Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania was supposed to kick off Phase 5 in style, introducing Kang the Conqueror and finally revealing the secrets of the Quantum Realm. While the movie did those things, an overreliance on The Volume and a bizarre ending meant it was ultimately a major disappointment.
We know the ending was reshot right before the threequel arrived in theaters and, in hindsight, entrusting such an important story to a filmmaker who had previously been tasked with delivering the MCU's light-hearted palette cleansers was a blunder.
MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios author Joanna Robinson recently appeared on The Watch podcast and shared some inside intel on how Marvel Studios responded to the negative critical and fan response to Ant-Man's latest adventure.
"[Marvel Studios] is aware of what's happening to their brand," she says. "My understanding, having talked to some people, is that 'Quantumania' really shook them, and I'm sure 'Secret Invasion' shook them further, but 'Quantumania' really shook them because they felt like they had something good. Because they all internally thought, 'Everyone's gonna love this.'"
"And then they put it out and people didn't. And then they were like, 'Oh no, our internal barometer is not attuned to what people want anymore.' With ‘Quantumania,’ they were like, 'We put out a banger.' And then that's not how a lot of people felt."
Marvel Studios is currently producing so many movies and TV shows, we perhaps shouldn't be surprised that some misfires are beginning to slip through the cracks.
In the case of Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, placing the action in front of a giant VFX screen resulted in the story being told feeling somewhat soulless. It's also tough to figure out why they introduced the Conqueror Variant of Kang - who, by rights, should have been the Multiverse Saga's big bad - only to have him defeated by Ant-Man and ultimately killed.
It seems they're learning from these mistakes, though, hence why the movie's writer, Jeff Loveness (another Rick and Morty scribe) is no longer believed to be working on Avengers: The Kang Dynasty.
Marvel Studios can, and likely will, recover from Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania but it's easy to see why we're now hearing so much about them going back to the drawing board on upcoming projects (like Daredevil: Born Again, for example).
Still, with a reboot looming, it seems we'll have to endure even more Multiversal storytelling over the next few years...