Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania – an interview with Peyton Reed and Evangeline Lilly

Luca Fontana

23.2.2023

Translation: Veronica Bielawski

In Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, a multiversal war breaks out. Just in time for the movie’s release, Marvel invited me to a roundtable with director Peyton Reed and leading actress Evangeline Lilly.

It’s not so long ago that Peyton Reed was a name unfamiliar to most people. Yet the 58-year-old director first attracted attention in 1989 with the short film Almost Beat. After that, he focused on comedies like Bring It On, Down with Love and Yes Man. His big public breakthrough came in 2015 with Ant-Man. Since then, he’s directed two more Ant-Man movies (2018 and 2023) – and scored his biggest coup yet in 2020 with Chapter 16: The Rescue, the highest-rated episode to date from Disney’s hit series The Mandalorian.

Evangeline Lilly, on the other hand, is an actress most will recognise from the TV series Lost, where she played Kate Austin between 2004 and 2010. Since then, she’s come to roll her eyes at the recurring question, «Are you ‘lost’?» She also played Bailey Tallet in Real Steel in 2011 and Tauriel in the Hobbit trilogy two years after that. Since 2015, the 43-year-old Canadian has been starring as Hope Van Dyne in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), where she most recently appeared in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

Right in time for the theatrical release, Disney and Marvel Studios invited me to a virtual roundtable with the duo. The focus of the conversation? How Peyton Reed deals with pressure to succeed, what he thinks of Kang the Conqueror and why Evangeline Lilly would already have the perfect (and extremely brutal) story up her sleeve for a Wasp spin-off.

Peyton, after it was announced that Jonathan Majors would play Kang the Conqueror, the iconic villain in Ant-Man 3, expectations for the movie rose dramatically. How did you deal with the pressure?
Peyton Reed, Director: You know, when you look at the world of Marvel comics, there are what we call the Mount Rushmore Marvel villains. In other words, the formidable, well-known antagonists who take on a significant role in the comics.

Thanos and Loki, for example.
Peyton Reed: Right. Kang the Conqueror is also one – and he hadn’t yet made his debut in the MCU. When we talked to Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, about Kang, he was immediately on board. We all loved the idea that in his first appearance in the MCU, he’d be fighting Ant-Man, of all people – the most unassuming of the Avengers. Everyone’s money was on Kang. No wonder: Jonathan Majors, who plays Kang, has an imposing and terrifying presence – the exact opposite of Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man. That’s exactly what we wanted. We figured it was time for Ant-Man, who’d been resting on his laurels since defeating Thanos, to really be put through the wringer in this movie.

Kang will continue playing a large role in the future – at the latest in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, when he will face off against the rest of the Avengers cast. Did Marvel give you instructions on how to develop Kang as an MCU character?
Peyton Reed: No. The only thing we knew was that another Marvel crew was developing Season One of Loki at the same time, and that Jonathan would be playing He Who Remains there, another Kang variant in the Multiverse. We knew we wanted to do a little bit of a drum roll with He Who Remains in the last episode of Loki, Season 1, and present a very different Kang variant – a guy who seems a little bit lighthearted. But we also knew it all eventually led to Kang the Conqueror, who the other Kangs consider the most dangerous and powerful variant – the very one we get to meet in Ant-Man 3.

Sounds epic. Are there any movies, maybe ones you grew up watching, that served as inspiration for Ant-Man 3?
Peyton Reed: Yeah, I’d say I grew up with equal parts fantasy, science fiction and heavy metal – and the corresponding elaborate and striking art from the 1970s and 1980s. I pulled from that. Of course, Star Wars, Star Trek, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Flash Gordon also served as influences. And then our production designer Will Tay had the artists show us the craziest designs in their portfolios that hadn’t made it into other movies. A number of those made it into the Quantum Realm. In the movie, Michelle Pfeiffer as Janet Van Dyne refers to the Quantum Realm as «worlds within worlds».

Evangeline Lilly: I remember filming that scene. It was my 42nd birthday. We were on the Volume set, where there were thousands of LED screens projecting the visuals of what was around us in the Quantum Realm. It was already an amazing sensory experiencing having those screens and physically immersing in the Quantum Realm. On top of that, in rare cases, I was also surrounded by prosthetic-wearing extras. This is in contrast to the typical green screens, golf balls and X-markings on the wall. (Author’s note: this is how CGI-heavy scenes are usually filmed, with the elaborate creatures being added in post-processing.) It was a living, breathing Quantum world. And on top of that, I was sitting at a table doing a scene with Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas. It was a very «pinch me» moment.

This is the third time you’ve played Hope in an Ant-Man movie. You’ve also made appearances in Avengers: Endgame and What If...? Is there anything left for you to discover about your character?
Evangeline Lilly: Oh, there’s so much I haven’t discovered yet about Hope. After all, these aren’t deep character dramas. They’re action movies. I’m always hungry for more opportunities to see inside of Hope and to get into her psyche. From the beginning, it’s been clear she has a dark side.

In the first movie, she stole her father’s earpiece and blacked out the sunlight by swarming a room with ants.
Evangeline Lilly: Yeah. But she’s been on a character arc that’s brought her into a much lighter place. Someone asked me, «If you did a standalone Wasp film, what would you want to see?» I said I’d really like to explore the dark side of Hope. And also, I want that earpiece! I want control over some wasps (laughs).

I want to see that movie!
Evangeline Lilly: Me too! In fact, this is something I’ve very specifically pictured. Peyton asked me once what I’d like to see for Hope in Quantumania. My little creator’s brain started going wild picturing an entire story.

What story?
It began in a faraway country. Hope was rescuing political prisoners from a really horrible prison. She’s alone, without Ant-Man, her mother or her father. And she’s rescuing these prisoners in a way that’s unnecessarily violent, because she’s so angry about the injustice. She’s allowing that anger to take over her better judgement, her grace and humanity. And all that was spurred by her mother coming out of the Quantum Realm and Hope not knowing how to connect and be intimate. Therefore, she ended up running away from the intimacy and into what she knew: fighting for justice and doing what’s right.

You really need to talk to Kevin Feige about this idea. It sounds like the perfect R-rated miniseries.
Evangeline Lilly: Definitely (laughs)! But then I realise that I’m creating way too specific a story and that’s never going to happen. I get too detailed when I start thinking about things. So, I tell myself I should just put that out of my mind and see what they write in the script.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania hit theatres on 15 February 2023. Runtime: 125 minutes. Rated PG 12. The roundtable took place in the early morning of 15 February 2023.

Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I'm an outdoorsy guy and enjoy sports that push me to the limit – now that’s what I call comfort zone! But I'm also about curling up in an armchair with books about ugly intrigue and sinister kingkillers. Being an avid cinema-goer, I’ve been known to rave about film scores for hours on end. I’ve always wanted to say: «I am Groot.» more

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