From the Marvel Cinematic Universe comes the next film to feature the adventures of Ant-Man, “Ant-Man and The Wasp,” which debuts Ant-Man’s long-awaited ally, The Wasp.
With the 2015 release of Marvel Studios’ “Ant-Man,” the Marvel Cinematic Universe acquainted its faithful and ever-expanding audience with Ant-Man, who is resurrected by Dr. Hank Pym when he handpicks Scott Lang, a good-hearted thief, to wear the suit and become a hero. The film also featured Pym’s daughter, Hope van Dyne, who is poised to become The Wasp. The action-packed heist film, directed by Peyton Reed, was both a box-office success and fan favorite, opening No. 1 at the box office and going on to garner over $500 million worldwide.
Now, in the aftermath of “Captain America: Civil War,” we find Lang grappling with the consequences of his choices as both a Super Hero and a father. As he struggles to rebalance his home life with his responsibilities as Ant-Man, he’s confronted by Hope van Dyne and Dr. Hank Pym with an urgent new mission. Scott must once again put on the suit and learn to fight alongside The Wasp as the team works together to uncover secrets from the past.
“Ant-Man and The Wasp” returns director Peyton Reed to the franchise and stars Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Peña, Walton Goggins, Bobby Cannavale, Judy Greer, Tip “T.I.” Harris, David Dastmalchian, Hannah John-Kamen, Abby Ryder Fortson, Randall Park, with Academy Award® nominees Michelle Pfeiffer and Laurence Fishburne and Academy Award winner Michael Douglas.
We recently attended a Press Conference in Los Angeles to gain some insight about the movie from some of the Cast and Filmmaking Team.
“What’s exciting about ‘Ant-Man and The Wasp,’” says producer Kevin Feige, “is it’s really a sequel to two movies. It’s a follow-up to ‘Ant-Man,’ while also showing the aftermath of ‘Captain America: Civil War.’ For me, there’s a tremendous amount of excitement when you’re able to tell stories like this and combine characters from their origin movies and then layer in their appearances from other movies. Because of this strategy, Ant-Man post-‘Civil War’ has now been exposed to a much bigger audience.”
Q: What in this movie was one of the most daunting sequence and were you happy to have finished when you filmed it?
Director Peyton Reed: There were a lot of daunting sequences, because we really wanted to set out and go nuts with the PIM-PARTICLE technology in this movie and it occurred to us at some point, well, maybe it’s not just Antman and Wasp who can shrink maybe grow. What if it were vehicles, buildings and other things and we really wanted to go nuts with it. But what that did was create some real technical challenges. So I think maybe the biggest is we did a whole car chase that took us through the city of San Francisco and we wanted to do a chase that you just simply wouldn’t see in any other movie because of all the size changes.
Q: What were the street closure situations like? From beginning to end.
Reed: We wanted to do all these very specific things and make San Francisco a character in the movie, but utilize the city and make this chase specific to that city. So the landmarks, things like Lombard Street. But then it occurred to us, we might not be allowed to do that. But thankfully the city of San Francisco was so cooperative and we really had free range to do some of the craziest things imaginable.
Q: Speaking of the Quantum Realm and how we’ve been introduced to it and now in two films, three with Doctor Strange. What is the future of the Quantum Realm? Are we going to see it in future films?
Producer Kevin Feige: Well, I mean without giving anything away, we love, these storytelling tools; new places, new things. In the first film it was, we got a glimpse of it for people who like to go through frame-by-frame, there were a little silhouette ok Janet as the Wasp in there, which is a big story element in this movie. There are things that you see back there… that Peyton has put in there and how they pay off in the near term, in the long term… remains to be seen.
Q: What is your favorite part of that wonderful fight sequence in the kitchen. Or just kind of on the whole what you loved doing with Hope and the Wasp in this film.
Evangeline Lilly: Well, I loved getting to be a Bladerunner. That was pretty cool. The knife, the knife gag in the restaurant scene is very, very cool. I love the kind of element of having somebody who’s completely in jeopardy, but also completely in control. 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 her, basically her whole life. Her parents are both superheroes and she was rearing to get in that suit for an entire film.
Q: If anyone is comfortable kind of explaining some of the quantum science that we play with in the film.
Michael Douglas: I’d say, well, Actually Peyton cast me for this role because he did find out that I had a degree in quantum mechanics and was very familiar. I would have to read the script again to be able to get a proper definition of the Quantum Realm. I know we get very, very small.
Evangeline Lilly: I actually can answer that question. Because I really love quantum physics and always did before this happened and that’s one of the reasons I was excited about this brand, was I really dig quantum physics and you know, at one point we thought the atom was the beyond all and end all; that everything ended at the atom. That was the smallest nucleus in the world. But actually we discovered that the atom is kinetic. And that atoms exist in multiple places at the same time. Can you warp reality? Can you warp universes?
Q: Paul, this is actually the third time you’ve played Ant-Man. So how did you and Peyton approach, not only as the sequel to Ant-Man, but a sequel to Captain America: Civil War?
Reed: It actually was, and it’s a really good you make; it is a sequel to both movies. And what was cool about Captain America: Civil War is we could not ignore what had happened to Scott Lang in that movie. And 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 this and fighting with the Avengers?
Paul Rudd: Well, one of the things that was kind of nice is it gave us a little bit of leeway, to lean into something maybe a little harder than we would have been able to at first, because now 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 make this, would he say this kind of thing? Would he make this kind of choice?
Both Ant-Man and The Wasp have their own specialized skill set, and it will be a daunting proposition for the couple, following a brief romantic history, to rise above it all without derailing Hank’s well-laid plans. Together they have the potential to be unstoppable, but getting to that point will be problematic.
When you look at the history of the comics, Ant-Man and The Wasp were one of the great team ups of Marvel. We’d already touched on that a little bit in the flashback in the first film with the original Ant-Man and Wasp, and we absolutely wanted to see that now in the modern day. Hope and Scott as these two Super Heroes who couldn’t be more different is the perfect way to delve into their potential to live up to this iconic duo and pick up that mantle.
The fun-filled “Ant-Man and The Wasp,” with its signature out-of-this-world action and laugh out-loud comedy, flies into U.S. theaters on July 6, 2018.
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