quantum Realm at times look like they were meant to be a knockoff version of George Lucas’s space operas, albeit in compressed form. Save for a relatively brief, breezy opening section set in the Marvel present, where Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) has written a memoir about his eventful life as Ant-Man and his experiences saving the world in the wake of the Thanos Snap and the ensuing battles, the vast majority of Quantumania takes place in the Quantum Realm, that deadly microworld that you fall into if you shrink so much that you find yourself slipping between subatomic particles.

Paul Rudd, Jonathan Majors, Kevin Feige, and director Peyton Reed give the lowdown on the movie that kicks off Phase Five in Marvel's cinematic universe.

This subatomic world has all this stuff going on in the fabric of spacetime outside of space and time but in the quantum realm.” “In terms of the Ant-Man trilogy, there is a flashback in the first film to the Wasp, the original Wasp, Janet van Dyne, but we don't see her face. “Many great artists would paint the covers for these things, and they would be on a newsstand, and that cover had to grab you, and many of them were creating these bizarre worlds. The first Ant-Man movie was mainly about meeting the characters and the origin story, but we got a taste of it at the very end, which is what led to where we took it in Endgame.” The culture of the play and the story is all there, but it's really changing, so you really have to be very clear about what it is you're doing and who your character is, what he's about, what she's about, what they're going after, and the rest of it, you play hard. The look was in the works for three and a half years.” The theme of family is a constant in the movies.” The quick answer is that Kang is a time-traveling supervillain who is also a nexus being, leading to this idea of variants. “When we start this movie, it is the present day, and the events of Endgame have already transpired. Things act very differently at the quantum level, and Paul talked about the amount of storytelling, imagination, and fun you could have there. In Quantumania, one of the things we've done is broaden that story and start talking about the secrets the family members keep from each other.” Now, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania lands in theaters and is expected to dominate Presidents Day weekend.

The latest Disney/Marvel sequel could take more than $100m over four-day weekend.

In Asia-Pacific, Korea produced $2.2m and Australia $1.5m. A four-day opening of between $100m and $125m is being projected for Quantumania. The tally from North American previews put the new film well ahead of 2015’s original Ant-Man (with a $6m preview take) and 2018’s Ant-Man and The Wasp ($12m) and just ahead of 2017’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, which took $17m from previews on the way to a $147m opening weekend.

Marvel Studios' littlest heroes have big roles to play in kickstarting Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Now playing in theaters around the ...

But in Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, “It’s exciting for Ant-Man to take center stage after being a huge part of the storytelling so far, with the events in Endgame and Civil War. We really liked the idea of making this Ant-Man film as important and integral to the MCU going forward.” Majors will also star in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty (opening May 2, 2025) and says he sees a “limitless” future for Kang in the MCU. For this movie, we liked the idea of uprooting that dynamic and making it a completely different kind of movie, where the people you might least expect to go up against Kang suddenly find themselves as the only people who are going up against Kang.” Furthermore, Kevin Feige, producer and President of Marvel Studios, says, “Phase 4 was about introducing a lot of new characters and new heroes to the world. “To be the film that kicks that off is fantastic.”

Those stakes are meant to become all the clearer in not one, but two credits scenes that are essential for what lies ahead, as all roads lead to Avengers: ...

Led by Prime Kang, the council was part of a ruse by Immortus to wipe out all other Kang variants and ensure that Prime Kang became Immortus, rather than one of the other variants’ future selves. The scene serves to tee up Loki’s second season, which is expected to debut this summer and further explore the consequences of Kang’s machinations throughout the multiverse and takeover of the TVA. ➼ Finally, Immortus, the Master of Time, who appeared in Avengers No. Enter the three central variants of Kang (all of whom are played by Jonathan Majors) as they discuss the death, as far as they know, of “the exiled one” — Kang the Conqueror — who is (spoilers ahead!) defeated in the film by Ant-Man and the Wasp. ➼ In the comics, Rama-Tut was the first iteration of Kang, appeareing back in Fantastic Four No. The scene then cuts to thousands of Kang variants, each sporting slightly different looks, some of an alien species, cheering in a giant amphitheater as more variants are teleported in to join them.