In the ever-evolving Marvel Cinematic Universe, everyone plays a role. In the case of Ant-Man, the Avenger capable of morphing his human form to insect size, he's always been - to some extent - the light relief. It's hardly a surprise, with Paul Rudd bringing his comic chops to the role and Peyton Reed, director of Bring It On, calling the shots on both Ant-Man (2015) and its sequel Ant-Man And The Wasp (2018). The character was the perfect palate cleanser, his two adventures respectively following the epic Avengers: Age Of Ultron and Avengers: Infinity War in the MCU's chronology.
When Reed started pondering where a third Ant-Man outing might go, along with Marvel chief Kevin Feige and Stephen Broussard, his producer on Ant-Man And The Wasp, he knew that couldn't happen again. “I was like, ‘You know what? Being a palate cleanser is great. It's where you expect to be with an Ant-Man movie. But I don't want to be a palate cleanser, I want to be the big Avengers movie that someone else follows with a palate cleanser.’ And we all liked this idea. It felt like a natural organic growth to the Ant-Man movies… I really wanted to paint on a much larger canvas for this movie.”
It was a feeling that had been brewing even on the set of , recalls Rudd. “[] if we ever do another one of these - which at that time, we didn't know whether or not we would - it would be fun to take a big swing. And I always thought that that was one of the really. It was the third Thor movie, and it was totally different than the other two. And that was kind of one of its strengths. And I was excited, as was Peyton and Stephen too, at the idea of trying to take a bigger swing with a third one.”
