That’s right, one of the biggest highlights of “Quantumania” is watching Scott Lang shift gears into full Protective Dad Mode, and in pivotal moments of the story, he gets real pissed off at his enemies. All the ex-convict turned hero wants is for Cassie to live a better life than he did, and that means protecting her at all costs. Though she’s stirred up some drama in the real world as a light protester, this is her first time on the battlefield.
At first, his fatherly frustrations manifest in a couple of moments of silly banter. Scott clumsily fights a threatening protozoa-like creature, and in one scene, he watches Cassie struggle to effectively use her Pym Particle suit in combat, then he lectures her on how to “jump, then tap,” a move that helps him maintain his momentum and strength as Ant-Man. The family that fights together, stays together. Despite a lot of the drama of the film falling flat, Paul Rudd is successful enough as an actor to sell the more emotionally subtle moments through his natural charms.
Unfortunately, it’s not long until the father-daughter duo is apprehended by the MCU’s new big bad, Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors). He has been ruling over the Quantum Realm in Janet’s absence with an iron fist. Majors plays Kang with a Darth Vader-esque level of menace, fitting for a man trying to assert his control over every timeline imaginable. Through flashbacks, we learn about Kang’s special connection to Janet — how he manipulated her during her time in the Quantum Realm into re-building his Multiversal Power Core machine, something he was cosmically exiled by time and space for abusing. Using Pym Particles, Janet broke the power core before leaving him in the Quantum Realm alone.
