After Avengers: Infinity War, Marvel fans are itching to see how the remaining Avengers can defeat Thanos. The next Marvel movie coming out, Ant-Man and the Wasp, is more focused on what happened after the big fight in Captain America: Civil War.
Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) joined Team Cap and revealed that his Ant-Man suit also had the power to become Giant Man. Now he finds himself under house arrest and estranged from Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly.)
“What was cool about Captain America: Civil War is we could not ignore what had happened to Scott Lang in that movie in this movie,” director Peyton Reed said. “It gave us an organic jumping off point.”
Knowing the Ant-Man sequel would follow Civil War, Reed began thinking about the consequences of the team-up film.
“My first reaction was what would Hank Pym and Hope Van Dyne think about Scott taking the suit and getting involved with this fight with the Avengers,” Reedsaid. “Well, they’d be pissed off. It gave us a really natural starting point from the get go.”
Captain America: Civil War also gave Rudd another movie in which to hone his portrayal of Scott Lang.
“It gave us, I felt, 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’s been established,” Rudd said. “We’ve seen Scott in two other films. People buy the abilities, they buy me in the role, they understand the rules.”
Lang provided some much welcome comic relief in Civil War. Returning to his own comedic franchise, Rudd could lean even harder into the comedy.
“So it felt as if we had a little bit more freedom to play into the humor,“ Rudd said. “Would Scott do this? Would he say this kind of thing? Would he make this kind of choice? Whereas the first time around we were still modulating. I feel like we went into this, let’s try it. Let’s go. People know who this guy is already.”
Civil War almost marked the debut of Hope as The Wasp. Lilly was happy to wait for her own film to introduce her superheroine alter ego.
“When I got the call saying, ‘We’ve decided not to put you in Civil War,’ there was this moment I could tell where the feeling in the room was like, ‘I’m sorry, don’t be offended,’” Lilly said. “I was like no, are they going to say what I think they’re going to say?”
They did say they wanted to give Wasp her own film, and eventually told her she would be part of the title. “I still didn’t know there was going to be double billing,” Lilly said. “That didn’t come til later and that was presented to me as a surprise by e-mail with a screencap of the title.”
Ant-Man and the Wasp is in theaters Friday, July 6.