Why Ant-Man And The Wasp Cut Out Some Flashback Scenes
SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains minor spoilers for Ant-Man And The Wasp.
One of the coolest things about the lead Marvel heroes in Peyton Reed's Ant-Man And The Wasp is the fact that they are legacy heroes. There was no Iron Man before Iron Man, or a Captain America before Captain America; but before Scott Lang there was Hank Pym, and before Hope van Dyne there was Janet van Dyne. You'd think this fact would have led to the new movie featuring more flashback sequences, but the director recently explained to me in an interview why he didn't take that approach:
The screenshot at the top of this article comes from one of those flashback action sequences, as it was featured in the main theatrical trailer for Ant-Man And The Wasp, but anyone who has seen the film will tell you that the moment isn't actually in the movie. Instead, the film really only has two brief looks at the past, and one of them is essentially a recreation of the flashback in the first Ant-Man.
I had the opportunity to bring up scenes with the original Ant-Man and Wasp when I sat down with Peyton Reed a couple weeks ago for an episode of our podcast, HeroBlend. Having noticed the aforementioned cut flashback scene in the trailers, I asked the filmmaker if there were earlier versions of the movie that took more trips to the 1980s. He confirmed that there was originally going to be more of them, but focused primarily on why they didn't make the theatrical cut:
You can listen to my full interview with Peyton Reed by clicking play on the HeroBlend embed below!
Ant-Man And The Wasp may not feature much of Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne in action, but it should be noted that it does have some key and amazing flashbacks. The opening, featuring a de-aged Michelle Pfeiffer as Janet saying goodbye to young Hope before her last mission, is jaw-dropping, and it's equally great to see the de-aged Lawrence Fishburne as Bill Foster during the telling of Ghost's origin story. Presumably including more scenes set in the 1980s would have slowed down the movie too much, but hopefully we'll get to see what the production shot later this year when this film arrives on home video.
For now, audiences can enjoy the outrageously fun blockbuster on the big screen, as Ant-Man And The Wasp is now in theaters everywhere nationwide.
CINEMABLEND NEWSLETTER
Your Daily Blend of Entertainment News
Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.