My World Of Flops: Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania

My World Of Flops is Nathan Rabin’s survey of books, television shows, musical releases, or other forms of entertainment that were financial flops, critical failures, or lack a substantial cult following.

In a 2022 interview with Vulture, Golden Raspberries co-founder Maureen Murphy addressed one of the odious organization’s most controversial/transparently wrong choices when she said that, all things considered, she would take back Shelley Duvall’s nomination for Worst Actress for The Shining. The Shining is now a popular choice for the scariest/best horror movie of all time, but in 1981 the geniuses over at The Golden Raspberries decided that it was one of the worst directed and acted movies of the year.

Duvall and Stanley Kubrick were at least in good company. Along with the laziest, most obvious choices, Laurence Olivier, Charles Grodin, Marlon Brando, William Friedkin, Michael Ritchie and Brian De Palma received nominations as well. Murphy still seems perversely confident that despite what history might say, the Razzies were right when they nominated Kubrick for Worst Director and Duvall for Worst Actress. She maintains that Kubrick is an “overrated” filmmaker who made “one good movie, and that was about it.” The concept of “overrated” is inherently snarky and self-aggrandizing. It’s a lazy way of saying that everyone else seemed to like a piece of entertainment but they are all wrong and you alone are right. 

Murphy also, tantalizingly, does not specify which of Kubrick’s movies qualify as better than average. The Golden Raspberries are the ultimate arbiters of a film’s creative value, so if they imply that, with a single exception, The Killing, Paths Of Glory, Spartacus, Lolita, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket are overrated trash, who are we question them? 

Kubrick’s spirit will not rest until he’s managed to convince the Golden Raspberry co-founder that he has made, at the very least, two good motion pictures.

As recently as 2020, Golden Raspberries co-founder John J.B Wilson maintained that Duvall’s performance was “shrill, one note” and “over-the-top hysterical.” He went on to assert, condescendingly and insultingly, “In defense of Duvall, we learned later, that Kubrick apparently drove her to the brink of madness due to his abusive behavior.  He subsequently got labeled a genius (by some) and she coo-coo. We suspect he badgered her into a cowering performance and in retrospect, we would like to place the blame solely on him. Robert Altman could certainly pull a better performance out of this once very promising actor.”

The Golden Raspberries isn’t doing Duvall’s blessed memory any favors by depicting her as a powerless victim whose fragile psyche was destroyed by Kubrick’s cruelty rather than a strong survivor who gave a performance for the ages in The Shining. Also, when discussing a fraught, sensitive issue like mental illness, maybe don’t use phrases like “coo-coo.”

This obnoxious reading denies Duvall agency over her own life and career and ignores that Duvall experienced considerable success after The Shining. She appeared as Olive Oyl in Robert Altman’s Popeye that same eventful year, and popped up in Time Bandits, Tim Burton’s 1984 short film Frankenweenie, Roxanne, and The Portrait Of A Lady. Duvall was a force on television as well. The New Hollywood icon was the creator, executive producer, and host of Faerie Tale Theater between 1982 and 1987 as well as Tall Tales & Legends. Calling Duvall a “once very promising actor” inaccurately and sadistically suggests that she realized none of that promise after Kubrick apparently broke her brain, all while pretending to be empathetic and compassionate. 

Then and now the Razzies embody a noxious combination of laziness, arrogance, and glib condescension. So it’s surprising that, for 16 years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe didn’t score a single Golden Raspberries nomination. That ended when, earlier this year, Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania was nominated for Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel, Worst Director (Peyton Reed), and Worst Supporting Actor, for both Michael Douglas and Bill Murray.

As is invariably the case, The Golden Raspberries were lazy and late. The superhero boom went bust a few years ago. The subgenre is exhausted from carrying the motion picture business on its superhuman back for a solid decade. Seemingly every half-ass superhero has gotten their own cinematic vehicle at this point, including Morbius and Madame Web. Those adaptations didn’t turn out too well.

The Golden Raspberries noticed, years after everyone else did, that the whole superhero movie thing was kind of over, and lazily tossed a few nominations Marvel’s way. 

The choices are predictably random. Ant-Man may be about a little (and normal-sized, and giant-sized) guy, but Marvel is a huge target. Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania had the misfortune to come out at the exact wrong time, when excitement over comic book fare was at a two-decade low and exhaustion had set in. On the other side of things, the stakes and budgets for movies like this are so high that Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania grossed nearly half a billion dollars at the worldwide box office, yet was still considered a money-losing disappointment. 

Unlike, say, Madame Web, the film is not so spectacularly, egregiously awful that it deserves to be singled out for scorn and mockery. It fundamentally does not work, but it’s still a Marvel movie from the director of Down With Love and Bring It On starring the universally beloved Paul Rudd and national treasures Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer. Despite what the Golden Raspberries might want you to believe, there is a limit to how bad a movie with that much going for it can be. 

Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania opens in the mysterious and perilous Quantum Realm with Pfeiffer’s Janet Van Dyne / Wasp squaring off against alien creatures before Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) crash-lands near her. One of the problems with interconnected universes like the ones found in Marvel and DC movies is that their successes or failures are on some level dependent on the moral character of their casts. That is bad news when dealing with the deeply troubled likes of Ezra Miller or Jonathan Majors. 

This was the year Majors was supposed to explode into superstardom thanks to his juicy villain turns in Creed III and Quantumania. Instead it was the year he was found guilty of harassment and assault. Marvel put a lot of faith in Majors. They made him a core of the universe going forward before the crimes that he has been convicted of rendered him unemployable. 

Kang plays a central role here. Even more regrettably, his film is full of breadcrumbs and hints about how we’ll definitely be seeing more of Kang when he returns in The Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.

It’s possible that Marvel will find someone else to play Kang. That seems unlikely. Between Majors’ legal travails and his introduction in a poorly received box-office disappointment, Kang is hopelessly soiled cinematically. That lends a strange, ironic quality to the many places where Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania slows down so that it can diligently establish Kang, and by extension, Majors, as Marvel’s future. 

The film’s opening establishes that Kang is a very serious character. The heavyweight thespian plays his scenes in this comic book movie about a superhero who can become teeny-tiny or very big as if doing Shakespeare on Broadway. There’s no levity or light to Majors’ performance or his scenes. It’s solemn, tragic, a very big deal. There is, however, nothing but light and levity to Rudd’s turn as an ex-con fired from Baskin-Robbins who becomes an Avenger. This speaks to a massive tonal disconnect at the film’s core. Majors is in a tragedy. Rudd is in a goofy, tongue-in-cheek comedy. The two intersect but never quite jibe. 

Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania goes from scowling to smirking once we’re reintroduced to Rudd’s Ant-Man/Scott Lang, who is loving his weird life after various life-saving adventures with his fellow Avengers, who are referenced regularly but never seen. As part of his daily rambles, he grabs coffee from Ruben Rabasa, the distinctive-looking octogenarian who rose to cult fame as the star of the main I Think You Should Leave meme that isn’t Tim Robinson in a sausage costume looking for answers. 

Rabasa functions here as a sort of sentient meme. It’s that guy, from that thing! The cameo epitomizes the rando nature of a lot of its humor. Later in the film, for example, Hank Pym (Golden Raspberries nominee Michael Douglas) sees an alien creature and says, “Holy shit, that guy looks like broccoli,” about a gentleman who bears an unmistakable resemblance to the vegetable. Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania is full of jokes and ideas that are almost funny. They’re 80% there but never make it that additional 20% to Chuckle Town. 

Another good example is a scene where M.O.D.O.K.—essentially a floating head with tiny little T. Rex arms and legs—dies, but not before switching sides from Kang to the Langs. The character design of M.O.D.O.K. is an eyesore. He’s supposed to look weird and creepy, but in a cool, iconic fashion; here he’s just ugly. M.O.D.O.K. may have earned his hyperbolic moniker by virtue of being a Mechanized Organism Designed Only for Killing and the former Yellowjacket, but in Quantumania he’s also that jackass Darren from work.

Anyway, with his dying breaths, M.O.D.O.K. tells Scott that he always saw him as a brother and if he had to die, he at least died knowing he perished as an Avenger. Rudd lets us know that, to Scott, Darren barely qualifies as an acquaintance and also is roughly several thousand acts of heroism and a functional body away from being in a position to join the Avengers. But, being a nice guy, he holds his tongue. He lets Darren die still under the delusion that he died heroically for his best friend and fellow Avenger.

The world-building, character and production design of the Quantum Realm bears a distinct resemblance to the alien worlds of the Star Wars sequels. Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania consequently feels like a forgettable, half-ass late entry in the Star Wars universe as well as a less-than-marvelous Marvel movie. Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania apparently cost in the area of $300M dollars yet suffers from a frustrating lack of physicality. Everything appears to be CGI. They might as well have titled it Ant-Man And The Wasp: CGI or Ant-Man And The Wasp: Green Screen. 

I don’t want ten thousand rampaging giant CGI ants. I want a dozen giant ants made of rubber and metal by weird geniuses who have devoted their lives to making cool shit happen. Everything is zeroes and ones. It lacks the human element. 

Early in Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, Rudd reunites with his Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire co-star Bill Murray, who plays a pragmatic, duplicitous, and horny rebel-turned-stooge in a role that would have wowed comedy fans a decade ago but now just illustrates how far the actor has fallen. The comic icon’s unexpected appearances once inspired feverish excitement. Now they engender something closer to dread. Then Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania turns into the Bill Murray Show for 20 minutes. The Caddyshack star sucks all the air out of the movie. He makes everything about himself and his amorous history with Pfeiffer’s ageless beauty. Murray’s glorified cameo is another element the filmmakers thought would slay but instead inspires shrugs.

Rudd begins his narration by conceding, “My life doesn’t really make sense.” The beloved comic actor winks at the audience throughout to acknowledge that the film knows damn well how ridiculous it is. By this point, however, Rudd has played Ant-Man in 2015’s Ant-Man, 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, 2018’s Ant-Man And The Wasp, and 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. 

That last one did pretty well, in that it is the second top grossing film of all time in the U.S. and Canada. We’ve consequently had ample opportunity to wrap our minds around the idea of a superhero who can be as small as a tiny insect or as big as a building. The novelty has worn off.

That’s true of the series as well. Quantumania lacks an X factor to set it apart from all of the other superhero movies that followed in the wake of Iron Man’s zeitgeist-capturing success. It would have benefited from the presence of Michael Peña, a scene-stealer from the first two films, but what movie wouldn’t? Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania ends up far from the worst of the worst, as well as the best of the best. It does not ultimately deserve to be singled out for mockery or praise, but with the Golden Raspberries, as with the Academy Awards, the nominees and winners are choices both obvious and wrong.

Failure, Fiasco or Secret Success: Failure