It is an inauspicious time for Marvel as their newest release, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, has now seen its review scores drop so low that it’s tied with Eternals as the worst-reviewed MCU film ever.

A week ago when I was first documenting its review scores, Quantumania had a 53%, but since then, dozens more reviews have been added, bringing it down to a 47%, the same score as the much-maligned Eternals.

However, it should be noted that this is one instance where there’s been a major critic and audience split. You might think this happens all the time with comic book movies, but at least in the MCU, the scores are usually closer than you might imagine, and oftentimes critics can even score Marvel movies higher than fans.

In this case, however, the gulf is enormous. Quantumania has an 84% audience score to that 47% critic score. That puts it in the top 20 of MCU movies for audience score, not amazing, but certainly not last place (out of around 30). Eternals too had a much higher 77% audience score to the 47% critic score, though I will admit while I personally liked Eternals more than my fellow critics, I agreed with them on Quantumania, as I didn’t much care for it outside of Jonathan Majors’ Kang.

The low review scores have not affected Quantumania’s box office run, it seems. The movie out-earned Ant-Man and the Wasp’s opening, and seems to have done pretty well domestically so far here. I think while some audiences are fans of Ant-Man himself, a big draw was indeed seeing Majors’ Kang on display, who will effectively be the Thanos of this phase of the Marvel universe with Avengers: The Kang Dynasty a huge blockbuster crossover coming later on.

That said, I am sure Kevin Feige is not super pleased with the critical reception. Marvel has prided itself on making movies to please both critics and audiences, as it really is something that out of 30+ films, only two have ever gotten “rotten” scores, and many are 90%+ instead. So I do expect some amount of retooling to figure out what’s going on here, as we’ve also seen newer Phase 4 films like Thor Love and Thunder or Multiverse of Madness have lower scores as well. Albeit not this low.

The next MCU film out is Guardians and the Galaxy Vol. 3 from new DCU head James Gunn, which is a bit trippy. That’s out May 5, and we’ll see if critics like that one a bit more than Quantumania here.

See what other writers are saying:

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania review – incoherent special-effects dump - The Guardian
It's perhaps not entirely fair to criticise a film in which buildings have tentacles and a supporting character is made of broccoli for...
'Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania' Review: MCU's First Fifth Phase Flick Starts With a Quantum Flop - Rendy Reviews
After fighting alongside the Avengers against Thanos in Endgame, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is back and capitalizing on his heroism as a...
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania: Marvel Movie Review - Vulture
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is an atrocious movie, but it's atrocious in a way that Marvel movies rarely are. Up until now, the films ...
'Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania' Review: Splat - NY Times
Murray notwithstanding, there are enough attractions to keep your eyes engaged, and the creature design is fairly witty. It isn't pretty; the ...
'Ant-Man 3' Ties 'Eternals' for Worst Reviews in the MCU - Insider
But even Majors' time-traveling villain can't save "Quantumania" from a slew of negative reviews, making it the second MCU movie to be rated ...
'Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania' Review - CNET
Much more focus is given to the villain of the piece, Kang, another miniaturized exile to the quantum realm played by Jonathan Majors. He's ...

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