Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which includes everything that's happened since Endgame, was an incoherent and disconnected mess full of stories that barely ever even referenced each other. But Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania is the start of a new day. It's a movie that should help the franchise regain its focus by putting the next big bad, Kang the Conqueror, front and center and kick off a new unifying story thread.

That's what it was supposed to do, anyway. And maybe that version of the movie exists on some other version of Earth. But in our reality, Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania is the most generic Marvel movie imaginable, smoothing over every edge that might alienate viewers until anything of substance has been expunged. That's not to say it's an unpleasant experience. It's not. Rather, it's the kind of movie you'll completely forget within a couple of days because there's nothing really worth remembering.

The setup here is that Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) has spent the time since Avengers: Endgame doing nothing, and his newly grown-up daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) has been secretly working with Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Hope Van Dyne/the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) on a project to remotely map the Quantum Realm.