Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is the 31st movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the first in Phase Five of the ongoing storyline of the Avengers and Avengers-adjacent superheroes. Needless to say, Marvel knows how to make one of these movies now. The strength of the MCU has been in its ability to craft a formula that combines action, comedy, and characters you come to know and care about, all while moving one big story together. But the saying that familiarity breeds contempt is also true. Quantumania does not exactly inspire contempt. But the real problem is that it doesn’t really inspire anything. It’s not that its bad; its fine. But it isn’t any more than fine. To put it simply: it just…is.

Quantumania picks up at some point after the events of Avengers: Endgame. Ant-Man/Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is enjoying the celebrity that has come with helping save the world. His self-satisfaction has seemingly made him self-absorbed; his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton of Freaky) points out how he has stopped caring about helping the little man while she gets arrested for her actions at protests. As it turns out, Cassie is actually a scientific genius whose skills are being honed by the Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), his wife Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), and their daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly), the Wasp (even though they were blipped out of existence during Cassie’s formative years and…never mind, don’t think, just watch). Cassie has built an antennae to the Quantum Realm, the subatomic universe that Janet was trapped in for decades, Scott for five years, and so on. When she finds out, Janet freaks out, just in time for the doohickey to suck them all into the Quantum Realm (oops). Turns out, Janet has failed to tell those closest to her that, before her rescue, she was a freedom fighter/terrorist wanted by Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), who was banished to the realm. The gang gets separated, there are rebels who like or don’t like Scott and Cassie, depending on the moment. Janet brings Hank and Hope along to find Bill Murray (there’s a character name, but at this point, it just doesn’t matter), who is supposed to help but betrays them to Kang. Lots of fighting ensues. And then there are after credits scenes to tease future installments of the MCU, which I’m convinced is the main reason anybody is watching these movies anymore.

Most of the problems with the MCU are present here. Almost the entire movie exists in the alternate Quantum Realm, which means almost everything we see is very CGI-looking CGI. The best of the MCU (e.g., Iron Man, most of the Captain America films) remains very tactile–superheroes exist in our real world and do real world things, so their superhumanity remains tethered to their humanity. That was lacking here. Also lacking–for the most part–is character development. It seems like the powers that be believe we know enough about Scott (okay) and Hope (not really), so, for a movie named for their characters, we don’t get much of them realistically encountering these circumstances. Cassie is woefully underdeveloped; we saw her for about one minute in Endgame–this was the movie that should have fleshed her out, but it has to move too quickly to furthering the narrative (and MCU metanarrative) along that she just is the things she has to be (Hey, she’s a scientific genius! Hey, she has an Ant-Man suit and knows how to use it!). The only two characters who get something close to explaining them are Janet and Kang, but the former’s story is kind of unrealistic based on what we already know about her and the latter’s is inconsistent–at times overpowering and at other times pretty ordinary. Kang is the big bad of the next two phases of the MCU and thus should be consistently awesome, but, again, moving the story supplants developing his motivation.

That said, all is not Hope-less. As I said, Quantumania was not bad. Even though the script is generally lazy and inconsistent, the cast does their best with what they have. Michelle Pfeiffer embraces being a rock-star action hero and carries as much weight as she can into this alternate reality. And Jonathan Majors, who is one of my current favorite actors (you owe it to yourself to see The Last Black Man in San Francisco if you haven’t), has lots of moments where you can see the awesomeness that his role in the MCU will provide. If you saw the TV show Loki (yeah, you’re supposed to watch the TV shows, too), he was exceptional in the last episode as a different version of the Kang character in that universe (it’s a comic book thing, just go with it). Plus, Paul Rudd is always super likable, so you can’t ever get really bummed out by a movie with him. So, thanks to the cast, Quantumania is still pretty watchable.

Quantumania may be evidence that the MCU has gotten lazy and the only motivation for releasing these movies is that people will still spend lots of money to go to see them. That’s probably true. But it’s also still okay to just go to see a big, loud, and fun movie in the theater. And Quantumania is probably still also that.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is in theaters.

(Photo credit: Marvel)