‘Stumbling in circles’: ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania’ review

Michael Clark Staff Reporter

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

When you fool me 39 times across an entire cinematic universe, whose fault is it? This is the question I asked myself on the long, dreary drive home from seeing “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”

Should I blame Kevin Fiege for dangling this metaphorical carrot over my head, or should I blame myself for falling for it every time? Like Lucy and Charlie Brown, he’s held the football out in front of me with promises of redefining the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Foolishly, I engage with this twisted game and end up flat on my back.

Unfortunately, “Quantumania” is another unfulfilled promise in the multiverse saga, a saga full of unfulfilled promises. It strives to usher in a new era of the MCU, and bring about a new antagonist that makes the likes of Thanos run for his money.

The only person who’s running for their money is Jonathan Majors cashing in his check after singlehandedly carrying this film on his back. The biggest compliment I can give this film is Majors’s strong performance as Kang, The Conqueror. He’s a genuinely scary villain, but his role in the film is wasted.

Most of the 125-minute runtime is wasted with repetitive action scenes, hit-or-miss quips and wildly redundant dialogue.

The added insult to injury is that not a single character develops in an interesting way throughout the movie. No one learned a lesson, there are no meaningful themes and the MCU as a whole is in the exact same place as it started.

This would all be fine if the film was at least fun, but it hardly brings any creativity or magic to the screen outside of a few standout moments. The film chugs along and hardly has a point. Thanos wiped out half of the galaxy as his debut and Kang debuts with countless defeats. The movie is truly nothing. Does it deserve such harsh words if it’s per- fectly mediocre? Maybe not, but after 30+ movies of the same plot beats, the same quips and the same action, it gets hard to appreciate this tired formula. The potential of this movie lingers in every scene and the possibility of what could have been truly stung.

If this is where the MCU is headed, I want off the train. The multiverse saga of the MCU was the perfect opportunity to get weird with it. Take some risks, make audiences gasp, and really tell an exciting and worthy story. “Quantumania,” proves that the MCU will likely just stumble around in circles until the end of time.

“Even looking at the way people celebrate things and the way people cook (are different),” Shamsi said. “You can cook the same ingredient when you just buy it from a shop like Walmart. But when it goes home and it goes through the process that happens in the kitchen, it is the culture, the back- ground and the people that makes the final dish that you see here.”

His wife made some of the Persian foods, such as Ash e Reshte. Another couple made falafel.

“Having a community of Iranian people just makes me feel as if it’s not that far away from family,” Shamsi said. “OSU is really international friendly. This is one of the events that I really appreciate.”

OSU boasted 1,519 international students in fall 2022, according to OSU international student statistics provided to The O’Colly.

Mayank Talreja, a master’s student from India, represents OSU’s largest international community. The country’s 418 students make it OSU’s biggest international population. The Indian Student Association also won the event’s best desert content with its kalakand, an Indian milk cake.

“That is what encourages us and gives me a motivation to do something for students,” Talreja said. “We help students transition their life from India to a new country here. It’s been great that a lot of friends are here from our country.”

ISO will also host its Culture Night on April 8 in the Seretean Center for the Performing Arts, another opportunity for OSU’s international students.