Captain America: Civil War isn’t exactly a capstone movie like The Avengers or its sequel, but it is anticipated that the film will have some massive repercussions on the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole. After all, just about every big screen hero we know about is not only going to be in the movie, but going toe-to-toe with other big screen heroes. Certainly one of the characters we expect to be affected in some way is Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang a.k.a. Ant-Man… but you probably shouldn’t expect to see too many of those consequences influence the direction of the upcoming sequel Ant-Man And The Wasp.
With its summer 2018 release date, the Ant-Man follow-up is happening after some major events set up to play out in Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but when I recently had the chance to talk with director Peyton Reed about it, he definitely made it sound like the events of the films will help define the larger world, but probably not the specific story. When I asked about how we would see Captain America: Civil War effect the events in Ant-Man And The Wasp, the filmmaker explained,
It’s a matter of sort of how much… the movie, at least the first one, doesn’t really dwell on that. I think it’s going to be hard to ignore the events of Civil War by the time my movie comes around - that movie and the couple movies that come out before it, between us and Civil War. But again, I think it’s all sort of, for Ant-Man, it’s all background and context. We’re definitely going to be telling our own unique story.
Essentially, it sounds like Ant-Man And The Wasp will have the same kind of larger MCU connections as its predecessor – which, really ranged from very small to rather significant. There are moments like when Scott Lang namedrops The Avengers, Hank Pym talks about cities falling from the sky, and there’s even a mention of Sokovia on a newspaper after Scott’s jailbreak – but then there’s also the fantastic cameo from Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson a.k.a. The Falcon, and the sequence at the Avengers facility. So if that same level of “being a part of a larger world” is featured in the sequel, we shouldn’t be surprised.
What do you make of this news? Would you prefer to see more connections to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe in Ant-Man and the Wasp? Or do you think a nice balance was struck in this summer’s Ant-Man? Hit the comments below with your thoughts.
Ant-Man And The Wasp will be in theaters on July 6, 2018, and Ant-Man is now available on Blu-ray and DVD.
