From the Marvel Cinematic Universe and director Peyton Reed comes Ant-Man and The Wasp, in which Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) has been left to deal with the consequences of his choices, ultimately leaving him on house arrest and struggling to balance his home life with his responsibilities as Ant-Man. When Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) need Scott to put on the suit again and help them uncover the truth of whether or not Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) could still be alive in the Quantum Realm.
During a conference at the film’s press day, co-stars Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly, along with director Peyton Reed and Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, talked about having Ant-Man and The Wasp serve as both an Ant-Man sequel and a sequel to Captain America: Civil War, the biggest challenges of this film, when we could see the Quantum Realm again, what makes The Wasp so cool, channeling Michelle Pfeiffer, the different kind of villains that you see in the film, how and why this became a title of equal billing, that rumor about an all-female Avengers film, and whether there could ever be a prequel with Hank Pym in the Ant-Man suit. Be aware that there are some spoilers discussed.
Question: Paul, this is actually the third time that you’ve played Ant-Man. How did you and (director) Peyton Reed approach this, not only as the sequel to Ant-Man, but as a sequel to Captain America: Civil War?
PEYTON REED: It’s a really good point you make, that it’s a sequel to both movies. What was cool about Captain America: Civil War is that we could not ignore what had happened to Scott Lang in that movie, in this movie. It gave us an organic jumping off point because my first reaction was, what would Hank Pym and Hope van Dyne think about Scott taking the suit and getting involved with all of this and fighting with the Avengers? They’d be pissed off. So, it really gave us this starting point where we were like, what if they were estranged at the beginning of the movie, as a result of this? There are ramifications of the Sokovia Accords, and Scott being on house arrest gave us a natural starting point, from the get-go.
PAUL RUDD: One of the things that was nice was that it gave us a little bit of leeway to lean things, now that the character has been established and we’ve seen Scott in two other films. People buy the abilities. They buy me in the role. They understand the rules. So, it felt as if we had a little bit more freedom to play into the humor. Would Scott do this? Would he say this kind of thing? Would he make this kind of choice? The first time around, we were still modulating. One of the really fun parts about this is that we went into it with the feeling of, let’s try it because people know who this guy is already.
Since Paul Rudd helped to write the first movie and now this movie, do you feel that he gives himself all of the good lines, or does he also give everyone else as many good lines?
EVANGELINE LILLY: His best lines in the movie were not in the script.
REED: Paul is as generous a writer, as he is an actor. Paul could easily say, I’m getting all the lines, and you’re not going to say this or do this, but he always has the whole picture in mind when he’s writing and acting. At least, that’s my perception.
RUDD: I try to think of the film, as a whole, and every character. This has been a collaborative effort, more than anything I’ve ever worked on. To think that I actually wrote it would be a gross overstatement. The truth of the matter is, Peyton was in the room and has been working on this, for a long time, and it’s the same with our producer, Stephen Broussard, and Kevin [Feige]. And two writers, in particular – Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna – really did a lot of the heavy lifting. Those guys are great. I tip my cap to them.
Peyton, what was the most daunting sequence you had to do for this?
REED: There were a lot of daunting sequences because we really wanted to go nuts with the Pym particles technology in this movie, and it occurred to us that maybe it’s not just Ant-Man and The Wasp who can shrink and grow, but what if it was also vehicles, buildings and other things, but what that did was create some real technical challenges. Maybe the biggest is that we did a whole car chase that took us through the city of San Francisco. We wanted to do a chase that you just simply wouldn’t see, in any other movie, because of all the size changes. That was probably the biggest challenge.
What were the street closure situations like, in order to be able to pull that off?
REED: That was something we thought about a lot because when we decided we wanted to spend more time in the streets of San Francisco, we wanted to do all of these very specific things and make San Francisco a character in the movie. We wanted to utilize the city and make the chase specific to that city, with the landmarks and things like Lombard Street, but then it occurred to us that we might not be allowed to do that. Thankfully, the city of San Francisco was so cooperative. We really had free range to do some of the craziest things imaginable in that city.
Kevin, in regard to the Quantum Realm and how we’ve been introduced to it, what future plans do you have? Are we going to see it, in future films?
KEVIN FEIGE: Yeah. Without giving anything away, all of the new places and new things are storytelling tools. In the first film, we got a glimpse of it. For people who like to go through, frame-by-frame, there was a little silhouette of Janet, as The Wasp, in there, which is a big story element in this movie. There are things that Peyton has put in there, but where and how they pay off, in the near term and in the long term, remains to be seen.
Are any of you competent and proficient, when it comes to explaining quantum theory in the Quantum Realm?
LILLY: I can actually answer that question because I really love quantum physics and always did, before this ever happened. That’s one of the reasons I was excited about this. I really dig quantum physics. At one point, we thought the atom was the be all and end all, and that everything ended at the atom because that was the smallest nucleus in the world, but we’ve actually discovered that the atom is kinetic and that atoms exist in multiple places, at the same time. That was scientifically proven. Once you discover that, then you know that matter is kinetic and matter is displacing, all the time, and if it can be displaced, it can be warped. So, if you can warp it, then you can warp size. If you can warp matter, can you warp time? Can you warp reality? Can you warp universes?
Evangeline, what was your favorite part of that wonderful fight sequence in the kitchen, and what did you most enjoy about getting to play Hope and The Wasp in this film?
LILLY: The knife gag in the restaurant scene is very, very cool. I love the element of having somebody who’s completely in jeopardy, but also completely in control, as a superhero. And it was just fun to finally get to see her take on the mantle because this is something that she’s been ready and willing to do, basically her whole life. Her parents are both superheroes and she was rearing to get in that suit, for an entire film, and we never got there. So, to actually see her fighting, in that moment, was wonderful.
Paul, how was it to channel Michelle Pfeiffer?
RUDD: I feel like I’ve been doing that for years! Every time we would refer to that, we kept calling it the “All Of Me Sequence” We had many conversations about it, early on, because it seemed like a fairly big swing. It was surreal, to say the least. There are those moments, as an actor, where you have to buy into this scenario, and you’re playing the truth of the moment. At the same time, as me being me and Michael [Douglas] being Michael, when I had my hand tenderly to his cheek and was staring into his eyes, we giggled a couple of times.
Was Michelle Pfeiffer on set, when you were doing that?
RUDD: No, I would never have been able to do that with her there Absolutely not!
The villains in Ant-Man and The Wasp feel like a different kind of villain. Why do you think that works so well for this movie?
LILLY: I have a seven-year-old son and he loves violent movies. He likes to taunt me by telling me, “Mom, I love violence!,” because he knows that I hate it. When he talks about good guys and bad guys in movies, I always feel a responsibility to clarify for him and say, “Honey, you know that there really is no such thing as a bad guy, right? They’re just good guys who have made so many bad choices that they’ve forgotten how to make good choices. And a true hero’s job is to remind them of their goodness, not to annihilate them or kill them. It’s to help them redeem themselves.” And I think that’s applicable to life. Superhero stories are fun and they’re a totally different world, but what I think is cool and is that when you have redeemable villains, you’re teaching children that, if you encounter somebody that might have a different opinion than you, it doesn’t mean that they’re a villain. If they have a different objective than you, it doesn’t mean you should attack them. Maybe you want to try to understand them first.
Paul, the humor in this is really great, especially because these are regular people with suits and not superpowers. How do you think that helps differentiate the Ant-Man films?
RUDD: Parents and children run throughout this film, and there’s a theme of fathers and daughters, which is something that’s relatable because whether or not you have children of your own, we all have parents. I’m playing somebody that doesn’t have innate super abilities. I want it to be relatable, and I can relate to the character, in that way. When I was thinking about it and we were talking about story and script, that was the approach. I have a daughter, roughly the age of Cassie in the film. She’s a little bit younger. And while I know, for a fact, that she’s going to want me to build a slide after she sees the film, which is really hard to do in a New York apartment, I know what it’s like to spend the evening playing with Barbie dolls. That’s the soul of it – the love that a family shares and how we need each other. Parents need their kids, and kids need their parents. I knew that, if we could somehow build a very funny movie that appeals to all ages, and that families and kids could see it, but it still has all of the elements that fit into the Marvel Universe, and all ages are going to be wowed by certain aspects of it, I can identify with that.
How much fun was it to shoot the storytelling flashbacks with Michael Peña?
REED: I’d never done a sequel before, and one of the things I like in sequels is progressing the characters. In looking at the characters of Luis and Kurt and Dave, the ex-con guys in the first movie, they’re really trying to stay out of a life of crime and they discover what it feels like to be a hero. In this film, we wanted to start them from a place where they’re on the straight and narrow now and they’re trying to start a small business. Scott’s involved in that business and he’s almost out of house arrest, so they’re going to make a go of this business. I like the idea that this movie would have huge personal stakes, but also the success of their business has huge stakes, particularly for Scott. And in terms of the Luis storytelling, that’s always a fun thing to shoot. What we do si that we basically shoot Michael telling the whole story, and I’ll cut together the preferred takes and do what we call a “radio cut.” And then, whether it’s Paul’s or Evangeline’s turn to do their lip syncing, we’ll take that little section on set and play it, over and over, through speakers, so they can hear it and then just go at it, multiple times, until we get a performance that syncs. It’s really fun to do. It was fun for me to do. I don’t know how much fun it was for [the actors] to do.
RUDD: He’s such a funny actor and he punches words, so you have to try to hit those and get the rhythms down. It’s actually trickier than it looks, at least for me, but it’s super fun.
It’s so fun to see how The Wasp is better adept at her suit than Ant-Man. Whose idea was that?
RUDD: Hope was born into this, so it’s a family business. In the first one, it was pretty clear that she would be really good at this. There was nothing to get in her way, ability wise. Scott was never really sure how he could be Ant-Man and still be a good parent, and whether those two things can co-exist. That’s really what we wanted to hang this thing on, with that kind of dilemma. One of the things that I like about it is that it really is a duo and a team. I think we work together pretty well.
Kevin, how did you come to the decision to not make this Ant-Man 2, but to instead have equal billing and make it Ant-Man and The Wasp?
FEIGE: That was the first idea for the movie. I think it was before even Civil War. The first Ant-Man film is all about how qualified Hope is and her estrangement from her father, who’s preventing her from doing these things. What ended up being the tag on the first Ant-Man film was there, from the beginning. It was about her finding that suit and saying, “It’s about damn time!,” so we always knew that the next one was going to be Ant-Man and The Wasp. It’s finally time to see her suit up and be the hero. As she said earlier, she was born to.
LILLY: Originally, The Wasp was going to be introduced in Captain America: Civil War. That was the original plan. I never expressed it, at the time, because how can you, but secretly I was like, “She’s not going to get an origins film? Oh, well, it’s okay. I’m just stoked to be here. I’m just happy that I get to put on a suit.” And then, when I got the call saying, “We’ve decided that we’re not going to put you in Civil War,” there was this moment where I was like, “Are they going to say what I think they’re going to say?” And then, they said what I thought they were going to say, which is that they really wanted to dedicate a film to introducing this female superhero, and they didn’t want her just to be a side note in this larger story. That was so exciting for me, but I still didn’t know that there was going to be double billing. That didn’t come until later, and that was presented to me as a surprise, by email with a screen cap of the title. That was pretty cool.
The Wasp is a fantastic character, and we all want to see more of her. Evangeline, is there anybody who you think it would be a lot of fun to see her interact with?
LILLY: I was asked this question prior to the movie, and I said it would be fun to see The Wasp with The Hulk because she’d be so teeny and he’d be so giant, but then we did Giant Man, so that’s out. I don’t know. Personally, I just have an enormous crush on Okoye and would love a chance to hang out with Danai [Gurira], as much as possible, besides the fact that I am personally going to continue to keep the rumor and gossip about an all-female Avengers film going, until it happens. Sorry, Kevin [Feige].
How are we coming on that, Kevin?
FEIGE: Very well. It’s all coming together.
Is there any chance you would ever make a prequel for the original Ant-Man, Hank Pym?
REED: I love the glimpses that we see of Hank Pym in action, in the glory days. In both movies, that’s exhilarating to me. I also know how much Michael [Douglas] loves to put on a suit. It’s just one of his favorite things. I love the idea. That’s probably a Kevin [Feige] question, but I love the idea of that the Marvel Universe is set up in a way where you can potentially tell any of these stories, in any time period. It was one of the thrills, in the first movie, to have that scene with Hank Pym, to introduce Hank Pym into the MCU and retroactively place him back with Howard Stark and Peggy Carter. I love that because, in the comics, he’s one of the original scientist superheroes. So, who knows what’s next? Nobody knows.
How soon is that announcement coming, Kevin?
FEIGE: I’d love to work with everybody [in this film], many times for many, many years to come.
Ant-Man and The Wasp opens in theaters on July 6th.
