QUANTUM LEAP
All hail the Kang…
ANT-MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA
DIRECTOR PEYTON REED STARRING PAUL RUDD,
EVANGELINE LILLY, JONATHAN MAJORS, KATHRYN
NEWTON ETA 17 FEBRUARY
Coming after the Avengers movies, phrases like ‘palate cleanser’ had been thrown around about the Ant-Man movies,” says producer Stephen Broussard. Look back and sure enough, 2015’s Ant-Man directly followed Avengers: Age Of Ultron and
Ant-Man And The Wasp similarly came just a few months after the epic Avengers: Infinity War in 2018, when purple baddie Thanos threatened global extinction. But this time it’s different. “[We felt] if we’re getting a chance at part three, we want the film to be big and feel central to the future of the MCU.”
As the curtain-raiser to Marvel’s Phase 5,
Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania is exactly that. The story sees everyone’s favourite ant-sized hero Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) sucked back into the sub-atomic alternate dimension better known as the Quantum Realm after his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) sends a signal there. Joining them will be Hope van Dyne (Evangline Lilly), aka Wasp, and her parents Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) – who, probably much to her annoyance, only just got out of the Quantum Realm after 30 years stranded there.
While the Quantum Realm was previously glimpsed on screen, this is a chance to fully explore this secret universe beneath our own. “It feels like a place you haven’t been to before in the MCU,” says Broussard, “full of people and characters and worlds and politics and history.” Chief among those people will be Kang The Conqueror, already lined up to be the MCU’s next major villain for 2025’s Avengers: The Kang Dynasty. “He is very powerful, very formidable, very strong, and will have, obviously, an ongoing presence, à la Thanos in the stories, going forward in ways that are different from Thanos and feel very fresh to us,” adds Broussard.
A “variant” version of the character has already appeared in TV series Loki, played by Jonathan Majors, and the actor returns here. “Jonathan talked a lot about this embodiment,” says Broussard. “He would use the phrase ‘No moves wasted.’ That’s how he saw this embodiment of someone so powerful.” Which makes putting him up against “everyman” hero Scott Lang a very tasty idea indeed. “Having [Lang] go against a Thanos-level threat felt like a really interesting combination,” adds the producer. “It’s a very unexpected notion of a battle royale, battle of the century, between this unlikely hero for humanity, and the most powerful villain entering the MCU.” Now are you stoked?