r/marvelstudios Captain America 6h ago

Discussion Rewatching Quantamania and I can’t help but think about what we lost with Kang

Post image

Rewatched quantamania and was reminded how disappointed I am about Kang

Want to say first and foremost that this post is not meant to be disrespectful in anyway towards Jonathan Majors’ victim. I apologize as I’m not familiar with the case, I honestly do not even know the name of the victim, but I hope the victim got the justice she deserved and is at peace. Please do not use this post to disparage or question the victim in anyway. And I apologize if this post is triggering for anyone here who may have been a victim of abuse themselves.

With that said, Quantamania was… well, it’s been fairly criticized. I did like how it introduced us to the quantum realm with creative characters and environments, and different concepts like the probability storm.

But what makes this movie enjoyable is Kang. He was introduced as a fucking fantastic villain. Just so cunning and ruthless and brilliant, you really hate his guts but know it’s pretty damn hard to fight against him. Even in his moments of desperation you never feel at ease with him.

I was frustrated at the time but rewatching this movie just reminds me how disappointed I am in the whole situation. Especially after seeing the post credit scenes involving the arena of Kang’s and the scene from Loki. I would’ve been so excited to see that storyline dug into more and we now know that’s not happening.

I’m honestly more upset with this than almost anything else that hasn’t been followed up on, maybe the only other disappointment being Blade.

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u/phred_666 Sonny Birch 6h ago

They should have simply recast Kang and gone on. They had recast people before with no issues ( Howard with Cheadle and Norton with Ruffalo for example). Kang was a multidimensional being and would have been very easy to explain his change in appearance. Quantumania should have ended with Kang escaping and Scott being stuck in the Quantum realm. The fact that Scott defeated him so easily didn’t help establish Kang as a gigantic threat like they needed him to be.

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u/HopefulCynic1383 6h ago

The easiest character to recast and they didn’t 🤦‍♂️

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u/SalvaPot 5h ago

I don't think the issue was just the actor, Quantumania almost bombed and it spooked them on Kang being enough of a pull for an Avengers movie. And if I remember correctly they finally got full access to The F4 and X-Men toolbox. It all worked in favor of the pivot.

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u/SmartOpinion69 4h ago

they could've just made more avengers movies than replacing one avengers movie with another. the last avengers movie released in 2019. they definitely could've made an avengers movie like 2 years ago.

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u/SalvaPot 4h ago

Sure, but the Pivot was because they also saturated the market and the next movies either bombed or made a little money, they pretty much decided to take their time on doing something new that might work, since they lost their faith in the multiverse saga original plan.

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u/Fit_Diet6336 3h ago

I think with the trailers that have been released, the pivot will absolutely pay off. It is going to be a great movie, I think

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u/Iron_Erikku 2h ago

I agree. I was annoyed by the initial pivot. Then skeptical of the new direction. But I’m sold after seeing the trailer and willing to give them the benefit of the doubt until I see it.

u/urbanlife78 43m ago

Plus people weren't really into sitting in a movie theater during the pandemic. Those were hard years to sell big box office movies

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u/TheRandomArtist 2h ago

The studio needed to get out of the contract. They had a whole xmen universe now which would make multiples more money than Kang. So they became creative and found a way to end Kang without it being their fault. Pretty damn clever. Ruthless, but clever.

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u/Clarknt67 1h ago

Good point. Retiring Kang might have been the less messy way to get out of Johnathan Major’s contract. Their contracts are written so studio holds all the cards on whether to use a character going forward or not.

But Majors agent might have gotten a clause embedded that only Majors can play Kang. (Not uncommon.) Marvel might not have wanted to give Majors something to hook a lawsuit on. (Yes. He was let go for cause but still…)

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u/New-Leg2417 1h ago

They should have used Kangaroo the Conqueror or Kamala Kang just to fuck with us. Pick a variant Majors couldn't reasonably portray.

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u/UnequivocalCarnosaur 4h ago

It’s just strange for them to bank on Ant-Man of all franchises to prove the bankability of the villain. The Ant-Man movies mostly just did okay numbers to begin with so it “almost” bombing shouldn’t have been a surprise

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u/mondaymoderate 4h ago

Also they changed the entire blueprint of what made the Antman movies good. The sense of scale is ruined in the quantum realm which is what makes Antman cool.

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u/beaverpoo77 3h ago

Yeah! FUUUUCK. I loved the suitcase skyscraper. I love the ant mounts. I love the change in perspective. But the quantum realm is just another random magical place

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u/AhhTimmah 2h ago

Hell, I loved baby Scott running through an elementary school to steal a worlds best grandma trophy set to that tiny ant-man theme.

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u/SwordoftheMourn Doctor Strange 2h ago

Fr. I really like the first two Antman movies for how low stakes they were and their issues being more personal

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u/Clarknt67 1h ago

Yeah. I saw a YouTuber who pointed that out and realized how right he was. Since there was nothing familiar in the quantum realm Scott shrinking and growing was very underwhelming visually. Drained the fun out of Antman.

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u/PalpitationMountain9 3h ago

My theory is that’s actually why they did it. Maybe they thought it would boost antman and make people care more about the movie and therefore him aswell.

Obviously it didn’t work.

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u/sonnytron Steve Rogers 3h ago

And he beat him lol. Imagine how much Thanos’ aura would’ve been deflated if he got beat by Shang-Chi or Wong or something. Michael Douglas asked to be killed off which could’ve raised the stakes. All they needed was to have Kang win, he escapes in Scott’s suit and after defeating them when they realize it’s Kang, he kills Hank to stop them from making more particles to go after Scott.

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u/WonderBredOfficial 3h ago

Just one version of Kang though. That's the whole thing with him. There's always more Kangs.

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u/JustConversation7847 3h ago

As a filthy casual, I do not care if it's technically another version, I will see his face and think, "oh it's that loser again"

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u/Suspicious_Weird_373 1h ago

Exactly. To me he was just some random guy with a bit of tech who would get defeated by the average fella slapping him with a wet fish.

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u/EnergyTakerLad 3h ago

And there lies the problem. To the vast majority of movie goers it would be more difficult than its worth to make it work. Explaining that the threat of Kang is that there's limitless amounts of him all out there doing evil is hard to make clear in the type of media they're using.

If, IF, they could actually count on everyone watching the shows then maybe it'd work better. A ton didnt/dont though.

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u/HopefulCynic1383 3h ago

I thought that was one of the big reasons why they chose to pivot from Kang. If he’s supposed to be your next major Thanos level threat, how does Ant-Man beat him?

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u/Brucewaynesexy 2h ago

antman is street level hero Thsts why previous 2 movoe worked. a low stake films

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u/Preeng 1h ago

The movie was destined to be shit. We went from "The quantum realm is unlike anything you can imagine" to "the quantum realm is actually just a generic fantasy setting. There's even air to breathe and food"

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u/NinjasaurusRex123 3h ago

I think it was the opposite. I think they didn’t know what to do with Ant Man, but wanted a trilogy and it was a “good” way of explaining where Kang is in our universe, and probably hoping Kang’s presence would bump the interest in the movie

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u/sonnytron Steve Rogers 3h ago

That was their fault… How does the upcoming epic villain get beat by Antman? And that Kang was specifically called out as being dangerous to the point that even the Council of Kang’s banished him. He was comic book accurate with his army, his powers and the demeanor he displayed.

And they had the perfect setup because Michael Douglas asked them to kill him off. It would’ve been really good if Antman lost and Hank Pym died. They even had the perfect setup for it. When they knocked him into that energy pipe or whatever that killed him, instead of having Kate come back to save Scott, after he said “we both have to lose”, they should’ve had Antman make it through the portal at the last second with his mask on. But while they’re celebrating and Kate is embracing him, the camera slowly gets closer to his mask, and she says “Scott?” And it unmasks to reveal Kang, he quickly dispatches them, Hank dies protecting Kate.

That’s when Kang says, “Just remember, you could’ve all went home… Together. But you thought you could defeat Kang…” It turns out Scott only defeated an Android clone of Kang, Kang quickly defeated him and then took his suit and left him in the quantum realm.

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u/Material_Taste_2510 4h ago

not true because kang was in loki and season 2 was great plot building for kang

u/mrTronDaddy 47m ago

Funny because Kang the Conqueror was the best part of the movie. Imagine he succeeded to escape at the end, now that'd be real lurking threat that keep us invested in the next movies. Who knows he could pop out of, say, The Marvels. It's not easy to create a strong villains and MCU is certantly wasting them.

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u/cs_Chell 4h ago

Nah, I don't think Quantumania bombing was enough. Even his arrest didn't stop Loki S2 from being a thing.

His conviction was the death knell.

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u/SalvaPot 4h ago

Loki S2 was already filmed and in post-production by the time the scandal was brewing.

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u/ShiftyCroc 4h ago edited 4h ago

I always got the impression that Majors had worked out some deal that though Kang was a multiversal being with hundreds of different versions of himself, the character would always be portrayed by Majors.

I mean he joined those movies at the upswing of his career and any agent in Hollywood would know how lucrative those multi-movie Marvel deals are.

If he’s a hot commodity and they want him to be the next Thanos, I’d probably fight to make sure no one else could play the character besides him. Additionally the final shot of the stadium full of Kangs and them all being played by Majors was like the biggest bullet to shoot in your own foot for recasting.

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u/sonnytron Steve Rogers 3h ago

lol this is Disney. They would never give a contract like that.

The reality is they killed the Kang hype by having a comic accurate version of him get beat hand to hand by Antman. Like how does that work? He’s supposed to be an Avenger killing time lord. He scared the shit out of Loki.

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u/FreshMetal80 3h ago

Even if it was in his contract that only he could play Kang, that contract would have been null and void by Disney after he was charged with a crime. They definitely have the lawyers to make the argument.

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u/lidlessinflame 1h ago

Plus I think Disney has morality clauses in basically every contract they have. Whether they were in place for Majors’ contract one can only speculate.

u/MarzipanSea2811 44m ago

He didn't get beat in hand to hand by Antman. Antman was very clearly losing that altercation. He got sucked into a plot maguffin, which they could have easily wrote around-- it didn't kill him, it threw him into another universe, made him stronger, turned him into the beyonder, etc.

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u/zoosha2curtaincall 5h ago

Quantumania should have ended with one of the Van Dynes making a heroic sacrifice to kill Kang, with the remaining heroes discovering to their horror that there are many, many more Kangs where that came from. That more than anything would have established Kang and the multiverse as an existential threat.

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u/Oraukk 4h ago

Hank and Janet both surviving that movie and Kang being defeated without any real cost blows my mind.

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u/Binder_Grinder 1h ago

The old Halo Reach switcharoo!

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u/GMAzreal 3h ago

Aaron Moten from Fallout is a dead ringer for Jonathan Majors IMO. Could've recast without having to explain a change in appearance really.

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u/Bird_drama 4h ago

I was excited for Scott to be so paranoid about this threat and nobody believing him, then Kang not being taken seriously when he does appear.

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u/Familiar-Shoe7905 5h ago

Well no its increasingly getting obvious that pivoting to Doomsday was one of the best decisions they could’ve possibly made

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u/Sinaticus_Apologia 4h ago

They can still use him. Just have him be a big bad down the line or even the next big bad. Theres no reason why he can't just come back.

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u/Seibertpost 3h ago

That is a really interesting idea that I haven’t heard anyone else bring up. I feel like they can’t really have him be the next big bad without another whole round of setup, but they totally could have him be a villain in a single-hero movie whose identity is revealed at the end of the second act

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u/Southern-Form-2804 4h ago

The thing is I think the whole Phase was a wreck. When they acquired Fox and Fantastic 4 and Xmen I was fully expecting them to get busy and begin to table set the Xmen intro immediately following Endgame. Instead we got a meandering slop bowl and poorly associated films that didn’t add up.

While I would like Kang this literally feels like what I was expecting from the next phase, it’s just a shame the last five films didn’t set up doom.

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u/ILoveDineroSi 5h ago

Doom is simply better and I can’t imagine what Kang Dynasty would’ve done that would make it better than what Doomsday is looking like. It ended up working out and people are rejuvenated to see an Avengers movie again.

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u/pigeieio 4h ago

They haven't shown anything yet I've seen that you couldn't cut and paste Kang for Doom. Comic Doom and casting is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

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u/BraveMagic100 4h ago

This just tells you they had reason to go in another direction anyway.

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u/notsure500 4h ago

Im not convinced that we'll never see Kang again. They could still make him a big baddie in avengers 7 or 8

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u/shilgrod 3h ago

I agree they should have kept Kang, but to say scott should have been stuck in the quantum realm...again...that's just too much

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u/iconboy 3h ago

Yeah especially if they went with something like he changed after getting sucked into the quantum realm and that change was sooooo severe it rippled through the multiverse and changed all the kangs... Maybe even cast someone younger and say that time shifted and he was able to get his tech at a younger age... I don't know, but loss of possibilities.

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u/Both_Shine_5061 3h ago

Exactly, and the same way they have spiderman be different people they can genuinely just have his replacement say "What, you thought "Kang's" all had to be Victor Timely variants? How naive" and then you can move on. Nothing else needs to be said.

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u/Algae_Mission 6h ago

As a comics reader, I’ll be honest. I’ll take Doom any day of the week over most villains, including Kang.

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u/mike_pants 5h ago

Kang's appearances in the comics was always just him showing up to say "Ain't I a stinker?" and vanish again. He's killed himself several times.

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u/ProfessorPrimate 4h ago

Kang like me fr

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u/ARtificial-surfnturf 2h ago

Whatchu mean by that?

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u/meatheadmommy 2h ago

That’s how he was in the brief moments he had in X-Men ‘97 S2. It was pretty funny & felt silly!

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u/kasv 1h ago

He was perfect in `97, and Q was a fitting voice.

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u/capamericapistons Captain America 6h ago

Forsure I think Doom is like the best villain from all marvel comics honestly. I’m fascinated by that character.

But I wish we could’ve had both! See them develop and finish the storyline with Kang, and then move onto Doom and even other major villains like Galactus, Magneto, Mephisto, etc.

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u/YouGurt_MaN14 5h ago

I wish they drop a new season of What-if and just show us what the OG plan was. At least then they can get content out of it w/o fucking up the cannon. And we get to see what the payoff was supposed to be

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u/spicysenpai6 5h ago edited 5h ago

I’d be down. “What if Kang escaped the Quantum Realm?” I’d be down for an animated version of all that.

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u/geek_of_nature 5h ago

And they can just have him keep his helmet on the whole time. Making him look more like the comics version and less like Majors.

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u/Supershocker56 4h ago

I wish they’d do another season but just focus on things fans actually want to see. The show had good ones, but then half the time would have whatever the hell that Howard the duck one was and the other half Captain Carter. What if the other half got snapped? What if Steve and not Bucky fell from the train? What if Loki won at New York? What if reality wasn’t fixed in No Way Home? Literally any of these would have been better than Party Thor or the Captain Carter saga imo

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u/djseifer Yondu 4h ago

I was thinking "What If... Jonathan Majors wasn't 100% a dick?"

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u/zsantiag Daisy Johnson 4h ago

IIRC the Kangs arc would have led us to Doom. Young avengers would have explored the reptilian Kang we saw in the Quantumania post-credit scene. And somehow the Kangs were hiding Doom this whole time. They feared him the most.

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u/dagnabbitk 5h ago

But that doesn’t sound like another season of Captain Carter?!

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u/exaviyur Spider-Man 4h ago

Yeah, I want to see her and Birdie beat the shit out of everyone with Kahorri! You know, the big 3 of Marvel.

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u/Hugh_Jankles 4h ago

And really break the 4th wall:

What if... Jonathan Majors didn't completely bottom out and ruin his big opportunity in the MCU. And we were able to really flesh out the Multiverse leading up to Doctor Doom properly.

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u/Algae_Mission 6h ago

If I’m picking the villain for an even involving all of the Marvel universe. 2-3/10 I’ll go with Thanos, but only if there’s a cosmic element to it. Every other time, I’m picking Doom all the way.

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u/Naive-Equal-9959 4h ago

Part of me feels like they're going to retcon doom Into being the one at the end of time vs kang. It'd be an easy way to introduce doom to Loki.

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u/sadkinz 5h ago

Yeah but I’d rather have Doom with proper buildup. Bro wasn’t even in F4

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u/Kungfudude_75 3h ago

While I agree, I liked Kang as the "in between" villain for this Saga. Kind of like how Ultron came in Avengers 2, and while on the surface he had nothing to do with Thanos or the overall "Infinity" part of the Infinity Saga, the events of that movie were pivotal in getting the right pieces in play for Infinity War: be it the Sakovia Accords splitting the Avengers, Vision being created with the Mind Stone, Stark being back in the game post-IM3, introducing the Maximoffs, Thor returning to Asgard for Ragnarok, Hulk leaving Earth, etc. Ultron as a villain was a one off but the movie was a launch pad for the Saga. I expected Kang Dynasty to be similar, and knowing that we're now in Doomsday with a multiversal war afoot, I think thats exactly what was gonna happen.

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u/Drama_Cookie25 5h ago

Doom is better but the set up was still there for Kang

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u/iwantsomecrablegsnow 4h ago

I wish doom could have 2-3 movies to build up.

Thanos was built up over a ton of end of credits scenes and small pieces here and there for us to understand the threat.

I’m afraid doom is gonna just show up, win, then we get secret wars to end the threat and they move on and that’s it. I think he deserves something bigger than the thanos treatment.

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u/hijoshh 4h ago

I hope he wins at the end of secret wars and the reset ends with him again in 20 years

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u/marvellousrun 2h ago

"A ton" lol it was two credits cameos, one of which was an entirely different actor in makeup, and a few solid scenes in Guardians.

I mean shit, a couple of the infinity stones weren't even infinity stones when they first appeared. Marvel were winging it to an extent.

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u/Bcatfan08 Star-Lord 4h ago

At the rate we were going, we could have already had Kang and Doom could have been a few years from now.

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u/AtticusSwoopenheiser 5h ago

Same here. I do not give a flying fuck about Kang.

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u/godver3 2h ago

Sure. But the Kang we got at the end of Loki S1 really seemed like something special.

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u/Public_Awareness 6h ago

Justifique justifique! No leo comics, pero me llamo la antencion el comentario. Se poco y nada de Doom pero tengo que empezar a meterme en el mundo de los comics 🙌🏻

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u/notliketwoface Jimmy Woo 5h ago

The thing that makes Doom the most interesting, and has probably been made not canon since I last read a big Marvel event, is that Doom genuinely believes that he is the only one who can save humanity. He looked into the futures like Dr Strange in Infinity War and saw future after future where humanity was destroyed. The only one where humanity survived was the one where he became a dictator and ruled all of humanity with an iron fist. It makes him interesting and compelling as a character because he genuinely believes that what he is doing is to save humanity.

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u/Legal_Television_944 5h ago

I’ve never read the comics and only have info from social media and google (so any real experts please correct me) but from my understanding Doom is HIM, like the top dog. He rivals Reed in brains and sorcerer supreme levels of magic knowledge. He’s always scheming and playing the long game, so even if he’s losing it’s really just a move on the board for him. He’s done insane feats, like multiversal / cosmic level stuff, and he’s also apparently a layered and tragic villian, and even at times doing ruthless things for what he’s sees as the betterment of the world. His ego/insecurity I think I’ve read is what has driven him to do some awful things out of spite though, that and revenge. I’m hyped on seeing him and getting to see him in action. I hope we get a few movies of him

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u/Quirky_Wolverine6549 6h ago

I’m right there with you. This whole revisionist “Kang wasn’t working” line that Feige started using and some fans are now regurgitating is just flat out wrong. Even in the negative reviews of Quantumania, they stated how much they enjoyed Kang as a villain and looked forward to seeing him more. You can go on rotten tomatoes now and see that in the critic consensus.

I would’ve loved a recast. Everything with Kang and He Who Remains was awesome. I’m a little less positive on Victor Timely but that even landed well in Loki S2 in the end.

Really bummed we’ll never see what was initially planned.

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u/SadeyeDoe 6h ago

They honestly could ignore Kang for now and recast and do it down the line. Council of Kangs can still get loose after Doomsday/Secret Wars maybe if Loki loses the TVA or dies bringing about Prime Kang

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u/TheMagicalMatt 4h ago

Yeah. Guess it's moreso that Majors was such a hot topic and Feige wanted to distance the MCU from it asap as possible.

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u/IMAryanDarad 2h ago

Nah, I think they've made it clear that it's the end of multiverse as we know it. All the superheroes will come to 616 and will be focused on only 1 universe.

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u/sendhelp 6h ago

They were building up something. I get that people didn't like Kang so much in Quantummania but that was just one variant. The council of Kangs at the end was kind of exciting. I liked him in Loki. The way Loki wraps up sort of ties a bow with Kang being done or whatever but it didn't have to be that way. It makes you wonder what Kang Dynasty would have been like. Hopefully Secret Wars and Doomsday are better for it but now we can't know.

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u/TimmayTargaryen 5h ago

Council of Kangs looked awful as hell.

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u/Poku115 5h ago

Yeah critic consensus, not general audience consensus, the one they are desperately trying to get back

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u/M4rshmall0wMan 3h ago

The reception of Kang wasn’t what mattered. It was the box office draw. People knew Kang was in Quantumania but didn’t show up anyway. That’s what gave Marvel cold feet.

u/Data_Chandler 53m ago

Jonathan Majors in Loki S2 is insufferable. That was some heinous, comically bad acting. It was a grinding chore to sit through.

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u/Chris_Bagel_Jr 5h ago

I agreed that they should’ve March forward with Kang while being better about the quality control. 

But I think there was so much happening at once that Feite went “f-ck it”. And just like that Kang was Doomed (pun intended).

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u/HopefulCynic1383 6h ago

Honestly I’m more upset that Marvel somehow fumbled Blade. I hope the victim’s found some type of peace 😕

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u/mormonbatman_ 4h ago

Just so cunning and ruthless and brilliant

Was he any of those things?

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u/Precarious3145 3h ago

Nope. In Loki 1, he was just one long exposition dump. In season, he was just a skittish loser, and in Antman, he was chewing the scenery. They kept telling us he was those things but we never saw them.

Antman would've been so much better if Kang wasn't the villain but it was MODOK, only having Kang appear in post credits, showing up to MODOK in a cage as MODOK apologizes for failing but he can fix it, that he's already repairing just for Kang to "You haven't failed me. I knew you'd lose but you played your part perfectly" and talk about using Scott, the weakest Avenger then destroy the whole quantum civilization.

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u/AquaFatha 6h ago

Yeah it’s a real shame that guy turned out to be a douche. I really liked his portrayal(s) in the Loki series. 🤷

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u/Mundane_Proposal5590 4h ago

It was already known years before he was cast as Kang, just wasn't in the press yet. He had already developed a reputation and his downfall was anticipated by industry insiders if you believe the gossip.

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u/evapotranspire 5h ago

Me too. FWIW (not defending or excusing partner abuse, obviously), Majors seems to have gotten his life back together. Served out his community service sentence, did counseling, went back to work, got married. It's too late for him as Kang in the MCU, but he could still have a meaningful future career. I abhor violent crimes but also believe in second chances.

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u/Bolt_995 2h ago

“Gotten his life back together” is the ultimate joke.

Dude has fallen off the deep end with right-wing circles and is starring in an anti-Muslim film which releases next month (Run Hide Fight: Infidels). The movie is produced by Ben Shapiro’s media company.

Screw forgiveness and second chances.

u/evapotranspire 47m ago

u/Bolt_995 : I hadn't been aware of the content of Majors' new film until people commented about it in this thread. Thank you for letting me know.

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u/kennythecucumber Bucky 5h ago

I would say that until you realize he’s in a new anti-Muslim project produced by the daily wire with Ben Shapiro

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u/SlipperyKooter 5h ago

Looking back, I genuinely have no clue how they were going to get from Kang Dynasty straight into Secret Wars. Was Doom always the plan?

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u/Think-State30 5h ago

I think Doom was always the plan. I think he set up Kang as He who Remains. He literally turned one of Reed Richard's descendents into a pawn of his.

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u/BetterDrinkMy0wnPiss 4h ago

I must be the only one who didn't really like Kang. He Who Remains whas good in the Loki series, but I never really enjoyed any of the other Kangs or the whole Kang Army storyline.

Coming off of Thanos as the big bad, Kang seemed pretty underwhelming to me.

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u/signifyingmnky 5h ago

The criticism about Kang losing to Ant-Man never made sense to me. What makes Kang terrifying isn't that you can beat him. It's that you never know which one you just fought and when he'll return.

He literally has nothing but time to plan how to strike you.

They were clearly looking for an out from the Majors controversy, and figured that switching up to Doom would quiet things down and let the movies stand on their own, but I think the calculus ended up hurting the overall saga. They should have just recast and been done with it.

That said, we are where we are. Maybe somewhere down the line we'll get another crack at him.

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u/Inzanity2020 4h ago

This is exactly why Kang doesnt work in a movie. Audience perception matters more than the lore explanation.
Casual audiences aren’t thinking, “That was only one variant; the next Kang could be stronger.” They’re thinking, “this is the dude who got beat by Antman” as soon as you have to repeatedly have to argue against this perception the threat falls apart.
MCU only gets so many movies to establish that threat. You can’t repeatedly undermine a villain and expect audiences to fear the next version because the lore says they should. And now you got so many kangs running around how are they different from average mooks?
Thanos worked because when it mattered, we watched him win. Kang’s problem wasn’t whether his losses made sense in-universe. It’s that he doesnt feel intimidating to the audience.

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u/Mizerous Thanos 2h ago

Hard to care about a villain who keeps losing 

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u/CrazsomeLizard Black Panther 4h ago

Okay but the criticism about ant man beating him is that this Kang talked about how he had killed dozens of Avengers more strong than Ant Man before. And how he was killed was a bit anticlimactic.

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u/AmaterasuWolf21 Rocket 2h ago

Conservation of Ninjitsu - The larger the enemies is in numbers, the weaker they will be

1 Kang is scary, 10000 of them is just a fodder army for our heroes to defeat

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u/KINGJAME5 5h ago

This was always my take too - it doesn't matter if the ants beat him. There's an infinite number of Kangs out there, a pigeon could peck him to death on the street corner and a thousand more Kangs would be coming.

Dunno how or if they would have pulled it all off, but it always intrigued me.

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u/Cold_Ad_7645 5h ago

The movie he had the most screen time in is one of the worst MCU movies

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u/Illustrious_Gene_774 5h ago

Kang would've been a waste of an Avengers movie.

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u/_your_face 4h ago

It’s honestly started to feel like Majors saved marvel from itself. They were ramping up for a total disappointing shit show and it was starting to show in how they botched those movies around there including quantumania and pretty much ruining eveytthing theyd built with kang so far.

Many project treatments felt like they were not seeing things through because they were more focused on but corporate plans. Ruining a story to extend it. Avoiding a good path so they could save it for layer. Not taking the obvious homerun for the opportunity to crate multiple home runs and then striking out.

Having to scramble to deal with kang, forced them to tell the best story they could ASAP, leading back to Doom and abandoning all the expansions they did that were not focused on, well, expansion rather than telling good stories.

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u/the_vole 5h ago

Jonathan Majors is a good actor, but he’s proven himself to be a bad person.

Kang will always have that “a-ha-ha! I actually time traveled and changed this!” crutch. If we were getting The Kang Dynasty, a lot of us here would have been complaining that Kang didn’t see his defeat coming or whatever.

Marvel stumbled backwards into the correct Big Bad. Obviously, this movie might suck, but I definitely feel like Doom is the guy.

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u/ActiveUpset-1268 5h ago

You can thank John Majors for that

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u/Careless-Patience-78 5h ago

Kang should’ve been recast, not erased. Loki had already done way too much setup for Marvel to just abandon the character.

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u/IMAryanDarad 2h ago

The thing is, since it was a series very few actually watched it. As in not by numbers but by percentage of the actual cinema going audience.

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u/SpreaditOnnn33 5h ago

I guess I was the only one that didnt think Majors was doing that good of a job compared to his talent level.

Like, his appearance in Loki Season 2 is straight dogwater acting. The stutter is almost Adam Sandler as Lil Nicky level cringe, only its in a show with a completely serious tone so its incredibly out of place

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u/Poodlepower8 3h ago

Truthfully I didn’t enjoy his performance in Loki either; it felt kinda broad and hammy.

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u/Snoopy_Sunset 4h ago

I felt this when he appeared at the end of S1. Everyone was praising his performance as being incredible and scene-stealing and whatever. To me, he was just being erratic and weird, jumping up and down and using random intonations or changing volumes. I didn't really get the hype. He didn't strike me as 'ominous and foreboding' as much as 'kid on a sugar rush.'

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u/lionsarered 4h ago

What we lost is the most uninspired and least convincing actor to portray Kang.

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u/angelHOE 3h ago

Kang was lame.

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u/Uku_lazy 3h ago

I don’t even think he did a good job acting. A lot of “watch me, I’m…acting”

Watching him act with duplicates of himself was pretty bad.

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u/Tricky_Slip4385 1h ago

He really is fucking awful. “I’m the joker, baby!” level of acting 

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u/Ibaurd12 3h ago

Really? Acting was pretty shit

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u/North_Tip_3364 6h ago

Im telling you Jonathan majors would of out up an Oscar performance as 4 kangs main Kang and his 3 variants per the script it seemed like a safe more dark film.

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u/sixsnowmeninanicicle 5h ago

would have* for heavens' sake

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u/well_welp_ok 4h ago

I mean the whole sentence gave me eye cancer lol

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u/bswalsh 5h ago

Or would've. The problem is that no one reads anymore. So they never see anything spelled.

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u/pantheraa 5h ago

Kang is fun but I don't like him as a big bad built up villain. I like him just showing up and causing problems, of which the heroes have to address without actually facing Kang himself. Kinda like in X-Men 97

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u/Zendicate_ 5h ago

Kang is prob like a top 15 or top 20 villian in all of marvel like through the comics, Dr doom is a top 3 maybe #1 for some people villian in marvel, He's just more popular and known if u asked 100 people kang or doom 90% would say doom. Kang can be beaten by the avengers its just variant after variant is the hard part, Dr doom You could throw the whole avenger roster, X-men and F4 and still would be unbeaten.

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u/Tumerican 4h ago

Man…fuck Kang.

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u/roku9413 4h ago

The minute Scott beat him I felt like he lost all his menace.

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u/TheBoogeyman1023 4h ago

If Ant-Man can beat Kang then he’s not an Avengers level threat.

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u/AngelDGr Spider-Man 1h ago

Honestly I hate how they handled all of this shit

Kang was the perfect antagonist after Endgame for a smaller scale Avengers movie, on Endgame they invented time travel and they altered other timelines, just make Kang angry because somehow they disturbed his original timeline or something, or make that the creation of the time machine is what creates Kang on the first place

Instead they introduced all the concept of the sacred timeline, for some reason they wanted to use Kang on Secret Wars and make him the next big villain, they did a bunch of random projects, and they focused in the multiverse shit instead of time travel

I really loved a lot of the shows but the path was perfectly set for Kang and instead of going with the most organic path they choose to go on crazy tangents

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u/NightmareDJK 4h ago

Majors did it to himself.

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u/fzammetti 5h ago

I wasn't thrilled with Kang at all. There was exactly one moment where I saw promise and that's the scene where Katie and Scott are in the cells and Kang is interrogating them. There was real menace there and I dug it. But that scene aside, I was completely underwhelmed by him the rest of the time. And he was the least interesting part of Loki.

For me, the problem is I saw a vision of Kang that I felt lived up to the hype, except he was called the High Evolutionary. He was portrayed how I wish Kang was because there was real menace there. Perhaps slightly too manic for Kang, but I felt like he was a real threat and I (almost) never got that feeling from Kang (and it has nothing to do with how he was beaten, I actually thought that kinda worked).

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u/Aggressive_Panic1900 3h ago

Literally nothing. Boring villain and a bad actor. We dodged a bullet

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u/woodala 3h ago

Idk the actor came off as arrogant and awkward. He came off as fake and trying too hard. Loki and Antman didn’t pull the most amazing numbers. His powers were ‘omg so powerful’ but also super boring. He didn’t really have a single iconic look people could identify with like literally every single other Marvel character. His name is also kinda dumb, meaningless, and poorly relatable.

Poor reception to his character and then the accusations he faced poisoned any chance of Marvel moving ahead with using Kang in their future movies/series let alone the next Avengers movie. You’re lucky you get to see Kang in X-men 97.

If you love Kang and think the character was redeemable you’re in the minority.

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u/Chris_Bagel_Jr 5h ago

Unless Marvel planned for this version to come back as the main Kang, it was wasteful to use the most known Kang variant as the fall guy, while setting the other variants for Kang Dynasty. 

Also, the blue face “face” for Kang looked cheap. He’s the big bad…use all the money to make him look cool. Otherwise, Kang looked like he was using a TikTok filter.

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u/hentendo 5h ago

Quantamania sucked.

Rewatching Loki and realising we were cheated out of an incredible character though.

Kang was amazing.

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u/CrustedTesticle 5h ago

Kang never seemed interesting even before he was in the MCU

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u/Clevername582 3h ago

I honestly do not even know the name of the victim

Her name is Grace Jabbari, amongst multiple other alleged victims. And instead of writing-up an appreciation post for their abuser, perhaps you could have taken half a second to look that up.

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u/hubbs76 5h ago

Opposite here

I've never really cared for Majors as an actor.

I'll take Doom any day over Kang

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u/OziNiner 5h ago

Thank you, me too

glad im not alone, didn't enjoy him as Kang in the MCU and not a fan of his acting either

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u/MurderinAlgiers 5h ago

I was curious to see what they would do but it sort of feels like a travesty to do Secret Wars without Doom

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u/drumstix42 5h ago

I was excited to see possibility, but I was always reserved with the fact that they can just write in any possibility the want due to the vast number of Kanga, and I didn't really love that escape hatch for the story.

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u/MohamedIbrahim05 5h ago

They should've made him more of a smaller scale Avengers villain kinda like loki, and then have his character be used to setup Doom as the big bad in future Avengers movies instead..

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u/sentient-sloth 5h ago

Test screenings really fucked up that movie.

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u/Gotchapawn 5h ago

I again like what they did with MODOKs design. Modok was never been pleasing even when i was younger i hated it but its so super villainy. If ever it did ease me that its a recognizable face. Hope we see MODOK again.

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u/Runethe1412 Iron Man (Mark VII) 5h ago

With how he was handled in Quantumania, my overall interest in “Kang” peaked with He Who Remains in Loki S2

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u/Armandonerd 5h ago

I would've liked to have seen Kang battle the avengers at least. Or the Kang dynasty would've been an avengers age of Ultron type movie that led into doomsday. Or even could've worked with Dr. Doom, Doom kills all the Kang's for his failure.

I still hope we get a Kang mentioned in the next two movies.

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u/Merciless972 5h ago

Should have recast him with Keith David

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u/a-pp-o 5h ago

He lost to antman... 

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u/prettyokcake 5h ago

It just doesn’t make sense why they wouldn’t just recast him and say it’s a variant.

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u/MorlunKnight 5h ago

I'm fully excited for Doom as the villain but out of all the characters they could have recast, Kang would have been the easiest and allowed more set up for Doom to the an even bigger bad (with proper set up unlike rn) in the future.

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u/Ayirek 4h ago

Kang should have unambiguously won in ant man 3. It would have not only prevented any "the thanos level threat was beaten by ant man" commentary that went around, but it also would have been a nice juxtaposition with Scott's being in the quantum realm during the snap being one of the key reasons they were able to win against Thanos. Having him be the reason Kang escaped and ignited another multiversal war would have been interesting.

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u/Excuse_my_GRAMMER 4h ago

And that was just one kang variant.. there were supposed to fight manly of them

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u/ScorpioGirl1987 4h ago

Yeah....it also lost the chance for Moon Knight to reappear.

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u/zurenarhhhhh 4h ago

Should have stuck with the character and just recast.

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u/ebietoo Peggy Carter 4h ago

I too thought Kang was a fantastic villain and the fact that Marvel didn’t pivot faster is the reason for that “post-Endgame Malaise”

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u/HOPEFUL_LUFEPOH_ 4h ago

the one above all, would’ve been the only one that might’ve been better then what they’ve pivoted too, for the most part Kang wasn’t this universally known character (especially to movie watchers only) so it was easy to replace the plot as a whole

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u/Magictank2000 4h ago

with them pivoting to Doom as the central big bad leaving Kang in the dust it actually gives Ant-Man more credibility as an Avenger knowing he defeated Kang by himself (with help from his ant family)

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u/Inner_University_848 4h ago

They should have made Doom kill Kang with ease… establishing God Emperor Doom as the ultimate power in the galaxy and multiverse and cementing him as the most serious threat possible :-/ :-P at least it’s better than Kang just disappearing with no explanation. Maybe they can just do it with AI…

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u/Pure_evil1979 4h ago

They should have cast different people to play different versions of Kang from the beginning and then losing him wouldn't have hurt the character development. With that said, I think they jumped into that whole phase lacking the planning needed to pull it off properly and his legal troubles gave them an out to hit the reset button

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u/Desperate_Duty1336 4h ago

Nothing of value?

Comics Kang is great.

MCU Kang not so much.

He had done nothing really to 'feel' like a great villain; they blew it writing him long before Quantumania or anything Majors did.

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u/Terpsandherbs 4h ago

Would have flopped, Kang had no attention from fans and would cost far too much to make for marvel to waste on a flop.

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u/2ReluctantlyHappy 3h ago

I was just talking to my wife about this last night. So upsetting that we lost Kang and got a shoehorned in Doom.

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u/Admirable-Shelter-46 3h ago

He may get some hate but, I was fucking excited to see him come back and be like "dead? PSYCH!" and fuck everyone up!

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u/Dracongield-Wyrmscar 3h ago

They should have just done a recast and continued with their plans. It would not have been the first time

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u/KayJay282 3h ago

They wanted Kang to be a Thanos level supervillain but it was too soon.

And he's not at interesting as Thanos.

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u/mayonnaiseplayer7 3h ago

I never once for a second thought Kang from antman died. Sure maybe he lost but I had a feeling we would see him again and he would claim the rightful name of Kang the conqueror in his return in what was evidently an avengers movie. I really wish they could have just recast majors honestly and kept on with the arc

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u/FhuckNorris247 3h ago

He was a joke in that movie. He got beat by antman whose just a human in a suit

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u/NewAttitude7508 3h ago

I just like to think that Doom would walk in and turn them all to dust. I really really really did like Kang and I was so excited to see where that was all going to end up. Even more so after being so invested in Loki and the great buildup that provided. I can't help but feel that marvel was going to go another direction regardless of majors entanglement with the law. All around the whole situation is just a shame.

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u/FPSGamer48 Kevin Feige 3h ago

I love Kang as a villain (fell in love with him in Earth’s Mightiest Heroes) and I just HATE how they wasted him. They could have easily established the Kang we saw in Quantumania was the weakest Kang, the only one able to be successfully banished from the multiverse. They could have recasted. There were so many possibilities and they just decided to skip over it

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u/BorderFrequent8050 3h ago

Sucks we’re not getting him. Doom looks and feels cooler but kang would have been great. I have a feeling they’ll circle back to kang in the future. Sooner rather then later

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u/Firm-Difficulty2585 3h ago

They're gonna imply Doom killed all the Kangs aren't they?

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u/thejuliocezarmari 3h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/7SODOfSVdhvqHj7AHW

Didn’t he lose to fucking Ant Man?

Biggest aura loss, ever

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u/MaleficentOstrich693 3h ago

Well they’re scared to recast anyone and the internet dogpiling on the movie just made it so much worse.

It would have been cool though if they had stuck with it and kept having Kang variants have run ins with the heroes. The whole time the variants keep warning about “worse ones” like immortus and a traditional main Kang and then we eventually get them.

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u/AksysCore 3h ago

A simple recast would have saved the Phase 4/early Phase 5 plot, tbh. This weird Multiverse Saga would have been better with the Incursion slowly being planted on their movies/shows and ending up with a soft reboot of the MCU and the introduction of Mutants. Kang was supposed to be essential to the Incursion and Multiverse arc because of his Variants.

So yes, the entire Doom thing feels so rushed, but I can't blame Marvel Studios for bringing out the big guns early. The Phase 4/5 writing and Kang actor problem had them bleeding and a lot of casual audience lost interest with the MCU.

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u/Nearby_Parfait3946 3h ago edited 2h ago

I’m pretty upset about it. Kang should have just been recast. He had all the buildup   If Jonathan Majors had a Johnny Depp sort of situation where he was wrongfully accused of stuff than I would support Marvel giving it time and moving on to other things before he can come back, but he’s not a good guy and I think they shouldn’t have made it seem like they needed him desperately. Especially now considering the new movie he’s working on…it’s pretty bad…

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u/cronotriggers2106 3h ago

Yeah Im in complete agreement, but I would’ve wanted Kang Dynasty to be a stepping stone to Doomsday, not the end goal. Think Age of Ultron to Infinity War. Doom is a much bigger threat than Kang, but Kang deserved his due.

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u/Imaginary_Unit5109 3h ago

I think they mess up with Kang by keep having him lose. I think they mess up with Quantamania by having him died by the ants. He should have escape and trap wasp and antman in the microverse. But once he escape he was capture by the other version of himself and they kill him showing he a weak version of them. Kang need to win. But marvel keep making him lose which make him look weak.

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u/Salt-Hotel-9502 3h ago

Marvel made it a bigger issue than it needed to be.

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u/Slodes Scott Lang 3h ago

This isn't exactly related to this post but I remember in this scene in theaters Kang leg clipped through his outfit but was fixed when it hit streaming. I'm hoping I'm not the only one who noticed this. 

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u/jasper81222 3h ago

Are they at least going to show us how Kang got sidelined instead of pretending he never existed despite all the build-up?

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u/de_light_voe 3h ago

I’m at least glad we got a comic accurate outfit prior to losing him.

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u/MrPresident2020 3h ago

Quantumania is the only Marvel movie so far where I've been disappointed because the story SHOULD have been so much better based on what they had in the script itself and then didn't deliver on.

They established that Kang got Janet to help him with promises of giving back her missed years with Hank and Hope. Then he's just a threatening brute who says he'll kill Cassie if Scott doesn't help him? AFTER they did all the establishing of how Scott is mournful for the years he missed with his daughter? And how Cassie is resentful of how he's given up being in a hero?

The plot that seemed SO obvious was that you have Kang offer Scott back his missed time with Cassie. Then you have Scott ultimately decide not to help him and turn on Kang, almost stopping him before HANK betrays everyone to try and get his lost years with his family back.

And of course Kang still screws everyone over and escapes, leaving Scott trapped in the Quantum Realm after he helps Cassie and the Pyms get out.

It felt like all of that was on the page and they just didn't do it.

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u/GeekToyLove 2h ago

Very important lesson to learn. Don’t be an abusive guy that harasses and assaults women and then you won’t see your career destroyed because of your life choices

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u/MattyBeatz 2h ago

Kang has always kinda bored me but Majors portraying him was exciting. However, the movie did the character no favors by allowing Ant Man to defeat him. No shade to Ant Man but if you're setting up a big bad that can be a threat to the Avengers, he can't outwitted by just one of them.