Exclusive | Ant-Man 3 director Peyton Reed on what makes Kang the Conqueror so scary

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the newest instalment in the Ant-Man franchise and the 31st movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, introduces Kang the Conqueror. After Thanos, Kang is the next Big Bad that the Avengers will eventually face in the fifth Avengers movie, titled Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, which is due for release in 2025. Quantumania continues the tale of Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) who, along with his daughter Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton), and other major characters — Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), and Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) — find themselves in the Quantum Realm, the pocket universe that we have briefly visited earlier. And in the Quantum Realm, they come across Kang.

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We spoke to director Peyton Reed spoke about the dark tonal shift of Quantumania, Kang and how he differs from Thanos, Scott's motivations, and finally the Quantum Realm, where most of the movie takes place.

Hi, Peyton. I am really thrilled to be here as I adore Ant-Man movies. I love how Scott Lang is just your ordinary guy, just going about his business. And suddenly, he becomes this superhero. These movies are much lighter and less serious than the rest of the MCU, and that makes for a refreshing change from all the darkness and death elsewhere in MCU. So how does it feel to be saddled with the responsibility of introducing one of Marvel's most fearsome supervillains, Kang, with Quantumania?

Well, it's a thrill to have Kang the Conqueror introduced in an Ant-Man movie. I grew up reading Marvel Comics, and I always loved Kang. I love the idea that Ant-Man is the most unlikely Avenger. He's just a normal guy with no real superpowers. He's not a brilliant scientist or a billionaire, just an ordinary person. So as we were formulating this movie, we came up with the idea of putting that sort of everyman Avenger up against one of the most powerful antagonists in the multiverse. In the comics, Kang has dominion over time. And Scott Lang's whole goal, in all three of the Ant-Man movies, was to have more time with his daughter. And as a result of the events of Endgame and the Blip, he lost another five years with his daughter. Cassie Lang is now an adult in this movie. We had a lot of fun and drama with the idea of Scott trying to relate to his daughter who is no longer a little girl, and is instead a young woman.

Can we expect the Ant-man franchise to enter the truly dark territory with Quantumania? The first two films were quite lighthearted.

One of the things that we wanted to do with this movie was to shake Ant-Man up a little bit... take him out of his comfort zone, and really put him up against an incredibly formidable bad guy. So it was fun to take his lighthearted energy and put him up against Kang. That's not to say Kang doesn't have a sense of humour. But he is a character who doesn't live in a straight line. And a big part of his character is he expends the least amount of energy possible. He's a very, very clear character. If he says something, he means it, and you better listen to it. So to put those two energies up against each other struck us as something quite dramatic. It's safe to say that Scott and Hope and the rest of the family have some things in store for them in this movie that go far beyond anything they've experienced before.

How does MCU Kang, in your opinion, differ from Thanos?

Well, Thanos and Kang are both very powerful villains in the MCU. The thing that's unique about Kang is that he's the most feared Variant of all the Kang variants. But there are multiple Kangs in the comics; hundreds, if not thousands, of Kangs. So you have a villain who's not only battling our heroes, but he's also battling himself. Because those different Kang variants have very different worldviews and very different motivations for what they want throughout the multiverse. And that is why for us Kang was an interesting villain for us to kick off Phase Five in the Marvel Universe.

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Is he somebody vastly different from all the other supervillains Marvel superheroes have faced?

That's right, because there's not really just one of him. You know, we've seen a Variant in season one of Loki. Jonathan Majors, who plays Kangin Ant-Man 3, played a character called He Who Remains. They're very different people, but they're Variants of each other. And He Who Remains spoke of what might happen with this sense of dread. And in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, we're going to show you what he was talking about. We're going to show you the person that he dreaded. He is a very scary, powerful villain, and he has a unique relationship with the Quantum Realm. The Quantum Realm means something very different to Kang than it does to Scott Lang and Hope van Dyne and the rest of our heroes.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania releases on February 17.

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