Over this President’s Day Weekend, Marvel’s tiniest character put up gigantic numbers at the box office, silencing any critics (like myself) who thought that moviegoers would grow stale of the franchise heading into 2023. 

Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantumania is Marvel’s first release this calendar year, out of an expected five films to come, and it has already amassed $104 million, according to CNBC. This was the third installment of the Ant-Man series and Paul Rudd once again plays the unlikely hero, Scott Lang, who finds himself in an existential crisis since there are no more bad guys for the Avengers to fight. 

Now, with no adventures looming, the audience gets to learn about Lang’s star-studded family, which stars Evangeline Lilly as the Wasp/his girlfriend Hope Pym, Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer as her parents, and Kathryn Newton as Lang’s daughter, Cassandra Lang. 

Marvel once again purchases the souls of two Oscar worthy actors, as Douglas and Pfeiffer pump out cringy and predictable dialogue for nearly two hours, putting me in the same sort of existential crisis our main protagonist is stuck in himself. Despite the A-list ensemble, it was the introduction of Kang the Conqueror which captivated the audience as Marvel fans finally got to see a villain as powerful as Thanos takeover the big screen. 

Kang is played by rising star Jonathan Majors who is coming off an Emmy nomination for his work on HBO’s Lovecraft Country. Majors is a talented actor but his work as Kang was pretty subpar. I felt like Majors was just doing his best Denzel Washington impression for the entire runtime of the movie. With that being said, the action scenes were still impressive. If there is one thing the Marvel franchise has contributed to cinema all these years, it is how epic and visually stunning their CGI is. The setting for three quarters of the movie is in a completely different universe but nothing on the screen looks like it was produced by a green screen and the 3D effects actually make the experience more immersive. 

Overall, the third Antman film was underwhelming and is currently sitting at a 47% Rotten Tomatoes Score. However, when I went on Saturday night, the theater was still packed, and the lines were still long. The 40-year-old man sitting next to me still laughed at all the painfully written hack jokes, and everyone (including myself) waited in their seats and watched all the credits just to see the 30 second end credit scene which once again highlights the grip the Marvel franchise has on the masses regardless of its dismal plotlines and cheap dialogue.