With Ant-Man and the Wasp released for digital download, we can now watch our favorite scenes repeatedly from the comforts of our couches. There is, indeed, a smorgasbord of hilarious scenes to choose from, including any with Jimmy Woo. However, one of these scenes that we want to put on repeat has got to be the visually striking car chase scene through San Francisco. We had more than just questions about that scene for the film’s director, Peyton Reed, though.

Speaking with CBR, Peyton Reed opened about the pressure of tackling a sequel to a fan-favorite property, the importance a Hello Kitty Pez dispenser took on in his film, and his desire to make Ant-Man a full trilogy.

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CBR: Did you feel the pressure of having Ant-Man and the Wasp taking place following Infinity War?

Peyton Reed: I think as a director I felt pressure from every angle. Ant-Man and the Wasp is really the first sequel I’ve ever directed, so most of the pressure for me is kind of, you know, self-imposed pressure. I’ve never done a sequel, so I wanted to do everything possible to make it even bigger and denser, and hopefully more funny, and as emotional, maybe more emotional than the first one.

It was also the first time we were going to see Wasp. We were going to see Hope van Dyne in the Wasp suit. I definitely felt like this is a huge opportunity, and we really want to get it right. So, I worked really closely with Evangeline, and we all worked together to come up with what we hope is a really dimensionalized character.

Scott loves being Ant-Man, but it always brings him negative consequences. What do you think brings him back to being Ant-Man time and time again?

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Reed: It’s absolutely true. Every time he’s put on that suit, it’s brought some incredible complication to his life. At the beginning of Ant-Man and the Wasp, it seems like he’s really put it behind him and wants to just be a part of his daughter’s life, but events conspire that he has to put the suit on again. I do think it’s that kind of thing that maybe as much as you try to run away from your destiny, your destiny is gonna catch up with you. There’s a world where he’s destined in one way or another to be that hero.

But I do like that we had fun with the idea there’s partnership. At the beginning of the movie, I don’t think anybody looks at Hope van Dyne and looks at Wasp and says like, “Oh, wow, she needs a partner,” but events conspire in this specific rescue mission that they actually do need Scott, so it’s a reluctant partnership at the beginning of the movie.

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Car chase scenes sound like they’re already difficult to shoot. Could you run us through the process of shooting car chase scenes with people and cars shrinking and growing?

Reed: When we landed on the idea, I think it really thrilled me, in particular, to do sort of a classic chase through San Francisco and really make use of all the specific landmarks and the specific topography of San Francisco itself. Like make the city a character in that chase. And really having the homages in the chase in the movie like Bullitt, the Steve McQueen movie, What’s Up, Doc?, the Peter Bogdanovich film -- all these little moments.

But to add the shrinking and growing, it felt like here is a version of a car chase scene that you legitimately would never ever see in another movie. It just felt very specific to our movie. And it also really felt like this is a really logical great fun way to further the Pym particle technology, not just to use it on people but to use it on vehicles and buildings and things like that.

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It was extremely challenging technically also because we wanted it to be in actual San Francisco, during the day… like everything you see really clearly. And we knew it would only work if everything felt 100% realistic. So the biggest challenge was to really sort of create this kinetic chase, but to make it seem like it was really happening in the streets of San Francisco.

And why a Hello Kitty Pez dispenser, of all the possible choices?

Reed: We knew that we wanted to have something where a really, really ineffective very innocent object was grown by Hope and used as a potentially very deadly weapon. We wanted to find something where the juxtaposition seemed to be the greatest, and so [we] set up the fact that Louis had been given this Pez dispenser by Cassie.

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We looked at all different kinds of Pez dispensers. At one point I think someone suggested, “Well, it should be Iron Man or Captain America,” and I was like, “Well, no, I don’t want to do another Marvel character.” And when we saw the Hello Kitty one, it felt like such a just a very innocent piece of iconography. It really just felt fun. When we actually started doing the previs for the movie, the giant Hello Kitty coming at camera and then taking out these motorcyclists, it struck us as funny.

If you direct a third Ant-Man film, you’d be the first Marvel Studios director to direct all three films in a franchise. Would this be something you’re interested in?

Reed: I’m definitely interested, and I love these characters that I would love to be able to tell more story with these characters. It’s something that as we were writing this movie, we definitely set things up that we wanted to pay off given the chance, so fingers crossed! I’m hoping there’ll be a third one. We don’t know yet. We’ll see what happens, but I would love to do it.