ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The diminutive superheroes Ant-Man and the Wasp returned to theaters today in "Quantumania." For those not keeping track, this is the 31st Marvel movie and the start of the middle section of Marvel's Multiverse Saga. Critic Bob Mondello says, more interestingly, it's the start of a new villain.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Scott Lang, otherwise known as Ant-Man, is bopping down a San Francisco street as the movie gets started, musing on his great good fortune.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA")
PAUL RUDD: (As Scott Lang) I used to ask myself a lot of questions. Scott, you're an ex-con. How are you an Avenger? That doesn't make sense. But everywhere I go, people tell me the same thing.
RUBEN RABASA: (As Cafe Owner) Thank you, Spider-Man.
MONDELLO: This is pleasantly self-deprecating, but also gets at something that's been bothering the insect-oriented contingent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Nobody takes their guy seriously. This time, though, Lang and his family are kicking off a whole new storyline set in a place they spent the last film getting Mom back from.
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MICHELLE PFEIFFER: (As Janet Van Dyne) You know how dangerous the Quantum Realm is.
EVANGELINE LILLY: (As Hope Van Dyne) We all do, Mom. Nobody's going to the Quantum Realm.
KATHRYN NEWTON: (As Cassie Lang) That's why we made this.
MICHAEL DOUGLAS: (As Hank Pym) Your daughter built a subatomic Hubble Telescope in a basement.
MONDELLO: Mom is proud until she realizes the telescope operates more like radar, bouncing signals and reading results.
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PFEIFFER: (As Janet Van Dyne) Wait. Wait a minute. You're sending a signal down to the Quantum Realm. Turn it off now.
MONDELLO: Too late. The whole family gets sucked in. And small, as in subatomic, is about to get big, as in extravagant. Turns out Mom forgot to mention to Lang and family that she'd been interacting with a whole populated world in the Quantum Realm, multiple civilizations lorded over by a guy who tends to blast first and ask questions later. Lang, meet Kang.
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JONATHAN MAJORS: (As Kang the Conqueror) You're an Avenger. Have I killed you before?
RUDD: (As Scott Lang) What?
MAJORS: (As Kang the Conqueror) They all blur together after a while. You're not the one with the hammer.
RUDD: (As Scott Lang) That's Thor. We get confused a lot - similar body types. Who are you?
MONDELLO: He is evidently the baddest of the bad and will be for a few more films, judging from the upcoming title "Avengers: The Kang Dynasty." Thanos only wanted to destroy half the universe. Kang appears interested in exactly doubling that carnage.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA")
MAJORS: (As Kang the Conqueror) You will bring me what I need, or everything you call life will end.
MONDELLO: Kang is played charismatically by Jonathan Majors, who's having quite a year. He just wowed Sundance audiences as a troubled bodybuilder. He'll soon be a troubled boxer in "Creed III." And here, he's a troubled supervillain.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA")
MAJORS: (As Kang the Conqueror) I will take my revenge on those who banished me, and I will burn them out of time.
MONDELLO: Director Peyton Reed has surrounded him and Paul Rudd's Ant-Man family unit with lots of digitized stuff - rideable flying manta rays, a desert and cantina that, considering the filmmaker's involvement with another Disney franchise, you might call "Ant-Mandalorian" (ph).
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA")
DOUGLAS: (As Hank Pym) Holy [expletive]. That guy looks like broccoli.
MONDELLO: With lushly artificial-looking digital backgrounds, foregrounded, a few actors make impressions - William Jackson Harper, quirky as a mind reading empath, Michelle Pfeiffer, fiercely analytical as an exposition-spouting Mom.
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PFEIFFER: (As Janet Van Dyne) I can rewrite existence and shatter timelines.
MONDELLO: But as the final credits rolled through the cast, right down to Woman with Dog, I realized "Quantumania" only had about as many credited actors as credited production assistants. That feels like the wrong balance for the successor to a couple of Ant-Man flicks that were light and human Marvel palate cleansers. For series purposes, Marvel may need this to be a main course heavy with worldbuilding, but scale has a tendency to overwhelm humor. And gargantuan is rarely fun, especially if you were hoping for antic. I'm Bob Mondello.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHRISTOPHE BECK'S "THEME FROM ‘QUANTUMANIA’") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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