Saw it this morning and I had a fun time! Not thought provoking or earth shattering cinema but I certainly didn't come out of the theater pining the death of the MCU or anything. I think I'm somewhat less agitated by any 'overall' takes of the MCU as a whole because I simply don't force myself to watch every project that comes out. If something looks interesting to me or I already have an attachment to the main character, I'll catch it. If not, I'll skip it. Maybe it'd be different if I was watching every MCU project but if they just left me disappointed I probably wouldn't keep watching them.
The story of Quantumania is a take it or leave it plot that services the main idea of further introducing/cementing Kang as the next big bad of the MCU. At that, I think it really succeeds. While Majors absolutely knocks it out of the park, showing tremendous range and versatility and fierceness and utmost menace. The idea that this Kang was one of them trying to STOP the rest of the Kangs yet is a terrifying monster just has me super pumped for the convergence of Kangs. I think the idea of a multiversal villain of multiple number is a really fun path to take after the Goliath that was Thanos and how he was built up as the singularity of badness in the first MCU saga.
I enjoyed the Pym-Lang family and thought each had a proper good showing. Paul Rudd just continues to be one of the best damn things in the MCU for me, right up there with the likes of Downey Jr, Hemsworth and Evans. I was worried that the Pyms all being involved would clutter the movie but I think they shared the limelight well. Likewise I had trepidtation with shoehorning Cassie into the hero role but I think she held her own here and didn't detract at all. I think the humor was balanced almost perfectly and the tension felt ratcheted when it needed to be. I can see where MODOK would cause fan outrage but I didn't mind his role at all, he was never played as a true, deadly threat so I don't see the harm in using him how he was.
For all the criticism of the special effects, I didn't really gleam any atrocious CGI in my eyes. MODOK looks goofy but I feel that's intentionally his design. I don't doubt the special effects artists and studios are supremely overworked but for taking place almost entirely in a the quantum realm with its assortment of alien outposts and odd creatures it looked damn good.
My two major complaints would be that it just didn't FEEL like an Ant-Man film. In the lead up to Quantumania I re-watched the first two Ant-Man films and what makes them play out so well is how grounded in reality they are. At their heart they're comedy-action heist films. Scott Lang is a down to earth dude given the gift of amazing technology yet unlike Iron-Man he's never cocky or playboyish. He tries his best and almost always focuses on his family and loved ones first and foremost. So to see him as a memoir author who likes the limelight seems slightly off. Doubly so for the setting here. While I enjoyed the quantum realm, it just doesn't feel like it fits in an Ant-Man film. This felt like someone spilled the Pym-Lang clan into a Guardians of the Galaxy story with it's array of weird locales and outlandish characters. I get the conceit that this was just a means to introduce Kang to the wider viewing audience but I don't think the Ant-Man films really fit there.
And that's my ultimate qualm with the film:
Ant-Man should have died at the end of the film. It was right there for the PERFECT culmination of the threat of Kang, the heroic, good will of Scott, the propulsion of the next Avengers level threat and would have more than lived up to the billing of this jump starting this MCU phase with an absolute bang. He should have sacrificed himself to end this Kang variant and solidifed the stakes that are careening to the rest of our known characters. This then would have propelled the Pym-Lang family into a race to warn the rest of the Avengers. It would have been such a crushing finale to have the rest of Scott's family mourning him in the last scene before rightly confiding with each other that they need to alert someone that something BIG is coming.
Instead, everything is a-ok and we're having a birthday party and not worried about the FACT that this guy just told them all there's more of him coming and they're actually worse. The moment Lang theorizes that he may have doomed existence itself before it gets turned into a joke is the EXACT tone this film should have ended on. It's just a monumental missed opportunity. In Loki we got a gentle, wise, peaceful Kang that warned us of the potential of his own self. Here we got to actually SEE just how merciless and evil a Kang can be and I am fine with him being ultimately defeated, he just NEEDED to take something of worth with him to continue to stack the stakes. It would have been the shellshock the MCU really needs to re-ignite right now and start gaining traction. We're in a real weird position where we the audience are being told repeatedly that Kang is someone to be feared yet the very universe we're watching really doesn't feel the same outside of Loki who is trapped away in some other universe, not the one we've been following.
It's a good movie with a huge misstep, IMO.