First reactions describe Ant-Man 3 as the Star Wars of the MCU

Thanos, the first overarching villain of the franchise, only made a small appearance before Avengers: Infinity War. This time around, the MCU is bringing in an arguably more dangerous villain early on, with a lot more involvement.

For what it's worth, Ant-Man 3 doesn't seem like a "throw everything at the wall to see what sticks" kind of situation.

As per the early previews, Paul Rudd delivers and Kathryn Newton doesn't disappoint in her first appearance in the MCU. More importantly, everyone loves Jonathan Majors. After playing the happy, playful and near-unhinged Kang variant, He Who Remains, in the Loki series, critics are fawning over Majors' ability to flip the switch as a completely different variant in Kang the Conqueror.

As the kids say these days, Majors understood the assignment.

Curiously enough, we don't hear much about the performance of Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Douglas, and Evangeline Lilly. With that said, we'll find out more about Ant-Man and the Quantumania when it finally hits theaters on February 17.

Speaking of Ant-Man 3's premiere, it's interesting that Avatar: The Way of Water is still available to watch. Even though it's finally been dethroned from its perch atop the box office, people continue to watch and re-watch the sequel in droves. It doesn't look like Disney has plans to stop showing Avatar 2 in theaters anytime soon, so Ant-Man 3 and Avatar 2 will likely have to duke it out in a friendly box-office battle two weekends from now.