A BIG ... AND SMALL ... DEAL
Actress Evangeline Lilly and Company talk about Ant-Man and the Wasp
Evangeline Lilly swears ATLANTA that what I’m watching is going to look way cooler on the big screen when Ant-Man and the Wasp opens in theatres this Friday.
“This fight, right now, is the ugly stepsister of what the fight will actually become once they’re finished with it,” she says smiling.
The Lost actress is in between takes for a scene opposite Hannah John-Kamen’s villainous Ghost.
Director Peyton Reed has set up shop at the Whitehall Ballroom in downtown Atlanta for the sequence.
What moviegoers will see when it all finally comes together is Lilly’s Wasp going from big to small to big again as she dodges the shape shifting Ghost, as well as an assortment of bullets, knives, meat tenderizers and falling glass.
Ant-Man and the Wasp is the 20th movie so far in Marvel’s interconnected Cinematic Universe and the storyline picks up after the events of Captain America: Civil War.
Scott Lang — a.k.a. Ant-Man — is living under house arrest after breaking the Sokovia Accords by showing up to fight against Iron Man in Berlin.
But as often is the case in movies, things go wrong. Plans change, and Hope Van Dyne — a.k.a. the Wasp (Lilly) — and her father Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) come crashing back into his life with an urgent mission to save Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) — Hope’s mother and Hank’s wife from the mysterious Quantum Realm.
There’s no such thing as a tiny problem in the MCU, but during our daylong visit with Lilly, Reed, executive producer Stephen Broussard and John-Kamen, we uncovered nuggets of intel that shine a big light on Marvel’s smallest heroes.
STUFF GOES WRONG
If the first Ant-Man film was a heist film, Broussard and Reed describe the sequel as a “one bad night, s--- goes wrong movie.”
“After Hours is a great example,” Broussard says.
“Adventures in Babysitting is another great example on the family-friendly end. Go ... Midnight Run … Quick Change with Bill Murray ... basically, when it seemed like it was going to be so simple, things continue to go wrong.”
DON’T EXPECT ANY CAMEOS
After Ant-Man squared off against Anthony Mackie’s Falcon in the first film, there might be expectations for another funfilled cameo. But don’t hold your breath.
“Because you have this other thing going on in this other part of the universe with so many characters involved,” Broussard says, hinting at Infinity War,
“it kind of feels like everyone is occupied.
“We have a lot of characters and a lot of new characters in this one, so it’s not necessarily about who’s going to show up that you know. It’s more about who’s new in the MCU.”
KNOW YOUR ELMORE LEONARD
As Ant-Man, Wasp and Hank try to rescue Janet from the Quantum Realm, they don’t just encounter one villain ... or two, and the baddies aren’t motivated by global domination or genocide (ahem, looking at you, Thanos).
“The main classic villain is Ghost,” Broussard says.
“But she doesn’t want to take over the world.
“She has her own thing that she’s after and Scott, Hank and Hope are in her way. So the film is influenced by the crime novels of Elmore Leonard ... There are all these colourful characters in this poppy underworld and they all have their own agendas and they’re all clashing in the middle. No one is a bad guy to anyone else; they’re just in each other’s way.”
“It’s a chase movie in a way,” Reed adds, “and all these people — from our heroes to the villain to the most street-level people are after the same thing.”
THE INFINITY WAR QUESTION
In the months leading up to April’s Avengers: Infinity War and Ant-Man and the Wasp, a lot of fans were wondering how Marvel would tie the two films together.
Broussard says it will be clear when you see it (and it will — we’ve seen it), but it’s really a stand-alone story.
“The shared universe is fun, the interconnectivity is fun ... but this is a bad three days that these characters have to go through,” he says.
“It’s not a globe-trotting space epic and I like that we can do that in one summer. It shows how different Marvel can be.”
DON’T CALL IT ANT-MAN 2
On the day we visited, Wasp and Ghost were trading blows in a fight scene that sees the two women fighting over a mysterious case that will help our heroes in their search for Janet. But Broussard and Reed say Ant-Man and the Wasp is very much the story of two people.
“They are co-leads and we’re approaching this as 50-50 in both story and the action,” Broussard says.
“When I was reading the script a thought that kept coming back to me was, ‘When do we get to see them fight together?’ I wanted to see that,” Lilly chimes in as her stunt-double steps into her scene.
“It’s got elements of a buddy picture and it’s got elements of a really messed up romantic comedy,” Reed says.
“But this movie is called Ant-Man and the Wasp. It’s not Ant-Man 2, and Wasp is not a supporting character ... they are hero partners and they’ve got to learn to work together.”
ANT-MAN AND WASP WILL RETURN?
As Marvel has introduced its heroes, the studio has given them three-movie story arcs (with the exception of Hulk and Doctor Strange).
Broussard, Reed and Lilly all have ideas for other adventures with Ant-Man and Wasp (who both show up in Avengers 4), but nothing is carved in stone.
“We’re fortunate that we’re making a second one, and I’m hopeful that we’ll make a third instalment because we have so much story that we want to tell,” Reed says as Lilly and JohnKamen take a break.
Broussard, who has also worked on Captain America: The First Avenger, Iron Man 3 and Doctor Strange, likes how Marvel has continually offered fans a different experience when it comes to its sequels.
“The first Captain America was a WWII mission movie.
“Then it was a total left turn into paranoid ’70s spy thriller and then the third one — Civil War — was an epic universe colliding thing.
“That’s how you avoid sequel fatigue, and I think we’re doing that here. If you’re lucky to get to part three, you have to do something crazy and radical. Iron Man 3 with Shane Black, which I was involved with, was bold to me. (Thor) Ragnarok was fresh and different.
“There are good opportunities for that in an Ant-Man trilogy capper ... The more of these we do, we want to challenge ourselves not to repeat what we’ve done in the past. We don’t want to tell the same story over and over again.”