'Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania' Lacks Bite, and This Scene Proves It

Editor's note: The following article contains spoilers for Ant-Man and the Wasp: QuantumaniaThere are a lot of fair criticisms that could be lobbed at Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the underwhelming new entry in the MCU canon. It's too far removed from the low-key breezy charms of the first two Ant-Man films. Its "small group of rebels mount a charge against an evil empire" storyline cribs too heavily from the standard sci-fi/fantasy template. It's focused too much on setting up Jonathan Majors' Kang the Conquerer as the next Thanos-level MCU villain at the expense of the core Ant-Man characters. All of these things are true! And yet none of them were the reason I found myself angry when I was leaving the theater. I was seething over something far less consequential but still rather infuriating: Bill Murray could have and should have died a much more horrible death in this movie. It could have been an all-timer of a Marvel death scene — something to cackle about with your friends on the drive home from the movie. But the film completely whiffed on it — a pretty fitting and symbolic indictment of Quantumania on the whole, if you think about it.