(BREATH TREMBLING)
CASSIE: Where are we?
(JANET BREATHING HEAVILY)
We always loved doing the unexpected with Scott Lang.
(THUDS)
FEIGE: He is arguably the character that is the most underestimated.
STEPHEN BROUSSARD: I think back to making the first film,
which was one of the titles that, when we announced,
people kind of looked at us strangely, like, "Really, Ant-Man?
"You're going to make a movie about that? Are you kidding?"
PEYTON REED: We had no idea.
"Is Ant-Man going to work? Are people going to come see it?"
We were fortunate that I think audiences really latched on to Scott Lang,
and I think they did for the same reasons I did.
Daddy!
You can't just show up.
SCOTT: I wanna to be a part of her life.
He is not a super scientist or a billionaire.
He's just a regular guy who sort of happened upon this suit
and this technology and got sucked into this insane Marvel Universe.
When we first started with Ant-Man, we were a palate cleanser.
Because we were always coming after the kind of finale-big
Marvel story, the Avengers story that was ripping people's hearts out.
And ours were light and they were fun and they were sweet.
But at one point, Ant-Man became the key to saving a literal universe...
What if we could enter the Quantum Realm?
FEIGE: ...in Avengers: Endgame.
And that is not something I think people would have predicted
after his first appearance.
So carrying that tradition, we thought,
"What do we do with another Ant-Man movie?"
And that's really when we hit upon, "Let's use this film
"to kick off Phase Five."
The film that kicks off Phase Five
-is Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. -(ALL CHEERING)
PAUL RUDD: One of the things that was really exciting was
knowing that what we were doing
was probably going to surprise some people.
Like, "Wow. I can't believe this is an Ant-Man movie."
-(BOTH GRUNTING) -(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)
Cut it!
(EXCLAIMS)
(SCOTT SCREAMS)
CASSIE: (ECHOING) Dad!
SCOTT: "Word of advice.
"Look out for the little guy."
RUDD: Ready? Kang walks in.
Ready.
So you see him.
And then... And then, I blow it up.
REED: Camera is not going to see Kang at all before.
But we're gonna see Paul,
we're gonna see Scott's expression not knowing what it is.
-He pushes her in. -Oh.
Then he gets blasted away.
Then we reveal Kang.
Oh!
REED: I always knew it would be great to build to a movie like this.
(CREATURES CHITTERING)
As a kid, I was a big Fantastic Four fan and Avengers fan,
and I remember stories
where Doctor Doom would shrink down and you'd realize,
"Oh, there are whole civilizations deep down there."
They're worlds within worlds, and it's populated.
And wouldn't it be great to be able to get to that at some point?
From that were the early seeds for what Quantumania could be.
(BREATHING HEAVILY)
BROUSSARD: This was all sort of established in the second film...
Mom?
BROUSSARD: ...where Janet is rescued from the Quantum Realm.
We hint at what the Quantum Realm could be,
we hint that there's maybe more than just a lifeless void down there.
There's even some Easter eggs if you go back and slow down
the second film, where you see what looks like subatomic cities.
It's me.
BROUSSARD: And she's wearing clothes, that, "Where did these clothes come from?"
Somewhere in the back of our mind,
we knew if we ever were lucky enough to get to a Part 3,
the seeds for that idea,
the seeds for going from small San Francisco crime movies
to a sci-fi epic that has more in common with Lord of the Rings or Star Wars,
that was the starting place for Quantumania.
But we were very conscious of this film feeling like its own thing.
And we spent a year concepting this film.
It's the longest run of concept time that I've ever had on a film at Marvel.
REED: The way this hood is hanging over, that's pretty cool there.
Because you can just barely see the eyes, so that then when there's the reveal...
Before we release...
One of my big influences on this was just going through
old '60s and '70s and '80s science fiction paperbacks
and looking at the covers.
And they were all about just creating these whacked-out worlds.
But also, I think you can't do a movie like this without looking at Moebius.
Things like Flash Gordon.
So literally, we had everything on the table.
The best thing about
doing a sequel
is the opportunity to work with the people you worked with before.
So there's a familiarity.
You don't have to go in like strangers and kind of feel your way out.
When you're lucky enough to get to tell a third film in your series,
it means that you've been together with some of these cast members for years,
and with that comes a lot of trust about the kind of story you're telling.
It's anchored by these amazing actors,
you know, and the choices we made going back to that first film.
And you look at actors like Evangeline Lilly, Paul Rudd,
Michael Douglas, and Michelle Pfeiffer, who joined in the second film.
These are heavyweight talents.
These are absolute world-class actors,
which help sell the craziness of this world.
-Show us! -Show us!
(WOMAN CHUCKLES)
KATHRYN NEWTON: You're going to love it.
We'll see about that.
RUDD: Scott Lang, he's had a lot to digest.
We start this film. The events of Endgame have happened.
And now, I think that, for the first time in many years,
Scott is able to take a breath and kind of sit back
and spend some time with his daughter
and enjoy just being present in his own life.
But that doesn't last that long, that peace.
Dad!
(SCOTT BREATHING HEAVILY)
JEFF LOVENESS: Scott is just a dad who realizes
that he's accidentally brought his daughter
into this world with him now.
And now he sees, like, "Oh, man, I can't really play this
"as loose as I usually do.
"I got to keep my daughter safe."
And so I really tried to lean into the likeability
and the everyman charm of Paul Rudd.
On top of that, he can deliver any joke and make it ten times better
just by saying it.
CASSIE: Hmm.
It's like we're camping. We love camping.
CASSIE: We've never been camping.
But we've always talked about it.
He is just endlessly coming up with different ways to come at a scene.
You know, we work very hard on the screenplay and,
and get it where we want it, and we shoot that.
But we always mix it up and, you know, nine times out of ten,
Paul's going to figure out a better, funnier way to tell that story.
(WARBLES)
Your Nobel Prize is in the mail.
It better be. I just saved eight bucks.
God, I admire you.
Thank you.
LOVENESS: It was really fun to play Evangeline Lilly
as, like, the straight-edge, high status,
highly capable, highly efficient person.
She really surprised me with her just dead-on deliveries.
She's been, uh, really great in this movie.
No pizza in the Quantum Realm?
(CHUCKLES) No. No anything.
You know, Mom, you can talk about it. If you want.
I'll be honest and tell you it's been really difficult.
Because I...
Every time I revisit Hope, every time I come back for a new film,
I realize I have to reinvent her,
I have to figure out who she is now,
what that looks like and how to make sure
that it doesn't look like a completely different person,
like that there's a through line that you still see Hope
and you feel her.
REED: I think maybe a little bit of a drift in, right?
-There's a whole thing I can see. -REED: Yeah, there's a force field
that goes all the way around this thing, right?
-Okay. -So taking that in,
a little bit of a, a move in,
and then I'll cue you for, um...
You've got to do something. That's where you dig for the thing.
I used to jokingly talk about the first film,
like she was just always in a bad mood and kind of had attitude.
Okay, we can try this and when he fails, I'll do it myself.
LILLY: But by the second film already, I felt like I had to drop that,
because she was in a much better place.
So, each film, I'm like, "Wait, who is she and how do I play that?
"And how do I make sure that it's still Hope?"
And it's been a challenge, but a challenge that I welcome.
(WARBLES)
-(SIGHS IN EXASPERATION) -(CLICKING)
-Awesome. -If only Cap could see you now.
LILLY: In Ant-Man and the Wasp,
Hope brought her mother back from the Quantum Realm,
and was very, very excited.
I think she might have had little girl fantasies
about what that reunion would be like.
Mommy and I will tell each other everything.
We'll be best of friends.
I missed you so much.
I missed you too, jellybean.
What we don't see between the last film and this one
is that she wasn't so open.
She wasn't so intimate. She wasn't so vulnerable.
(BREATHLESSLY) Do not move.
(ALL PANTING)
There was a closed-off part of her that Hope couldn't reach
and it hurts.
Hope and Janet, working through the gaps in their relationship.
(WHIRRING)
So, you've been studying the Quantum Realm?
-Mm-hmm. -Why didn't you ask me about it?
I tried, Mom.
A lot.
You never wanted to talk about it.
Michelle and I were really passionate about that part of the story.
And we spent a lot of time making that really honest.
We didn't want it glossed over.
We didn't want their tension to be cute.
You said there was nothing down here.
Why didn't you tell us about this?
I will explain everything, but right now...
-I need you to trust me. -Then make me trust you!
I started to get really excited about the movie
once we talked about Janet.
HANK: Janet, what is he talking about?
LOVENESS: This is Janet's history of violence coming back.
This is Michelle Pfeiffer's Unforgiven.
How many worlds will die
if you get out?
Not yours.
LOVENESS: This is that movie with a legendary movie star,
and it's her past coming back to destroy her family.
And Michelle brought so much pathos and guilt to this character.
I couldn't beat him. He was too powerful.
What did you do?
(PANTING)
MICHELLE PFEIFFER: This is the first film where I think we really get to know Janet.
I do think she struggles with feeling like an outsider.
It's interesting. On the previous film, I just wasn't there for that long.
REED: And, cut! Yeah. Great.
PFEIFFER: I think I sort of maybe left the last one
feeling still a little bit of an outsider,
because my visit was so brief.
(GASPS)
Let's go home.
But this one, we were really in the trenches together
for a very long time.
I even said to Michael one day, I turned to him and I said,
"I'm just so happy that I got to know you on this film."
It's watching and learning from each other.
And, you know, Michael is hysterical,
no matter what you give him to say.
I love ants.
I (BLEEP) love ants.
DOUGLAS: There's just a fun factor to it,
to get into this other world, you know, the Quantum Realm.
And "anything goes" is a trip.
What I discovered about Michael Douglas in these movies
is how funny he is.
You read my book?
Every goddamn word.
I think the general audience thinks of Michael
in, you know, sexy thrillers,
and his great commanding voice, and he's an incredible dramatic actor.
But his comedic chops are fantastic.
She had some questions, okay?
I can't help if people are inspired by me.
He really is Hollywood royalty.
So to get him as Hank Pym in that first movie was exciting.
40 years ago, I created a formula that altered atomic relative distance.
What does that mean?
(WARBLES)
I learned how to change the distance between atoms.
REED: And to build this character of Hank, who is a mentor character to Scott.
But he's kind of a bent mentor, right?
Hank, I'm a thief. I'm a good thief, but this is insane.
There's some morally gray areas, uh, about Hank,
and he can be a bit of a curmudgeon.
But I love Michael's energy in a big way in this movie.
I would've just broken you out with ants.
All right, you know what? Family meeting. Can we have a family meeting?
Isn't that what we're doing?
Yeah, I mean about this.
About everybody being so fine with this.
MAN: Here we go.
(STAGE BELL RINGS)
We had discussions about who the villain of this movie was going to be,
and we loved the idea of pitting Ant-Man against a major Marvel villain.
You're an interesting man...
Scott Lang.
Kang the Conqueror came to mind
because I was a fan of Kang's since I was a kid, in the comics.
(OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING)
That excited us, to take the Avenger
who might be perceived as certainly the tiniest Avenger,
and putting him up against this powerful, powerful multiversal villain.
KANG: You're an Avenger?
Have I killed you before?
(SCOFFS) What?
They all blur together after a while.
Audiences have seen a version of this character in the series Loki.
This is wild. (CHUCKLES)
He Who Remains.
It's a very different character. It's just a variation.
LOVENESS: He Who Remains is kind of squirrelly guy
who hides away at the end of time,
and this is the guy he's afraid of.
This is Kang the Conqueror.
This is the version that every other version of him is terrified of,
so terrified that they had to ambush him and banish him down to the Quantum Realm.
What is this place?
(BREATHING HEAVILY)
KANG: Once I get out of here,
I can take any universe I want.
The Ant-Man franchise, within the MCU, has a very clear ethos
has a very clear rhythm to it.
I had the benefit of stepping into a song that was already playing.
Today we conquer eternity.
(INDISTINCT CONVERSATIONS)
(CAPTIVATING MUSIC PLAYING)
REED: The Marvel movies, I think, are at their best when you have a villain
that is a really compelling character.
A villain who has a very clear agenda...
Just be glad I need you.
REED: A villain who also has this side
that you kind of relate to their point of view despite yourself.
We wanted Kang to really, really embody that.
We're going to get out of here.
(SIGHS)
KANG: She's gonna open the door...
(JANET CHUCKLES SOFTLY)
KANG: ...and you'll be there.
KATY O'BRIAN: When it came to the costume,
Kang is very much this futuristic character.
He's very foreign in a lot of ways to our culture and to our world.
So he has a very different, very sleek, futuristic appeal.
That's what conquerors do.
They burn the broken world.
And they make a new one.
It's always a challenge when you're bringing
a Marvel Comics character from a two-dimensional page
into a living, breathing person in a movie.
Because a lot of those designs, almost all of them were,
you know, originated in the '60s.
But we looked at all the panels and we really embraced these things,
and how can we do the sort of 21st-century version of that thing?
Taking visual cues from the comics and, and making them feel real.
(WARBLES)
(THRILLING MUSIC PLAYING)
SAMMY SHELDON DIFFER: This was probably
the most difficult costume on the film to make.
The concept was drawn in a way that you couldn't tell what the fabric was,
whether it's hard or soft, so we had to experiment.
I think this is the third version of how we solved the problem.
IVO COVENEY: What Peyton was really keen on was the lines of this...
It was this line.
-Yeah. -Comic book accurate.
So he wanted the size of that collar. He wanted these lines flowing down.
And although we had that, they had to be broken up to allow for more movement.
Starting out, they brought the costume completely into the trailer.
And I did take a moment.
And then once I put it on, I went, "Mmm, this is it."
You know, like, there are very few moments in my life where you go, "This is it."
(CAPTIVATING MUSIC PLAYING)
MAJORS: There is a energy within the suit.
It makes you stand up straight.
You know, that's just how it's built.
There's mysticism about it, you know. It's iconic.
I think one of the hardest things in this film
from a design point of view was to find that balance
of a certain amount of familiarity about things,
but not be exactly what you think it is.
One of the things that I looked at quite early on were
natural photography and electron microscopy
and just trying to find colors and textures
to help take it from it just being this sort of
hard surface, technological world
to having this slightly more organic feeling to it.
And that's quite a tricky thing, to strike that balance.
I just started with some initial sort of sketches,
put together a bunch of reference boards and materials for Peyton,
just to create the whole vibe of the world.
MAN: Look up. Spin.
It's coming in, it's coming in, it's coming in.
And, bang!
Look at him. Pry him off.
(PFEIFFER GRUNTS)
This world that they've (CHUCKLING) created was, um, pretty spectacular.
We worked with this relatively new technology,
The Volume, where they actually project,
in 3D, all around you on the stage.
So you are really there and you're not having to pretend.
This changes everything we know about life,
about evolution, our place in the galaxy...
Holy shit!
That guy looks like broccoli.
(GRUMBLES)
HTAY: When using The Volume,
from a design point of view, you have to start early...
MAN: All right, everybody. We're gonna get started now.
HTAY: ...to feed the process.
It's a little bit like bringing postproduction up front
and bringing preproduction, production and postproduction all together.
So that you can actually, in effect, shoot on it.
Give us as much in camera as we can, really make it feel real.
Not only that, we had these incredibly imaginative,
otherworldly characters,
and the costumes and the makeup design.
You really felt like you were entering
this sort of strange and frightening and magical universe.
REED: Once we get into our...
Michael and Evangeline are here.
Rock guy in the background.
Right, guys? So I imagine that we can use him here.
You'll be able to get him in the foreground,
like floating pieces of rock right in the foreground.
This, I think would be great.
The biggest challenges on this film is inventing every look
and every idea from the ground up.
And at every angle, we've asked ourselves,
'What's the Quantum Realm version of this?
"What's the Quantum Realm version of aliens?"
We call them aliens because that's the term we're used to,
it's the shorthand we're used to.
But essentially, it's not.
It's a whole different world and a whole different way
of looking at species and life.
CONOR O'SULLIVAN: We needed to go quite extreme.
Nothing should be like it is in our world.
It should be an ephemeral sort of universe.
(CAPTIVATING MUSIC PLAYING)
O'SULLIVAN: We were getting some very unusual designs.
This guy is Pixel Man, he was a great favorite.
The idea of him is that he looks like
a collection of pixels floating in the space
that are kind of concentrated and become the body of a human.
We had a lovely guy called Kintsugi Man.
This lovely gentleman here actually was one of our stuntmen.
So we knew he was going to have to perform stunts.
So I wanted a fairly robust makeup.
I mean, obviously, he couldn't have anything as delicate as those.
We completely covered him, and he had prosthetic pieces.
You can see these are all built up
to give him this sort of slightly broken look.
We also had a lovely chap we called Ribbon Man,
because I wanted it to look like his face was unraveling.
So we drew, like, a bandaged effect on his face.
And then we had these ribbons coming off,
but we had the inside of the ribbon dark blue,
which, if you looked at the back of his skull,
looked like it was the inside of his head.
Some of the things you really couldn't physically make them.
To actually sculpt them with your hands would be very difficult.
So I just exploited 3D printing like crazy.
That was the first for me, to actually do a 3D-printed mold and produce pieces
that were to merge with the skin.
There are moments when you are reading the script, and you go,
"I just struggle to understand what that is as a concept."
And then you kind of get into it and you start spitballing ideas,
and artworking up stuff.
And then it tends to have a life of its own.
Good example of that would be the controls for Krylar's yacht.
(SQUELCHING)
Where are the controls?
Those are the controls.
(SQUELCHING)
What the hell?
O'SULLIVAN: Initially, it was called a dielectric gel,
and it's used for waterproofing electrical components.
It's a very sticky, mucusy jelly,
and it's not really of any use to us.
But I started mixing it with another material,
and I was able to harden it and change the properties of it
to make it much more useful as a prosthetic.
REED: And let's start that up!
HTAY: Sometimes you just have to take a risk and experiment,
and I think we got a great physical result.
And I've got to say, Michael Douglas was an absolute professional.
-Hello. -Whoa!
VEB: Hi. (CHUCKLES) Hi.
Did you drink the ooze?
-Why can I understand you? -VEB: Oh.
Great. That's the ooze.
Hey, everybody, It worked! Ooze worked!
(ALL CHEERING)
Veb, he's just this blob with these weird, creepy arms.
Hi. I am Veb. You just drank me.
I did... What?
This is amazing, because it's so weird.
We knew we needed someone to inhabit it in ways where would come to life,
even though it's a fully CG character.
You wanted to feel personality and feel the performance of that.
VEB: I have holes.
BROUSSARD: Very early on, we hit upon the idea of inviting David Dastmalchian
back to the Ant-Man franchise
to play a completely different character than he had played
in the first two films.
Oh, that's Kurt. He was at Folsom for five years.
He's a wizard on that laptop.
-Nice meet you. -Nice to meet you, too.
When Peyton told me about the role, I'd never done anything like this before.
What would this look like? How would they involve me?
Was I just going to get to go to a booth at some point and give my voice?
To me, what I wanted
was the opportunity to, like, be there on set.
A big hole.
How many holes do you have?
I'm sorry. Is that a personal question?
I don't have any holes.
DASTMALCHIAN: When I stepped foot for the very first time
on the set of the Quantum Realm,
it was like all my childhood dreams of making movies coming to life.
There was so much practical set building happening there,
and then all the magnificent imagination.
We got to make sort of like a Marvel Wizard of Oz
which I felt was, like, "What an insane opportunity."
You can read minds?
Yeah, and I really wish I couldn't.
Everyone is disgusting.
(ELECTRICAL RINGING)
-Could you please stop thinking that? -Sorry.
LOVENESS: I had so much fun because I got to write a corner of the Marvel Universe
that basically felt like fresh territory.
REED: You guys will take off your hoods... You let go of him,
take off your hoods, and reveal that you're fuzzy,
cute little owl creatures.
LOVENESS: We got to populate it with so many creatures,
and they built subcultures and they built languages.
-(SPEAKING OTHER LANGUAGE) -(GRUNTS)
LOVENESS: It's just incredible.
Every second you see on camera had so much thought behind it,
whereas I'm sitting here on camera and I was like, "Well, you know,
"there's a broccoli guy, He's drunk.
"He speaks the broccoli language."
So, what's your story then?
JANET: Move.
It's time. Follow me.
LOVENESS: We just tried to make this as heightened
and as colorful and as vibrant as possible.
At the same time, you had no rules, but you also had to make your own rules.
And luckily, those rules could be, you know, whatever you wanted them to be.
(CLANKS)
MAN: Step out, please. Glasses on.
-(LAUGHING) -Yes! Yes!
MAN: All right, and back it up.
-What do we do with our hands? -MAN: Back it up.
-Superhero stuff. -Superhero stuff.
Oh, look at that! She's a natural.
One of our philosophies that we've always applied
is to just go back to character and to root it in character.
And the science fiction and the world building is fun.
Dad!
(MUSIC PLAYING)
But, ultimately, it's window dressing
to this story about a father and his daughter reconnecting.
(GRUNTS) Dad! (PANTING)
RUDD: As far as having Kathryn now play Cassie as a young adult,
it was great because it's life.
It's much different dealing with a 6-year-old...
Mommy's so happy you're here, she choked on her drink.
RUDD: ...than it is somebody who's 18.
SCOTT: Cassie. What happened?
Jail stuff.
And so, I think the thing that was fun was watching Kathryn
kind of take on Cassie
and play a character who wants to find her own way, discover who she is,
and maybe butt heads with her dad a little bit.
-(SCOTT GRUNTS) -Okay. I have a suit.
Yeah, I noticed.
Oh, man. When I read the script for the first time,
the thing I was the most stoked on was Cassie's character.
(GRUNTS)
REED: Yeah. One more.
-MAN: Look there. -Okay.
For about, I don't know,
(STAMMERS) five years now,
I've been pestering Marvel Studios about their female characters.
Saying, like, "We're all very competent.
"We're all very kickass.
"We're all very serious,
"very responsible women who make sure
"that we keep the boys in line and we do everything perfectly.
"And when I look around at the women in my life,
"there are so many other colors to the female
"that I would like to see in your movies."
And then I read the script and Cassie is just...
She's like, zany and brazen
and kind of, like, irresponsible in a fantastically, um, pure way.
-And Kathryn killed it. -(GASPS)
(WHIRRING)
(WHISPERS) Please let this work.
(GRUNTS)
(EXCLAIMS) Yeah!
(LAUGHS)
It worked!
Look at me.
I'm such a dick.
It's never too late to stop being a dick.
Okay?
REED: Audiences who have a relationship with young Cassie,
Abby Ryder Fortson, who played her in the first two Ant-Man movies.
I feel like they want to know
that the daughter of Scott Lang grows up to be funny.
And grows up to be a bright, optimistic person in the way that Scott Lang is.
That was really, really crucial for this movie.
And I'd seen Kathryn in a screen test that she had done for another Marvel role.
-Director Fury sent you. -Wow. Who?
BARTON: He knows where I live.
-Oh. Oh. -BARTON: Fury.
You mean Mr. Good Eye.
-No. -BARTON: Yeah, he loved you.
Like I said, I was on a rooftop at Third...
There's more cookies. Oh, my God.
It's like, wow, she has this brightness to her. She's funny.
She has this youthful optimism about her.
And she has the physicality.
She's an athlete. So I really wanted someone
who could do all the physical demands that that role required.
And Kathryn was just terrific.
For a lot of the movie, our heroes are split up.
And Scott and Cassie are on one side of the story.
So I needed someone who could really, really hang with Scott
because it was important for the dynamic of the movie.
So I needed an actor in the role to play Cassie
who could really spar with Paul Rudd.
This is not our fight.
Just 'cause it's not happening to you doesn't mean it's not happening.
(ELECTRICAL RINGING) She's disappointed in you.
-I got that. Yeah. Thank you. -You're welcome.
Paul is the best.
He was so welcoming.
-MAN: Boom! -(GASPS)
(OBJECTS CLATTERING)
-REED: Cut it. -(LAUGHS)
That was too close.
And he told me not to hold back. Like, on our second day of shooting,
I was just trying to be invisible.
Back up.
NEWTON: I was like, "Okay, just don't mess up
-"and then, like, you'll be okay." -Back up.
(ALL LAUGHING)
-Get back! -Oh! Oh!
(LAUGHS)
NEWTON: And we had this scene
with Michelle and Michael and Hope and everybody.
And Peyton was like, "Okay, now do one for fun."
And I was like, "Okay." So I started improvising.
(LAUGHING) And I did, like, whatever I wanted.
And then afterwards, Paul was like, "You've got to do that."
He's like, "You don't want to finish this movie
"and feel like you held anything back."
He's like, "'Cause that's the worst thing. And the truth is, You just have to kind of
"throw it all down, do everything you got
"and just make sure you didn't hold back."
And so that's what I took away from Paul,
and I'll take that on forever, to every project.
That was nice.
(STAGE BELL RINGS)
NEWTON: The first time I tried on my Cassie superhero costume
was when it really felt real.
I'll never forget it, because it fit pretty perfect.
REED: It's a distinct suit. No other hero has that. Boom!
-No other hero has what? -REED: No, we were just talking about...
DIFFER: Cassie's suit is very much inspired by the ant suit,
although Scott doesn't know it exists.
You have a suit? Wait, you have a suit?
DIFFER: So she's kind of taken references from that
and had help making this.
So it's a bit of a surprise in the film.
The purple is obviously from the comic book.
And the fun thing in this is that she's wearing Converse.
-REED: I like where we ended up, man. -MAN: Good job.
Because, as well as doing Cassie,
we're also working on Ant-Man and Wasp.
We're working on all the other characters.
They have to come along together.
I think if you were doing one, from a sewing perspective,
it's probably about two weeks' sewing, but that doesn't include
the backpack and the helmets, all their extra bits and pieces.
Even though we had a long time to prep, there was a change in the concept
of what the suits were during prep.
So originally they were meant to be Quantum Realm suits,
and then that changed.
We almost had to start again, so they became less of a kind of team,
and slightly more individual.
(ENGINE WHIRRING)
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)
REED: For this movie,
we needed a character who sort of had this backstory with Janet
and it was a role that needed someone who had a real presence.
Um... And we thought of Bill Murray.
Janet Van Dyne?
I thought you were dead.
Been a long time, Krylar.
Officially, Lord Krylar now.
I fought like hell against that.
I was intrigued by the idea of putting Bill Murray in a Marvel movie.
I was obviously a fan of his movies growing up in the '80s
and watching him on Saturday Night Live.
But I also knew that, pre-Saturday Night Live,
Bill Murray had played the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four radio show in 1975,
and I listened to that as a kid.
So we talked about that.
(BLOWS RASPBERRY)
LOVENESS: Bill came on set the first couple weeks.
He was giving just these micro notes on joke construction.
"Switch that word with that word and maybe take a pause right there."
And you're like, "Bill Murray knows what he's talking about."
We never wanted anyone to guess who he was playing.
The Internet is full of all these rumors, and no one knows who is going to be.
We chose someone they would literally never guess.
We tried to find the deepest cut Marvel character we could
and we found this random character from a random Hulk comic book
in the Quantum Realm called Lord Krylar.
(SCREAMS)
For the costume, you know, I talked with Stephen and Peyton
about, "Who is he? Do you want him more military?
"Do you want him more civilian?
"Can we get away with a suit, or do you want him more bizarre?"
And I think that, um, vis dev went through a whole load of things
of it being very, very like, Quantum and weird and fashiony
and strange textures and stuff,
and that became too theatrical.
So we came up with this blue and cream and gold combo. (CHUCKLES)
Uh, and just tried to have a bit of fun with it
rather than, um, getting into too many kind of crazy patterns and stuff.
Bill brings a lot to the table, and what you don't want to do is
swamp that with a confusing, complicated look.
In the end, we pulled it all back and we get one of these guys
that's in the French Riviera, that has their yacht,
and just added little Quantum elements like weird bits of beading,
and strange lines running across the body.
So there's some continuity of shapes with Will's designs for all the environments.
When Peyton came to me in the first place
and we started talking about this whole project
and the idea of the Quantum Realm being this vast worlds within worlds,
he wanted it to feel like it was huge.
I'm really happy with how Janet's homestead turned out,
because it's very much in my initial sketches
and playing with ideas to Peyton, this idea of subatomic particles
and that maybe the abode that she lived in was such a tiny particle,
and it crashed down through various Quanta and landed on a plain and had died,
and its energy had dissipated over time.
And that became this kind of cave-like structure.
That was realized in quite a nice way.
This is the exterior of Janet's homestead,
and what we wanted to do here, we were talking about
from early on, was almost to have it like a prairie land,
like an old Western, like an old-timer who was seeing out their days.
And this set was meant to echo that, really,
the idea of some weird Quantum prairie land
with these strange Quantum plants,
and this would be developed by VFX
and extended into much bigger, greater rolling plains.
These rock walls, again, with the idea of Quantum energy down here,
that somehow the Quantum energy had solidified and created these patterns.
And again, when we pull out into the wider shots,
we're going to have these patterns running through the landscape,
as well as the actual crops.
(CAPTIVATING MUSIC PLAYING)
Something again that was strongly pushed throughout this whole show
is trying to create really interesting compositions.
This idea of the sphere and concentric spheres,
and here we have Janet's homestead,
which is a series of concentric spheres in itself.
And in many ways, this room is a precursor to Kang's Celestium as well.
Those little design ideas that were developed out from this idea
into the Celestium itself.
MAJORS: Whoa!
We are on the Richard Attenborough Stage at Pinewood,
and this is Kang's Celestium with his Time Sphere.
It's something that I really wanted to keep as part of Kang's language,
was this circular or spherical motif.
I looked at a lot of Japanese Kintsugi
in the way that you have those sort of cracks through rocks,
and you can seal it up and re-perfect things.
Which is kind of what Kang is doing, destroying stuff and then rebuilding it
in a fashion that he sees fit.
I built an empire down here, Janet.
And I'm taking it with me.
HTAY: Again, I really wanted to create very kind of graphic moments
in terms of composition and try to give Bill Pope, our DP,
an environment in which we could actually frame up Kang
and it almost looked like panels from comic book or graphic novel.
MAN 1: Ready... Three, two, one, action!
-Katy. -MAN 2: And, bang!
Go, Steve.
Here he comes. And, bang!
REED: I loved the idea of building
a sort of barbarian type warrior character for this movie.
That felt like something that we really hadn't seen so much.
You see a little in Thor, you know, with Valkyrie,
but somebody who really felt like
straight out of a Robert E. Howard, you know, pulp novel.
I had worked with Katy O'Brian on The Mandalorian
and I thought she was terrific.
She's a bodybuilder and a fighter, and for real.
(THUDS)
She's got great presence, and we needed someone that was strong
and could embody that aspect of a leader, but also the wisdom of a leader.
And Katy makes great impact in that role.
With Jentorra, I really liked the idea that it was a revolutionary.
It was something different. It was someone who was
fighting for the greater good,
as opposed to maybe suppressing the greater good.
I want people to see, you know, a strong female role in a positive light.
Because this is like a dream role in a lot of ways. (CHUCKLES)
What are you doing here?
CASSIE: I'm rescuing you.
How?
When it came to the costume, I was so glad that Sammy, the costume designer,
called me and she was like, "Hey, have you seen the costume yet?
"Have you seen what we're pitching?" And I'm like, "No."
She's like, "Okay, I thought you might want to know
"you're pretty exposed."
And I was like, "Okay, I'll go to the gym. Thank you."
Jentorra, we were looking more at a kind of
growth, bone architecture.
And seeing what we could do with her armor,
to make it more like she's found a skeleton of a tiny creature
and used that.
He built his citadel on the bones of our people.
O'BRIAN: They were trying to connect it to the world,
because our people, they're very much of the world, of the Earth,
of the Quantum Realm.
So, the blue color that we have kind of meshes in with
things that you might find in our environment.
Once we added the hair, makeup, everything, it just clicks.
You know who you are and who your people are
and where you're going.
Welcome back to the Quantum Realm, Scott.
I've been waiting a long time for this.
BROUSSARD: M.O.D.O.K. was always a character
that we wanted to get into the MCU
somehow, somewhere.
A mechanized organism designed only for killing.
Now I get it. It's an acronym.
Actually, that's M.O.D.O.F.K.
BROUSSARD: Such an odd design, a little bit off-putting,
but really great and memorable.
(CASSIE GRUNTS)
REED: And we thought, like, does Kang need a henchman in this movie?
And we talked about all these things.
And M.O.D.O.K., if there's ever a context
for M.O.D.O.K. to succeed in live action in the MCU,
it feels like the Quantum Realm.
And it hit me
like the loudest bell I've ever heard. Like, "Wait a second."
"What if we have Darren Cross become M.O.D.O.K.?"
Hi, Hank.
Darren?
MAN: There we go. All right, we're set. And three, two, one, action!
(ANT-MAN GRUNTS)
When we originally shot Ant-Man, Darren is, like, arrested
at the end in his super suit.
And I was like, "Okay, great."
MAN: Here we go. And, action!
Then we went back for reshoots and nobody told me anything.
And I was looking at the sides, and this is, you know, uh...
Darren becomes like a tiny little ball of red goo.
I was like, "Oh, can't really come back from that."
And then there was another iteration
where he just sort of shrinks infinitely into a little dot.
And I said, "Okay, that's survivable in this world."
BROUSSARD: But clearly he would have been hurt very bad.
He would've been disfigured by this accident.
So we started thinking about that, and we started to think that maybe
there's an origin story in there for M.O.D.O.K.
REED: That was exciting to us.
And I remember the day that we called Corey,
because Corey Stoll, you may not know this,
a massive comics nerd growing up,
knew who M.O.D.O.K. was, loved the idea, and really, really embraced it.
I was like, "Yes, I'm in."
REED: Action!
Welcome back to the Quantum Realm, Scott.
I've been waiting a long time for this.
Darren?
You're looking at a man set free.
I've created so much more here than you could possibly imagine.
REED: And cut it!
That's the fulfillment of a dream. I didn't know I had.
Nowhere left to run.
I would have never thought
that that's a character that I'd get to play or want to play.
(YELLING) I'm the ultimate weapon!
STOLL: It's just so ridiculous and so broad.
But, I mean, it all makes so much sense.
I think the audience doesn't even know
that they're waiting for this resolution to my character.
I bet you thought you'd seen the last of me.
Just now noticing the baby legs.
They're not baby legs.
You think you're so smart.
Scott Lang, the man who took everything from me.
Who stole my whole life.
STOLL: And the filming technique they were using...
It could go one way, It could be like a real pain,
with dots on your face and you have this camera
and you don't know what you're going to look like
and it was so incredibly satisfying.
It's, in some ways, I feel like the ideal way to act.
Because you're not waiting for any technology,
even though the whole performance is so based on technology.
You're not waiting for lights, for camera.
You're not waiting for sound.
You're not waiting for hair and makeup even.
You know, you're just... It was just me and the rest of the cast
in this open space.
It felt like a really cool play rehearsal,
except that all this rehearsal is being captured
as data that can be turned into this performance.
You always were a brother to me.
I was?
I was.
And at least I died
an Avenger.
Yeah.
-You did. -Yeah. No, it's...
-You're in. -(DARREN SIGHS IN RELIEF)
We really liked making an Ant-Man film
as important, as integral to the MCU going forward
as any other film.
REED: I think that's an important beat. As you step out of that thing
and land here, that looking to her,
you know, taking your time with that before you then turn to this...
-I do? -REED: Yeah.
BROUSSARD: It's teeing up Kang in a very big way.
It's teeing up the future of this very fearsome, very formidable foe
within the MCU.
It's going to help show us where the MCU is going next.
But I love that we're getting to make a trilogy out of Ant-Man. (CHUCKLES)
And, shrink!
Yeah, back to one. Let's try one more right away, guys.
That's great.
BROUSSARD: The fact that not only he gets a trilogy,
but that Peyton will have directed all three films,
that Peyton has seen the trilogy home is so exciting to me.
PFEIFFER: I've loved working with Peyton. I feel lucky
that I've had someone like him
to kind of guide me.
(SLOW INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING)
REED: Shockwave that comes out (IMITATES EXPLOSION)
and just take you out of frame there.
We'll do a separate shot of a second thing which is like... (GRUNTS)
Coming from that port.
PFEIFFER: To be able to do the kind of superhero action
and the heart and the humor...
He just gets it.
This is, uh, a day one of, uh, Ant-Man.
I want to thank you all for being here.
I'm so psyched about this movie. We're going to have a great shoot.
I know a lot of you have been waiting a very long time to shoot.
And today's the day. Let's do it.
-Thank you so much. -MAN: Yeah!
(EXHILARATING MUSIC PLAYING)
(ANT-MAN GRUNTS)
REED: I grew up with Superman: The Movie
and Star Wars and Raiders and all those things.
And I'd always wanted to do a movie like that.
So, for me, it was really gratifying
because we were able to just paint on this really large canvas.
-Okay. -Boom! So you know what to do.
RUDD: Scott Lang has been really important in my life,
and it really has been an amazing group of people
I've gotten to spend a good chunk of time with.
Even in Civil War, I think I had that scene where we're on the tarmac
and I'm meeting Captain America for the first time,
and some of the other Avengers.
The whole thing was surreal,
and I felt a little bit like the character that I was playing.
I still feel that.
I can't believe I'm, I'm on this team.
I've treasured it. I really have.
I know before we ever started shooting this thing,
I'd tell people, you know, I'm going to...
"What are you working on?" I'd say, "Ant-Man"
"Ant-Man? What's Ant-Man?"
"It's a Marvel movie."
"Ant-Man?" Because not many people know the character.
And they'd say, "What are your powers?"
I'd say, "Well, I can shrink."
They'd say, "Okay."
"But I can also talk to ants."
(LEGENDARY MUSIC PLAYING)