Will ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania’ Solve the Biggest Plothole of the MCU Franchise?
Like many superhero movies, Marvel films require a suspension of disbelief for one to truly enjoy the antics on display. Everything within the Marvel Cinematic Universe makes total sense as long as you don’t question it too much.
However, some plot holes are very hard to forget, no matter how hard you try, and one of them involves mass. But will Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania finally solve the biggest plot hole of the franchise?
A brief look into the ‘Ant-Man’ franchise
After resigning from S.H.I.E.L.D in 1989 after discovering that the organization wanted to replicate his Ant-Man shrinking technology, Hank Pym decides to keep it under lock and key, believing the technology would be dangerous if replicated. Enter the freshly-released well-meaning thief Scott Lang who steals the suit but returns it after shrinking himself.
He is caught on his way out, but Hank breaks him out of prison using ants, and he and his daughter, Hope, train Scott to steal Ant-Man suit rival, the Yellowjacket, to prevent Darren Cross from using it for bad reasons.
Released as part of the MCU’s Phase Two, the film was a major success at the box office, earning over $500 million against a $169 million budget. The sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp was released in 2018 as part of the MCU’s Phase Three and followed Scott’s Ant-Man and Hope’s Wasp as they worked together to retrieve Hope’s mother, Janet, from the Quantum Realm.
The first Ant-Man movie reveals Janet’s whereabouts when Hank tells Hope that Janet disappeared into the Quantum Realm during a mission. The film was an even bigger commercial success earning $622.7 million on a $195 million budget.
The mass issue in ‘Ant-Man’
Pym tech is powerful. It ought to be given how everyone in the Ant-Man universe seemingly wants a piece of it. However, there have been several inconsistencies, with the biggest one involving mass. In the first film, Hope explains to Scott during training that the Pym technology only alters the object’s size, not the mass.
This logic creates a problem when we constantly see Ant-Man and his ‘handlers’ going about their superhero antics and throwing science out of the window throughout the first and second movies. In one scene in Ant-Man, Hank carries a shrunken tank as a keychain, and in Ant-Man 2, he and Hope travel with their lab.
If the earlier logic that the Pym Particles don’t change the mass, the tank keychain or the building, for that matter, would have weighed several tons, which would have made it impossible for him to carry them around.
These aren’t the only examples that justify the argument. Hope indicates that Scott is 200 pounds, so since mass isn’t altered when he shrinks, there would be no way he would be able to run on a gun’s barrel or even ride flying insects without causing a gun to buckle or kill the insects because he would be too heavy.
‘Ant-Man 3’ may finally solve the mass problem
While Ant-Man and Ant-Man 2 seemingly ignore their own rules about mass conservation, the upcoming Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantamania may finally put the issue to rest. The movie takes place in the Quantum Realm and follows Scott and Hope as they explore the dimension with their family.
The Quantum Realm, an amalgamation of the Microverse and Quantum Zone, is the key to time travel in the MCU. This means that it might be immune to the passage of time and possibly other rules, including mass conservation. If the bets are truly off in the third Ant-Man film, the MCU might have found a loophole to explain away any plot holes, including the mass issue in the Ant-Man franchise.
