Awesome / Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

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He’s Kang the Conqueror for a reason.

As a movie described as "Marvel meets Star Wars", it is the true prelude to the Multiversal Saga with plenty of movies and TV shows built up and connected to its events; how could this movie not be awesome?

Movie

• Kang the Conqueror. Jonathan Majors deserves MAJOR credit for delivering such an incredible performance. From the second he appears, he commands respect and fear in a way that no other villain has thus far. He's played completely seriously and if he makes a threat you know he can and will carry it out. It was a tall order, but it's readily apparent he'll make a fine heir to Thanos' Villainous Legacy.
  Janet: Who is "Kang"?
  Kang: Who I need to be.
  • In particular, Kang's status as a Knight of Cerebus. MCU villains have had a habit of being the butt of jokes, or at best, the Straight Man to a hero's quips. Not so with Kang. All the humor stops when he's on screen. Some people try to make jokes in his presence, and he just shuts it down. Not in a meta-funny "ha, the joke got subverted" way, but in a dead serious "Kang is here, this is not the time for jokes" way.
• Janet's confrontation with Kang once she discovers his true colors. With only a swift few seconds we see her resourcefulness, speed and Kang's utter brutality. It's perfectly executed and shows exactly what kind of villain they're up against. And what the Avengers will have to deal with.
  • This gets even better with Fridge Logic: Janet van Dyne is the entire reason that Kang is trapped within the Quantum Realm during the entire Infinity Saga; she sabotaged the power core of Kang's ship and rendered it unusable, then proceeded to organize a resistance movement with the Quantum World's denizens to resist Kang's rising empire. Janet's actions have the effect of preventing the rest of the universe as a whole from having to deal with Kang the Conqueror as well while it's already preoccupied with fighting Thanos the Mad Titan, and it would probably have remained that way were it not for Kang using M.O.D.O.K./Darren Cross to send a message to Cassie and lure the entire Pym/Lang family into the Quantum Realm once more.
• Scott and Cassie are faced with a gigantic jellyfish-like quantum monster they have no idea how to face. But before the fight can even begin, the heroes witness it erupt into an explosion of goo as its torn apart by a powerful beam of energy. In walks Xolum, a robotic quantum creature that can generate very potent lasers from his head and he only demonstrates more power and usefulness afterwards, even hinting to be Jentorra's second-in-command.
• M.O.D.O.K. more than lives up to his reputation as a construction specifically designed to kill. The revelation that he's actually Darren Cross, if anything, just makes it even better.
• Scott shows that he truly earned the rank of Avenger when he does what an entire army of armed soldiers and Quantum rogues never could; he stares Kang the Conqueror straight in the eye and tells him without saying hardly anything that he will kill him if he touches Cassie again, deal or no deal, proving that as lighthearted as his character is, being a Papa Wolf is a superpower in its own league.
  • In fact, Scott deserves major credit for remaining so resolute throughout all this. He's in Papa Wolf mode throughout pretty much the whole film, he never trusts a word Kang says and refuses to ally with him (only doing so when Cassie's life is threatened) and he proves himself a true hero in his own right who earned the gifts that Hank gave him all those years ago.
    Scott: Don't. Touch. Her. Again.
  • Kang gets his first moment of concern when Scott shows up at the head of the rebellion screaming in rage. This is what prompts him to personally enter the field of battle.
    Scot: You took my daughter!
• Cassie finally achieves her dream of fighting bad guys alongside her dad. Now having her own suit, Cassie, while still inexperienced, quickly gets the grasp of how to fight while in her shrunken form.
  • While being escorted by Kang's guards, Cassie, who was given two Pym Particle disc by her dad earlier, grows one of her captors and shrinks the other after getting back her suit gloves.
  • She then formulates a plan to rescue Jentorra from prison, taking out several guards while shrinking and growing at the right time.
  • Facing Darren Cross for the first time in ten years, Cassie is pretty nervous to see her attempted killer again. She spends most of the time running away from M.O.D.O.K. but once cornered, she quickly uses her Ace in the Hole, becoming a giant like her dad and destroying Darren with one punch.
• The entire onslaught on Kang's empire; from start to finish it's a roller coaster of epic and goes to show that while they may be small, you do not mess with ants, nor those who control them.
  • The Conqueror has finally gained the final ingredient for his escape; the multiversal regulator from his ship. Just as he's readying his fortress and fleet for departure to the real world once again, the land shakes with the sound of earthquakes. Even Kang himself is alert. Then, out of the foggy brown hague of the Conqueror's city, out steps Giant-Man, the largest and angriest Scott's ever been. He rampages through the city like it's made of wet paper and endures every ounce of pain thrown his way just to get to Kang.
    Scott: KAAAAANNNG! WE HAD A DEAL!
  • When Kang raises his Deflector Shield around his fortress, looking genuinely worried for the first time, Scott charges with the full force of a walking mountain and forces the forcefield open. Then, when he finally gets his hands on Kang, he ragdolls him across the streets and seems fully intent on ensuring he kills him as painfully as he can. Kang even seems to visibly struggle and even seems a tad fearful, possibly for the first time in his life. Unsettling? Yes, but Kang threatened his daughter. Big. Mistake.
  • Special mention to how Scott and Hope bring down the forcefield. Hope throws a tiny Scott who then turns giant mid-flight and smashes into the forcefield in the most devastating Fastball Special the MCU has seen.
  • Deplorable as he is, Kang deserves major props during this fight. Even when things start to look bad for him (a very pissed off Giant-Man gunning for him, La Résistance at his doorstep and the heroes dismantling his attempts at escape), he doesn't lose his cool until they breach his forcefield. Then, the second he steps onto the battlefield he demonstrates exactly why they call him the Conqueror. He unleashes a Curb-Stomp Battle to rival that of Thanos fighting Hulk and decimates the rebels with hardly any effort. Then, he effortlessly manhandles Ant-Man, Wasp, and Cassie in a straight fight, almost making it look like a minor chore he has to do than a gruelling battle.
    • There's one unique skill he has that sets him apart from all the other villains the Ant Family have faced; the ability to perceive and track both Ant-Man and Wasp even as they shrink and strike. Even villains like Ghost and Darren (who himself was a Sizeshifter as Yellowjacket), couldn't always lock onto them when they shifted to small size, especially when they worked together. Kang? He just casually swats them aside and even parries and dodges them with lethal precision, seeming to know what they'll do even before they resize themselves (and this is without his time-based tech). Say what you will about the Conqueror, but the man's perception is legendary.
  • Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man, reminds everyone of what a formidable hero he was and just why he chose that name for himself by arriving just in time to save everyone from Kang's fury...with an entire army of ants and a gigantic mecha ant of his and the ants' design, which tears through all of Kang's defences and swarms him so hard he's dragged off like a helpless ragdoll. All while Hank stands there casually, with his usual calm, arrogant flair.
  • Scott's final stand against an enraged Kang, who outstrips him in strength and skill even while injured. Scott gives his all, never once backing down and getting back up despite having lost his helmet (therefore access to his powers) and knowing he's no match. He even strikes Captain America's familiar boxing stance as if to say "I can do this all day". This of course, leads to the line from the trailer that gave everyone chills. Never mess with the little guy indeed.
    Kang: You thought you could win?
    Scott: I don't have to win! We both just have to lose!
  • And then when Kang has beaten him and is about to go through the portal back to Earth, Hope comes through it to help Scott and repeatedly blasts Kangs back with no words or shouts; just a cold, focused glare. She and Scott are then able to work together to kill him with his own power core.
  • Cassie, Janet, and Hank gets their own moment of awesome by opening up a new portal mere seconds after the old portal closed, averting another repeat of Scott being trapped in the Quantum Realm once more (but now with Hope being stuck too). When you factor in how the Quantum Realm's time dilation works, they wasted no time setting one up.
• The mid-credit scene. The Council of Kangs; all of them highly powerful and beyond space and time, convene once they sense that the Kang in the Quantum Realm has been defeated by people from Earth. This then puts Earth significantly high on their radar, as apparently no one else has ever been able to defeat them before. This leads to a harrowing yet awesome sequence of the great Kang leaders summoning every single Kang from every single timeline and reality, ready to rally them in a war for the Multiverse. Holy. Shit.
  • The fact that the three leaders of the Council of Kangs readily admit that the people of Earth have not only done the impossible by defeating one of the Kangs, but that they're actually fearful of them is something rather spectacular in itself, because at the rate they're developing and progressing in their understanding of the Multiverse, they may even be able to overthrow the council and take the Multiverse for their own. This seems to be the first moment in all space-time that the council needed to take serious action. Just in case there was any doubt left that Humans Are Special.
  • To further emphasize how monumental this is, let’s not forget that the Kang variant that the Ant Family fought in the Quantum Realm was there because he was too big a threat to all the other Kangs, who had to resort to exiling him, because he was too much for them to deal with, making his death a Godzilla Threshold for the Council, who decide that the Avengers are such a threat that they’re going to need all the Kangs to deal with them.
• The Stinger shows Loki and Mobius tracking "Victor Timely", a variant of Kang in the 19th Century. Loki is outright terrified to be facing him, even though this variant doesn't show any real evil, but he does so anyway because he knows what all of them are capable of.