Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania sets unfortunate new Rotten Tomatoes milestone for Marvel

First film in the MCU’s ‘Phase Five’ has underwhelmed critics

Louis Chilton
Thursday 16 February 2023 23:30 EST
Comments
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania trailer

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has set an unfortunate new milestone for Marvel Studios on Rotten Tomatoes.

The film, released in cinemas on Friday (17 February), is now the lowest-scoring sequel in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

Starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly and Jonathan Majors, Quantumania currently has an aggregated review score of just 51 per cent positive.

This places it below other MCU entries such as 2010’s Iron Man 2 (71 per cent) and 2013’s Thor: The Dark World (66 per cent), two films that are often considered the worst among the Marvel canon.

However, at the time of writing, Quantumania is not quite the lowest-rated MCU film entirely, with Chloé Zhao’s 2021 ensemble feature Eternals currently holing that dubious honour.

Eternals has a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 47 per cent. With reviews still likely to be added to the website over the coming days, it remains possible, although unlikely, that Quantumania could sink to a new record low for the franchise.

Quantumania is the first film of Marvel’s “Phase Five”, and will see the first cinematic introduction of Majors as Kang the Conqueror.

Having first played the role briefly in season one of the Disney Plus series Loki, Majors is expected to reprise the villain role in a number of forthcoming MCU films, including, most significantly, the next two Avengers team-up movies: The Kang Dynasty (2025) and Secret Wars (2026).

Kathryn Newton and Paul Rudd in ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania'
Kathryn Newton and Paul Rudd in ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania' (Marvel Studios)

In a three-star review of Quantumania for The Independent, Clarisse Loughrey praised Majors’s performance, writing: “Majors has pulled off the seemingly impossible. It’s as if he’s forced Marvel to orbit around the force of his own charisma.

“He delivers dry-as-Weetabix dialogue about timelines and variants with such solemnity, you’d be fooled into thinking he was talking about something actually real.”

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is out in cinemas from Friday 17 February.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in