‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’, the first Marvel movie of the year to hit theaters, premieres this Thursday, February 16 and carries with it the enormous task of introducing the frightening ‘Kang, the Conqueror’, the main antagonist of Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Certainly a colossal task and threat for the diminutive hero of The Avengers.
About it, trome was able to speak exclusively with the American Peyton Reedwho is in charge -for the third time- of directing a film from the Ant-Man universe and who shares his assessment of the role played by Jonathan Majors as Kang, as well as the challenges involved in recreating the Quantum Realm.
Peyton Reed: We’re very excited, we had to do a third Ant-Man movie, and to me, if we were going to do a third, we wanted to do very different things. We knew we wanted to explore the Quantum Realm and bring it to life and, you know, really live it. So we’re very excited, and particularly excited to start this Phase 5 of the MCU. What is different about Phase 5? Well, for me it’s that we introduce ‘Kang The Conqueror’ played by Jonathan Majors. As a kid who grew up reading Marvel Comics, ‘Kang the Conqueror’ was always one of the all-time great Marvel Comics villains and I was lucky enough to cast Jonathan Majors as Kang. He brings a completely different energy, a terrifying energy to the Ant-Man Universe. The Ant-Man movies tend to be a bit lighter, right? And it’s really about family and Scott Lang, in the Ant-Man movies and also in the Avengers movies, sometimes sees it as comic relief. But we’re going to throw some serious stuff at Scott Lang in this movie. He will face…he and Hope will face a villain unlike any they have ever met before. So for that reason, with this being the third movie, the third in a trilogy… We love the idea that Scott went from being an ex-con playing on the fringes, never even considering being an Avenger, and now he’s an Avenger. fully fledged He helped defeat Thanos in Endgame and is now the first of the Avengers to take on Kang the Conqueror. It was a heartfelt and exciting way for us to start.
PR: I always feel a self-imposed pressure in every film I make. There’s pressure, right? Do you want to make a great A movie? But with this character, who I grew up with, and I was being handed the keys to ‘Kang The Conqueror,’ and I knew I had to get it right. There were some great, very great villains in the MCU. There have been Thanos, Loki, Killmonger and many other great villains. So that was the challenge, that was always the challenge for us and for me, its director, to create a villain that lives up to those villains and even surpasses them. That’s a big challenge, we take it seriously and I think the best thing I did on ‘Kang the Conqueror’ was cast Jonathan Majors in that role, because he’s amazing. He is a really powerful and very scary villain.
PR: It’s a very good question. I mean, I was thrilled to join the MCU in 2014 when we did the first Ant-Man. And it’s really gratifying to grow these characters over the course of the three movies and also to see them have been on the sidelines a little bit and now they’re front and center, Ant Man and the Wasp in this adventure. I’ve certainly grown as a filmmaker in terms of the many challenges, having this amazing cast on all three movies and continuing to add to the amazing cast as well the technical challenges. Certainly all these movies have a lot of visual effects. I think Quantumania is, you know… we really push the envelope in terms of creating the Quantum Realm and creating battle sequences and situations where we find our characters. So for me, it’s been an amazing experience to be able to work with all these talented actors and artists from Marvel..
PR: (Laughs) That’s true, that’s a true story. That was a crazy experience. We had a set, which was the Freedom Fighter headquarters, and we shot on these giant sets at Pinewood in England. This set was kind of a dirt-covered set with these incredible sets, these giant structures. But apparently there was a mishap and a dump truck was supposed to show up and add more dirt to this and they got the order mixed up so there was a lot of manure mixed in with the dirt. So, one Monday morning, we got there to shoot this big, big scene, this sequence of scenes. And by the time we got on stage, I think he was talking about the day’s work and all of a sudden I heard “ahhh, what does that smell like?” And then, we called the producers and they said ‘yeah, there was a mishap’ and said they’d fix it in the next two or three days. So two or three days is a long time when you’re sitting around shooting other things. So the actors, myself, the whole crew, we had to put up with that for a couple of days. What’s more, I see those scenes in the movie even now and I can smell it (the manure).
Peyton Reed with Paul Rudd (Ant-Man) and Jonathan Majors (Kang) at the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania premiere.
PR: Look, I think we set out to make a movie that would take these characters and put them in this very, very epic story. And in doing so, we were able to create a really wild, crazy, extremely weird environment and introduce a lot of weird but compelling new characters to the MCU. So I would say it’s kind of a subatomic, psychedelic family trip.
PR: Well, obviously I’m very biased, but Thanos, Kang… I’m going to bet on Kang. I mean, he’s an incredibly powerful villain, just like Thanos. But Kang will not only fight our heroes, but also have to deal with the other versions of himself. The Kang variants, you know? Basically he’s fighting the heroes, but he’s also fighting different versions of himself and has big plans for the multiverse. and it’s up to all of our heroes to stop him from executing those plans. But my money is on Kang the Conqueror.
