The internet has long bought into the conspiracy theory that movie reviewers are secretly being paid by Marvel to give the studios’ never-ending procession of blockbuster events positive reviews, such is the consistent quality of what the House of Ideas has to offer. Well, the reactions to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania should help dispel this notion once and for all as the much-anticipated threequel’s Rotten Tomatoes score is now in, and let’s just say that if Disney are paying off the critics, they aren’t paying enough.
With the review embargo at last breaking this Tuesday afternoon, the movie’s Rotten Tomatoes score has debuted. As you can see for yourself over on the review-aggregate site, at the time of writing Quantumania is sitting at a pretty pathetic 64 percent on Rotten Tomatoes — that’s ironically tiny for such a short-statured superhero flick. Typically, a movie’s opening RT score will be overinflated before it drops down to a more measured rating over time. In this case, we can only hope Ant-Man 3‘s score picks up otherwise it’s doomed to clock in lower than even Thor: The Dark World (which has 66 percent).
2015’s Ant-Man, which was memorably almost directed by Edgar Wright before Reed stepped aboard, sports a Rotten Tomatoes score of 83 percent, while 2017’s sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp sits at the slightly improved 87 percent, meaning both of the films are Certified Fresh. With reviews widely criticizing the film for buckling under the inflated scale and scope of its storytelling, these RT ratings suggest this is a case where bigger definitely isn’t better.
Make your own mind up when Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania opens worldwide this Friday, Feb. 17.