Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania's screenwriter, Jeff Loveness, says that, although he was initially sad about negative reviews of the film, he now believes them to be "wrong" after seeing how fans reacted to it during a screening.
With a critic score of 48 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a 69 percent drop at the box office in its second week, it's safe to say that Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania hasn't been the success that Marvel hoped it would be. Marvel hasn't responded to the backlash just yet, but Quantumania's screenwriter, Jeff Loveness, has gone the copium route by calling the reviews "wrong".
As reported by GamesRadar+, Loveness recently spoke to The Daily Beast about the critical reception to the film and how he reacted to it. Loveness says that he was "despondent" about the reviews at first, but then changed his mind and decided they were wrong after going to see a screening of it and seeing the reception from fans.
Loveness said, "To be honest, those reviews took me by surprise. I was in a pretty low spot… Those were not good reviews, and I was like, 'What the …?'. I’m really proud of what I wrote for Jonathan [Majors] and Michelle Pfeiffer. I thought that was good stuff, you know? And so I was just despondent, and I was really sad about it."
After seeing a screening of the film, Loveness said, "I’m like, ‘Goddamn! No, (the reviews) are wrong! I’m right! MODOK is great!'. I’m pretty happy with it overall, and I think I learned how to take a punch this week. And now that I learned that it’s not too bad, I can just get on with making things.”
Although ignoring critical reviews is definitely the wrong move for a screenwriter and is clearly just a way of coping, it doesn't come as much of a surprise that seeing Quantumania with fans changed Loveness' mind, as the audience reception has been a bit kinder to it, with the Rotten Tomatoes score currently sitting at 83 percent.