SPOILER WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Marvel Studios' "Ant-Man," now in theaters.
Now that the finished product is in theaters nationwide, "Ant-Man" director Peyton Reed has opened up about the changes made to the film's structure along the way. He previously discussed the movie's alternate ending, and now, in a talk with CinemaBlend, he's also revealed that the film originally opened in a different way as well.
In the final version of "Ant-Man," the film starts with Michael Douglas' Hank Pym forcefully resigning from S.H.I.E.L.D. But, as per the original script from Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, the film was originally supposed to start out with a flashback to one of Dr. Hank Pym's missions as a way to introduce the concept of Ant-Man and his powers.
"It was basically a standalone sequence where you really did not see it was Hank Pym," said Reed. "He was retrieving some microfilm from this, originally Cuban general and then it because a Panamanian general... It really was designed in those early drafts to be almost like a Bond movie standalone scene in the beginning. It was going to show the powers. You never saw Ant-Man, it almost felt like an Invisible Man sequence, and it's really, really cool.
As production moved ahead and Reed replaced Wright as director, later drafts shifted the timeline from the original 1960s to the 1980s -- thus necessitating the change in location from '60s Cuba to '80s Panama. Even though Jordi Molla was cast as the mission's bad guy, a general, and the scene was shot, it didn't make it into the final film.
"It started to feel tonally disconnected from the movie we were making and story-wise, and it also kind of like, it set a standalone adventure, but it didn't just connect to the rest of our story," admitted Reed.
Since the scene was shot, Reed said it could eventually see the light of day. "We actually talked at one point about releasing like a standalone, Hank Pym as Ant-Man. Who knows if that will still happen."
"Ant-Man" is in theaters now.