It’s time to get over it: "Ant-Man" is not Edgar Wright‘s film, and while some fans are straining to say it’s still following his template, director Peyton Reed makes it clear he put his own stamp on the movie. **Spoilers ahead**
"I came on about the same time that Adam McKay and [Paul] Rudd were doing rewrites," he told Uproxx. "And I’ve known McKay for some time, and we talked on the phone and we were both really jazzed about the idea of, in the third act, in a movie in which we will have seen shrinking a bunch, [so] let’s take it even further in the third act and introduce what in the comics was the microverse, in what we call the quantum realm. Creating this moment of self-sacrifice where [Scott Lang, i.e. Ant-Man] has to go into the quantum realm to save his daughter, that was something that was never in those drafts that Adam and I brought to it."
And from there, the ideas snowballed. "It owes a little bit to ‘2001,’ and then there’s a ‘The Twilight Zone‘ episode that Richard Matheson wrote called ‘Little Girl Lost,’ where a little girl sort of falls into the wall. Something opens up and she’s in this whole other dimension," Reed continued. "And it freaked me out as a kid, and I love the idea, so we did an inverse version of that where the dad is now in there and the daughter is back in reality. So, I love that as a science fiction concept and, of course, he wrote ‘The Incredible Shrinking Man,’ so I love the Richard Matheson aspect of Ant-Man. And Adam came up with the idea that, in every heist movie there’s a trial by fire and they’ve got everything in line for the heist, but we need this one thing. Adam pitched that idea of sending Scott on a mission for which he’s not quite prepared and he comes up against another Marvel character. That blew my mind, and particularity with that specific character."
If you’re feeling lost in the haze of sci-fi and Marvel references, don’t worry, because from the start, Reed wanted to ensure even newbies could get swept up in the film. "I was banging this drum from the beginning, like here’s the things I want in ‘Ant-Man’: I want it to be under two hours, I want it to be tight, I want it to be funny, I want it to be kinetic and move to the rhythms of a heist movie," Reed said. "And it had to work for someone who hasn’t seen another Marvel movie or read another Marvel comic. There were going to be elements of it that, if you know, it will enhance the experience, but it had to work as a standalone thing. That, to me, worked in a really organic way."
But for fans who want a little extra sauce, a new viral news report from WHiH World News about Lang’s crimes and his stint in San Quentin will fit the bill, and a plethora of new promo material has arrived has as well. And for a little bit of fun, check out a recut version of the trailer in the style of a ’50s monster movie by Louis Plamondon.
