Welcome to the Quantum Realm.
Instead, the director wanted to, ahem, up the ante.
“I wanted to make the third one as whacked-out and as insane as we could.”
Evangeline Lilly and Paul Rudd in ‘Quantumania’.Marvel Studios
The result is the decidedly whacked-out and insaneAnt-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania(out Friday).
(More on him in a minute.)
“I’m thinking, ‘I don’t know, man.’
Evangeline Lilly and Paul Rudd in ‘Quantumania’.Marvel Studios
I thought he did a lot with the first and second ones with all these effects.
But this was just spectacular.”
(Quantumania, if you’re wondering, is film No.
Kathryn Newton and Paul Rudd in ‘Quantumania’.Jay Maidment/Marvel Studios
“He’s got that equal stature in the comics, but he’s a completely different villain.”
That’s big pressure for Marvel’s smallest heroes.
If all goes well, it won’t just be one small step for Ant-Man.
Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Evangeline Lilly in ‘Quantumania’.Jay Maidment/Marvel Studios
It’ll be one giant leap for the entire MCU.
Speaking to EW in early February, Rudd can’t help but feel a little reflective.
“It’s been a really cool ride.”
Jonathan Majors as Kang in ‘Quantumania’.Marvel Studios
WhenQuantumaniabegins, he’s still reveling in his newfound celebrity as an Avenger.
“And she became an Avenger who saved the world from Thanos.
There’s been a lot of change in this woman’s life in six hours of entertainment!”
Jonathan Majors in ‘Quantumania’.Jay Maidment/Marvel Studios
(Thanks, Thanos.)
(Except the shrinking, she notes, sadly.
That required CGI.)
William Jackson Harper as Quaz in ‘Quantumania’.Jay Maidment/MARVEL
But she says the similarities stop there.
“I’m a little more shy than Cassie,” Newton says with a laugh.
“you’re free to feel that we all like each other,” Newton explains.
“They were all making me laugh, and I made them laugh, too.
That was a great thing.
It’s definitely a win when you might make Paul Rudd laugh.
He’s the master of not breaking.”
It’s exhausting, though."
Plus, she also got to pick up some new skills.
“I’ve never cut anyone’s arm off in a film before,” Pfeiffer deadpans.
“Your kick was so good,” Douglas says, turning to her.
“A high kicker!”
“It was vicious,” Pfeiffer says with a smile.
One of Reed’s goals forQuantumaniawas to up the action across the board.
In one trippy scene, Scott gets trapped in a literal anthill of other Scotts.
In another, he and Kang face off in a brutal fistfight.
“One of the things that was new was just a straight-up brawl,” Rudd says.
“That hasn’t really happened in theAnt-Manmovies.
He adds, “And, I got to get into a fight with a pretty bad man.”
Let’s talk about that bad man.
Majors stars asKang the Conqueror,a notorious villain (or should we sayant-agonist?)
“‘What’s a Kang?’
‘What is it that makes these variants?
What are they variants of?’
That became the question.
And I’m continuing to explore that and refine it more and more.”
(“It’s you!
You came all this way!”
But on screen as Kang, there’s an unsettling weight to his performance.
Sometimes he rants and rages; other moments he’s disarmingly quiet and still.
“For me, it was all about one’s relationship with time,” Majors says.
“How would you move if you really had all the time in the world?
How would you speak?
Would you think faster or slower?”
He was so rooted into the ground.
It was interesting because I’m meeting him in the scene, and he’s deliberate in his speech.
Scott is a little fast-talking.
He’s a little jokey, and this is the way he deals with people.
And it’s not gonna work with Kang.
It made the rhythms of the scene feel different.
It wasn’t terra firma as usual.”
“That actually really hurts your feelings, you know?
As an artist, you go, ‘Well, what does that mean?’
I think it’s a mean thing to say.
But I’ve watched all of them, and I know it’s real acting.
He’s got that equal stature in the comics, but he’s a completely different villain.
“People really seem to be on board for Kang,” Feige adds.
“People are chanting, ‘Kang!’
when Jonathan goes on talk shows, and they haven’t even seen him in the movie yet.”
Production utilized the Volume, the cutting-edge visual effects backdrop technology first popularized by shows likeThe Mandalorian.
“I could see Krylar’s ship descending from the quantum heavens,” the actress recalls.
“I could witness quantum waterfalls.
I saw all these creatures with prosthetics and all of this amazing stuff.
I felt like a little kid!
Walking on, I was like, ‘Wow, you don’t have to fake much.'”
To help construct the village layout, the crew ordered a truck full of dirt for delivery.
There was only one problem.
“It was pretty bleak,” Rudd adds with a laugh.
“The glamorous side of moviemaking!”
After all, they’ve spent nearly a decade together, forming a close-knit super squad of their own.
And they’ve certainly come a long way from the “margins of the MCU.”
“As we’re telling this story of a generational superhero family, we’re kind of living it.
We’ve all grown up together.”
And shrunk together, too.
