Quantumania Breakdown: Kang Joins the Marvel Title Card, the Lang Dynasty Begins and Ants Steal the Show

He Who Remains May Be the First Villain on the Marvel Studios Title Card

I start every breakdown I do with the Marvel Studios opening title card, because Marvel updates it with every title. The big new detail for Quantumania is Jonathan Majors as He Who Remains from the Loki finale, added to the A. I'm pretty sure this is the first time a villain has been added to the title card. You could argue He Who Remains is less villainous than Kang the Conqueror, more mischievous, but in the terms of Loki he was definitely a villain, and I think it's a big deal.

The A stands for Avengers, and I think there is significance to Kang's face sitting there. In the post-credits scene, I'm pretty sure one of the Kang variants we see is Mr Griffin, the CEO of Qeng Enterprises, who takes over Avengers Tower. Elsewhere on the card, Iman Vellani's Kamala Khan is now in the R, and the V includes Shuri from Black Panther.

The Prologue Pairs Janet and Kang and Hides the Number Three

The film opens with a flashback prologue, and I love that the story begins between Janet Van Dyne and Kang, because they're both OG Avengers characters. The Wasp was on the very first Avengers cover, and I think bringing her back for Quantumania and Phase Five is a big deal. I also think it's interesting that three pieces break off Kang's ship as it goes down, alongside the trail of the crashing ship itself. Three matches the leaders of the Kang Dynasty's inner circle, and I think it's significant: there's the Holy Trinity, and there are the three Time Keeper statues in He Who Remains' Citadel.

I thought the CGI was fine; there was just a lot of it. I don't really have a problem with the use of the volume, because I like interesting design and I think this imagery is beautiful. I love the colour scheme too: purple and teal, significant Kang colours, appear right as the Kang Dynasty has banished him. I don't think it's crazy to look at that.

The blue arachnid creatures start as one that splits into two, a recurring motif: what is one is actually part of a hive of variants. I think that's very important for Scott Lang. None of us is an island; we are the sum of our possibilities, in a constant tug of war with our own choices. Seeing Scott in that probability storm was my favourite part of the movie, because that's how I feel at all moments.

Welcome Back, Kotter Opening Feels Like the Start of a Loop

The opening sequence in San Francisco, my hometown, is set to Welcome Back, Kotter, echoing how 2018's Ant-Man and the Wasp began with Partridge Family sitcom music. But what are we being welcomed back to? Scott has been in San Francisco for years. I feel like we are the ones being welcomed back, and the ending circles back to this, almost like we're beginning a loop.

There are fun cameos, including Ryan Bergara of Watcher, who appears with his wife. Someone thanks Scott by calling him Spider-Man, which I love, because nobody knows who Spider-Man is after the memory wipe spell. Dale returns with an employee of the century award and Scott's old Baskin Robbins apron, which says Jack, Paul Rudd's son's name. Scott's new suit uses nanotech, and I like that the upgrade has practical uses throughout.

Scott is on a book tour for Look Out for the Little Guy, and I call this the Lang Dynasty: the movie introduces the Kang Dynasty, but at its heart I believe it's about Scott earning his Avenger status. He is a de facto Avenger who publicises himself as one, but plenty of people claim to be something without the proof. Yes, he saved the multiverse, though the rat did a lot of the work. I think right now Cassie and Hope are doing a lot of the avengering. Cassie shrinking a cop car is a fun Hank Pym reference to the Soviet tank in the 2015 film, and she starts her journey in jail the way Scott did.

Quantumania Is an Ant Forward Movie

Scott's audiobook mentions time travelling with Captain America, Hulk turning him into a baby, and Rocket Raccoon. I don't think these are random references, and time dilation through your body matters a great deal here, especially with ants. Something not celebrated enough is that the Ant-Man movies are ant movies. Peyton Reed clearly loves ants, and ants end up becoming the heroes. In the lab, the helmeted ants are already building lit structures that look like Tomorrowland. The Mandalorian episodes Reed directed have an ant creature, and in The Book of Boba Fett the droids Luke uses to build his school are ants. The enlarged pizza, meanwhile, is a Back to the Future Part II reference Reed confirmed.

Janet's attitude has shifted. In 2018 she was fine with Scott going to the quantum realm; now she yanks the power cord. Maybe after the Time Heist she's freaked out about the timelines, or maybe an unsupervised kid talking to whoever is down there scares her more than an adult grabbing healing particles. There's also the possibility the timeline changed when He Who Remains was killed, so Kang now exists throughout history and the 2018 Janet maybe didn't have that history. That's just a theory. It is possible it's a retcon, and it is a bit abrupt.

The Quantum Realm Looks Striking but Lacks Awe

MODOK pulls them in, and we're never told how he opened a rift through a machine that wasn't a teleportation device. I liked that Hope chooses to jump while everyone else gets sucked down, and that once Scott catches Cassie, she taps his hand to resize him, showing she knows this tech. I treat the volume like a stage play, with suspension of disbelief, and love the floating crags and energy columns. My criticism is that the film didn't give these settings weight like characters. Paul Rudd and Kathryn Newton seem not to know what they're looking at, and awe is hard to convey unless you know what paradigm is being shattered. I think the best example of awe on film is Jodie Foster in Contact, and that's something I think a lot of Marvel actors struggle with.

I was frustrated that the film kept mentioning Kang but didn't reach him until around 46 minutes after the prologue; Kang is the reason most people came. But when he entered the frame it was a game changer. I think Jonathan Majors is one of the best actors Marvel has ever worked with. Kang's influence shows in his murals and a written language based on circles, reflecting how he sees time as a flat circle. As for MODOK, I don't think he looked bad, but the design of Corey Stoll's face looked really silly, and I think he sticks out like a sore thumb.

I Think Putting MODOK's Backstory Before Kang's Was a Structural Mistake

MODOK is a previous villain who takes a new form, and he has a kind of Cheshire Cat look to him. I compare him to the Tin Man, someone who worked on the Gale farm and then reappears played by the same actor. Here it just doesn't work for what the movie is trying to do. It's an "and" thing, not a "because" thing. I believe it's Trey Parker who, in a screenwriting lesson at NYU, says that if you just add another thing with "and then," you're not really doing your job; everything should be consequential or necessary. MODOK feels kind of forced into the movie. Nothing against Corey Stoll, whom I think is a great actor, but structurally I don't think MODOK is necessary, and he's a little too silly in moments that shouldn't be silly. I was never afraid of him, though it seems like they want us to be.

We also get MODOK's backstory before Kang's, which I think is a structural mistake, because the audience cares way more about Kang. It would be so much better to start with Kang's backstory and then, somewhere in the second act, have MODOK try his crazy epic backstory that doesn't live up to it. It would have felt more like a joke. Instead it felt like delayed gratification. I know the movie is only two hours and five minutes, "but man we needed Kang so bad."

Kang Burns Timelines With His Own Hands

I love that the Freedom Fighters' buildings are sentient, and that Jentorra says something like "he burned our stories," which ties into a recurring theme: Kang wants to burn people out of time. The multiversal engine core fascinates me. It's a sphere made of rotating rings, like an atom, another example of how Kang sees time as a flat circle, and its bands carry microscopic circular writing, almost like the runes inside the One Ring. I have to assume he's the only Kang who has it, otherwise they'd be running amok on each other.

One of my favourite shots is Janet's flashback to Kang's history. What do we see? A burned forest. The TVA's metaphor is pruning branches, but this guy is burning the entire forest down. He's in the trenches vaporizing people and cities, even exploding planets. Someone's face explodes, a mother clutches her child, and maybe it's better that we mostly see Janet's terrified expression. He's screaming; he's getting revenge. I think some incursion killed someone he loved, maybe took Renslayer from him.

Jonathan Majors is fantastic here. Asked what he's going to do, he just says "win." He even twists his earlier line, "time isn't what you think, it's a cage," into something else. Majors described this as no moves wasted. When Janet snatches the core and disrobes into her black and red Wasp suit, he loses his mind and blows up the home they shared for ages. To me this supports the theory that Janet didn't know Kang in the 2018 movie, or it's just a retcon. Majors also talked about being inspired by Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great. I describe his Kang as Caesar's ghost getting back at Brutus, whereas He Who Remains is more like Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream, a trickster.

The Probability Storm Is What Quantumania Is About

The probability storm is one of my favourite sequences; it reminds me of the abstract thought scene in Pixar's Inside Out. Thematically it's what the movie is all about: we are the sum of our possibilities, and at any point we can make a different choice. The first variant to step out of Scott turns away from the threat, representing his cowardice, so Scott is freed from his most fearful self. The Baskin Robbins Scott shows past life choices too. Baskin Robbins has 31 flavours and this is the 31st MCU film, which I think was just an accident.

When a variant gets big and unravels, I think it's because that possibility diverged too far from the norm and the multiverse says you're out, which implies some kind of divine law. You could argue this is the multiversal forge Bill Foster talked about, the wellspring of the multiverse, formed from within by people making choices, which is why I love Everything Everywhere All at Once. The cure is Cassie calling out; the Scotts collaborate the way ants do. It can feel trite to say love conquers all, but I think it's more complex: focus on the one thing that grounds you. The Kang Dynasty hates and fears its variants; the Lang Dynasty loves them.

The Ants, Kang's Greed and Scott's Avenger Moment

Why exile Kang instead of killing him? I believe killing him could see him respawn as a worse conqueror, so they exiled him the way Napoleon was exiled to Elba, which ended up a big mistake. Hank showing up with the ants got perhaps the biggest cheer in both of my screenings. The ants peel off Kang's armour, yet he gets away. My theory is that Kang got the ants to mutiny against each other, because fascism is always creeping up through the shadows. My least favourite part is Kang's speech about revenge against eternity being cut off by a Times Square montage. I'm not hating on Kathryn Newton, but I'd love all three Cassies in Secret Wars.

Kang could have escaped with the core, but he got greedy and took his entire city and fleet. Is that fair, though? He'd been sabotaged by the Kang Dynasty, and his goal is not to escape but to win. Scott grows, I believe, four times bigger than in Endgame, a small skyscraper. Kang's scars light up, and maybe they're neurokinetic sensors, like Wolverine's scars. Both crowds I saw laughed at MODOK's death, a mismatched tone, but it motivates Scott to become a true Avenger, staying behind like Steve Rogers jumping on the grenade. "I don't have to win, we both just have to lose" is his version of "I could do this all day."

Kang's probably not dead. I think the idea is that he's sucked into a probability storm of his own, and my theory at the time was that we were seeing the origin of Kang Prime. I'm not crazy about Cassie re-engineering the portal in minutes, but I love how the epilogue loops back. At least two women Scott passes are wearing a specific shade of purple, there's a green cake, and there are purple balloons behind him at the birthday party, and purple and green are the colours of Kang's robes. I don't know if this actually means anything, but I think it shows Scott has this kind of paranoia in his head, and that paranoia is valuable.

Victor Timely Could Be Where The TVA Began

I think this has the best post credits scenes of any Marvel movie I've seen. The Council of Kangs recreates a comic panel, with Rama-Tut, Immortus and a new futuristic Kang I think is connected to Iron Lad. The three leaders mirror the three Time Keeper statues, and I wondered whether the fourth, broken statue was the banished Kang. Majors played at least a dozen Kangs, each with different choices.

I like the second scene better: a 1901 expo with Victor Timely, a nod to Marvel once being Timely Comics, echoing the Stark Expo. My theory at the time was that Timely is He Who Remains and this is the origin of the TVA. Which post credits scene did you prefer?