Those low ‘Quantumania’ scores could be the result of Marvel booting Paul Rudd from a key role

Ant-Man and the Wasp; Quamtumania was supposed to be the movie that kicked off the MCU’s Phase Five with a bang, but it’s ended up being a bomb with critics. Its Rotten Tomatoes score is now so low that only Eternals ranks worse out of the many MCU films that have come before it. All in all, this is coming as a major blow for once-excited fans, who are now eager to catch the movie just so they can see what went so wrong.

A look at the film’s key crew, however, may reveal the real reason why Quantumania is lacking the charm of the first two entries in the Ant-Man trilogy, which is something that critics are claiming is the case across the board. And the answer is that it’s lacking that special Paul Rudd touch. Sure, the actor is still the lead of the movie, but it appears that he was less directly involved in bringing the threequel to life than he was in its predecessors.

It just so happens that Quantumania is the first Ant-Man flick on which Rudd is not credited as a writer. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the Avengers: Endgame actor admitted that there wasn’t really room for him to contribute to the script this time around as Marvel had a clear vision of what they wanted to achieve, with screenwriter Jeff Loveness operating solo:

“Well, I was working prior to it, and I think they had an idea of what they wanted to do,” he said. “There’s a guy named Jeff Loveness, who’s our writer on the film, and so they worked on the script. I talked to them a little bit about the idea of what the film was, but it was great.”

The first Ant-Man had an illustrious quartet of credited writers, including Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam McKay, and Rudd. Ant-Man and the Wasp then had even more cooks stirring the pot, with credits going to Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Rudd, Andrew Barrer, and Gabriel Ferrari.

Typically, having a lot of writers listed on a movie is cause for concern, with a single scribe indicating a film has a stronger authorial vision. In the case of Quantumania, however, it seems the opposite is true and a more collaborative approach might’ve been to its benefit.

The world will be able to make up its mind about Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania once it opens everywhere this Friday, Feb. 17.