WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Marvel's Ant-Man and The Wasp, in theaters now.


Things in the Marvel Cinematic Universe haven't been all that optimistic as of late. First there was the whole thing with Asgard being destroyed, then Wakanda was invaded by outsiders, then Thanos just had to show up with his Infinity Stones to wipe out half the universe. It's not exactly the happiest place in pop culture right now, is what we mean. In fact, to be perfectly honest, things seem down right bleak.

Thankfully, there's a light at the end of the tunnel... sort of. Though it's set before Infinity War and thus, before the finger snap heard 'round the galaxy, Ant-Man & The Wasp has positioned itself as a cheerful diversion to all the doom and gloom currently permeating the MCU. Focusing on just what, exactly, plucky not-quite-hero Scott Lang was up to while his Team Cap teammates were off fighting the Black Order, things pick up in the wake of Captain America: Civil War rather than trying to tackle the aftermath of the shattered cosmos. This means there's plenty of space for all the slapstick gags, giant household objects, and tiny car chases you can shake a stick at.

No, really. It's all worth it. We promise.

To further corroborate the importance of taking some time off from the doom and gloom side of the MCU, we sat down with director Peyton Reed to get the inside scoop on what it took to get the smallest Avenger back on the big screen.

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CBR: This movie has a really different tone than a lot of MCU movies. The villain doesn't really have a megalomaniacal arc. It's very personal. It's very... kind? Is probably a good way to describe it? How much of that was designed to be an intentional antidote to the tone of Infinity War and what was organic? What's the most important part of the overall voice you wanted to drive home?

Peyton Reed: I mean, I think yeah, it is a very different tone than Infinity War, but I think it... it really was about building off the tone we've created in the first movie, right? And expanding and sort of retaining the more intimate feel of it. It really is ultimately a movie about family and you know, this sort of generational aspect.

It's one of the few, maybe the only, movie in the Marvel Universe where there's a mentor figure. He's kind of a screwed up mentor figure, but I liked that the mission at hand in this movie is an intensely personal mission for Hank, but kind of particularly for Hope. Hope has now come into her own as a hero in this movie.

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So it occurred to us early on that, you know, who would be the role model for her? She would look to be her mom, but mom's been missing for 30 years. But of course now that Scott was able to get out of the quantum realm in the first movie and it's possible, it's really set the wheels in motion again with Hank and Hope about Jan -- could she be down there, potentially alive, and is there a way to find her? That seemed like a fun starting point for our movie.

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You also get to kind of play in that sort of like retroactive, early area with Hank and Jan a little bit again, but we see a little more here than we did in the first film. We also get some of that flashback history building for Ghost. How did you go about fleshing out those eras, even just when it comes to building out those scenes? Was there anything you came up with that didn't make on screen?

We talked a lot about that on the first movie and even more on this one. What I really liked in the first movie was how we were able to kind of retroactively place [Hank Pym] into the history S.H.I.E.L.D with Howard Stark and everything. Like okay, there was super hero stuff going on long before the MCU. Seeing little glimpses of that are really exciting.

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So we talked about all these various missions and all the sort of the quantum research. How long had Hank and Jan had been doing quantum research? And then thinking about when Elias Starr, you know, a colleague turned traitor had stolen their plans to do it. I love the idea of the thematic past coming back to haunt you...no pun intended. The idea of Hank Pym not being able to work so well with other people in his career is now really coming back to this movie, too, which I loved. He's such a flawed guy.

So I have to know: can you tell me whether or not Bill, Ghost and Luis survived the snap?

[Laughs] Well, I'm certainly not at liberty to discuss any of that. But I will say that, you know, in, in how we built our characters from the first movie and certainly how we've dealt with the new characters that we introduced -- I think particularly the way that, that Bill Foster and Ghost ended up -- there are a lot of questions there... Particularly with her. She could go kind of in any direction at this point. It'll be interesting to see is she, you know, will she become a villain or is she an ally? Is this cure permanent or not? I like that open endedness and we definitely have ideas of what we want to do.

I'm sure I can't say anything, or I'm Wasp will show up and dart me in the neck.

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Speaking of another thing you probably can't talk much about: I noticed a few winks to potential hero turns for Cassie. Obviously she's much too young now -- but can you talk a little about the potential to see Stature on the big screen down the line?

Well, we've all been aware even for the first movie about who Cassie Lang is and I really liked the idea that now that she's three years older in this movie, she makes little decisions and kind of steps up. She goes toe to toe with Jimmy Woo, she covers for her dad, and she's clearly intrigued by this world. There's that opening scene where Scott's created this sort of play imagination game about what it would be like to shrink down. She can't do it, but this is what it's like. Now, she wants to be his partner. So I thought it was fun to sort of set that groundwork, which also fed into that whole dilemma that Scott has, which is this, you know, work life balance of.

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On a totally personal note, I really appreciated that every time I was prepared for it to turn into Scott being, you know, the quote-unquote "main" hero in the story, things immediately circled back to Hope being the more competent person -- it was really refreshing.

Reed Yeah! Because I mean, I think it's true to her character -- it worked to me like, I know there were things going around like, "Is Ant-Man and The Wasp a romantic comedy?" And it's certainly not, but definitely looked back to what I call the holy trinity of romantic comedies, which would be It Happened One Night, His Girl Friday and Philadelphia Story, all of which were from an era of in the thirties and forties where they just wrote better roles for women. All the all the women in those movies are really strong, capable characters, and they're all honestly kind of smarter than their counterpart, you know? There's such respect between the men and women in them. Particularly His Girl Friday, where she's just this ace reporter -- that kind of stuff really informed the dynamic that I was doing here.

Then, because you have Paul [Rudd], too. Like, I suppose if you had another actor, it might have been like like, "No, she can't do that, I'm going to look like a pussy," that kind of thing. But Paul's like "[shrugs] Yeah, this great!" Also because Paul's a writer on the movies, [he understands] this is the logical way that things should go.


In theaters now, director Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man and The Wasp stars Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Peña, Tip “T.I.” Harris, Judy Greer, David Dastmalchian, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, Laurence Fishburne, Hannah John-Kamen, Randall Park and Walton Goggins.