You do the same creative, entertaining exposition thing with Luis (Michael Peña), sneaking more of it, when he goes on his nervous motor-mouthed verbal diarrhea.
We’re a comedy, and we want to do insane shrinking and growing things, but from a storytelling perspective, you want to try and come at these things from a fresh angle.
Look, we’re the 20th Marvel movie—that’s just the deal. You must set up and explain all of these scientific or pseudoscientific concepts and situations, but we have a bit more license to kind of come at it from some bizarre, fun, creative ways.
You ended up in the franchise through fraught circumstances jumped in at the last minute. This is obviously a different scenario.
Yeah, we built this one from the ground up, because this wasn’t based on a Marvel comic story— this whole story we created from whole cloth. The idea of being involved from the story level and screenplay level and having a full prep was great. It was the luxury of that time.
The first movie I came on when it was still in prep and Adam McKay and Rudd came onto to write. We changed a lot of stuff. So, it really was a matter of having more time.
However, I must confess a certain energy that we all had on that first movie just by how quickly we had to get things together. It really did fuel us: “okay, we’re a bullet train. We gotta make decisions, be decisive fast and keep moving.
Tell me about the responsibility of introducing The Wasp as a hero. Captain Marvel is the first female Marvel superhero solo film, but the Wasp beats her there in a sense.
The Wasp was the most exciting thing about this movie, and it was something we set up in the first movie obviously, and now we got to pay it off. So, Evangeline [Lilly] and I worked closely from the story and in the screenplay about what kind of hero we wanted her to be and how we wanted her to be different in some ways from some of the other heroes in the MCU. Evangeline has a pragmatic side to her—she didn’t want to be overly glam, she wanted to sweat when she fights, her hair in a functional ponytail and she wanted to do as much of the actual fighting as she could. It’s great when an actor takes ownership over a character and has a strong point of view about them. Evangeline was that from the beginning.
I felt a big responsibility to honor that character from the comics, but also having the first female hero in the title of a Marvel movie. It does mean something. It’s only been a few years now that people really have accepted these kinds of comic book movies as a real thing. I’m old enough to remember when these things were not a sure bet and far from it actually [laughs].
Do the directors and writers of Marvel have story meetings to update each other? I assume you’ve been told about the story and plot of “Avengers 4”?
There are formal meetings, and there are sidebar meetings, and people are passing in the hallway, and there are various ways we communicate with one another. We’re all very aware of what the other person’s doing, and I think certain people need to be on a need to know basis because there’s also a certain amount of secrecy even between Marvel filmmakers.
As far back as the first “Ant-Man,” the Russo brothers and [“Captain America” series and ‘Infinity Wars’ writers Christopher] Markus and [Stephen] McFeely; I showed them some early scene and cuts from“Ant-Man” so they could get an idea of the tone of the movie and characters and that informed the things they wrote for Scott Lang in ‘Civil War.’ I saw ‘Civil War’ really early because it was going to influence us. So that part is fun, this crosstalk and interplay.
You were publicly jealous about ‘Civil War’ and the Russos who got to introduce the giant man powers. Safe to say the same will happen with ‘Avengers 4’?
Oh, what a trick question! I really have gotten over my jealousy issues [laughs].
You placed Easter Eggs in the Quantum Real of “Ant-Man.” Did you do the same for “Ant-Man And the Wasp?”
Yes. There are definitely some, some visual Easter eggs for you to try and find, enjoy and think about.
The de-aging in this movie looks great. Could you, in theory, make an Ant-Man & The Wasp movie with Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer using this process?
Mmmm, it takes a lot of time. In theory? Yes. You could do that, but I think it’d be a nervous wreck by the time the movie was done. You don’t want to alienate or distance the audience—and we use de-aging in the first scene, so it’s really nerve-wracking getting it to look right and waiting to see how the VFX turn out.
To do an entire movie where everybody was de-aged? It’s very time-consuming. Will the technology get there eventually? Absolutely. Yes.
“Ant-Man 3”? Ideas? Plans?
Officially there’s no announcement. We’re all kind of superstitious to be presumptuous about it. I hope we get to make one I definitely have lots of ideas. I personally think there’s a lot more story to tell. Regarding any concrete plans at this point, we don’t know.
“Ant-Man & The Wasp” is now on Blu-Ray/DVD and digital distribution services everywhere.