'Ant-Man 3' will rival 'Avengers' movies in scale, promises director Peyton Reed

Peyton Reed, the director of 'Ant-Man' movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is done with the franchise being considered a 'palate cleanser' for the 'Avengers' movies. The movies, which star Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly in the roles of Scott Lang or Ant-Man and Hope van Dyne or Wasp, are comedic in tone, and generally lighter than the rest of the MCU. But the third movie, titled 'Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania', ups the ante considerably. As the Big Bad, it has none other than Kang the Conqueror, played by Jonathan Majors. Earlier, Majors had played the role of He Who Remains in the finale of 'Loki' season 1, a gentler variant of Kang.

Reed was speaking to Entertainment Weekly when he said, "People felt like, Oh, these are fun little palate cleansers after a gigantic Avengers movie. For this third one, I said, 'I don't want to be the palate cleanser anymore. I want to be the big Avengers movie. I grew up a real Marvel comics nerd, and there are a handful of antagonists in the Marvel comics universe who are all-timers. Loki, obviously. Doctor Doom from the Fantastic Four. And Kang the Conqueror."

He added, "In conversations with Kevin Feige and Marvel, it was like, I want to put Ant-Man and Wasp up against a really formidable villain in this movie, and so we're doing Kang the Conqueror. In the comics, Kang has dominion over time, he's a time traveler. His situation is a little bit different in this movie, which I won't spoil for you, but he's someone who, [while] we live very linear lives, from childhood to death, Kang doesn't exist that way. It struck me as interesting to take the tiniest Avengers — in some people's minds maybe the least powerful Avengers — and put them up against the most powerful force in the multiverse."

Notably, Kang will also be the villain of 'Avengers: Kang Dynasty', the fifth 'Avengers' movie which is set to be released in 2025. Kang is a popular character among comic book readers. As his title 'Conqueror' hints, he loves conquering. But his conquests are not of land but temporal. A descendant of Nathaniel Richards, which is also Kang's own name, and also of Reed Richards, better known as Mister Fantastic, Kang found out about the time travel technology invented by Doctor Doom and sought to use it, thus becoming a conqueror of temporal domains.

In Kang Dynasty, Kang attacks the earth along with his son Marcus or Scarlet Centurion (a mantle that was earlier held by Kang). The huge storyline is certainly worth an 'Avengers' movie. The movie will likely be bigger than the last two movies in the franchise -- 'Infinity War' and 'Endgame', which themselves brought together a cast of dozens of characters.

Meanwhile, 'Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania' also stars Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kathryn Newton, Jonathan Majors, David Dastmalchian, and Randall Park. It releases on February 17, 2023.