WARNING: SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR ANT-MAN
There’s still plenty of mystery behind the sudden departure of director Edgar Wright from the production of Ant-Man. Over the years, Wright has earned incredible amounts of geek credibility with films like Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and Scott Pilgrim. So it was a shock when it was announced Wright departed the production after being attached for over 8 years due to “creative differences.” Fans freaked out, lashed out against Marvel, and doomed the film before it was even produced.
Now, here we are, less than two weeks from the film’s release and, despite all the doom and gloom, early word on the film is director Peyton Reed may have actually turned in something pretty good. So, how much of the upcoming film’s success can be traced back to Edgar Wright and those early scripts? Well…
Reed spoke with Uproxx and discussed that very question at length. When asked what parts of the story come from the early drafts by Wright and co-writer Joe Cornish (Attack the Block), Reed said, “It was clearly Edgar and Joe’s idea to make this a heist movie and to sort of loosely base it on Marvel Premiere ‘To Steal an Ant-Man‘ that introduced Scott Lang. It was also their idea to create this Hank Pym/Scott Lang, mentor/mentee relationship. And, also, their idea to kind of do a Marvel movie where the third act battle takes place in a little girl’s bedroom. Genius. It was great.”
It’s nice to see Reed is so forthcoming in mentioning the good work Wright and company put into the film. It would be easy, and completely understandable, for Reed to want to distance himself from those sorts of questions and focus on the final product.
After Wright left the project, Marvel spoke with Adam McKay in hopes he would direct, but he wasn’t available. However, he and star Paul Rudd began doing extensive rewrites to those early scripts. Reed goes on to describe what elements he wanted to see in the film.
“Well, I came on about the same time that Adam McKay and Rudd were doing rewrites” Reed said. “I’ve known McKay for some time and we talked on the phone and we were both really jazzed about the idea of, in the third act, in a movie in which we will have seen shrinking a bunch, let’s take it even further in the third act and introduce what, in the comics, was the microverse, in what we call the quantum realm. Creating this moment of self-sacrifice where he has to go into the quantum realm to save his daughter, that was something that was never in those drafts that Adam and I brought to it.”
Ultimately, Reed had very basic ideas for his version of Ant-Man. He says, “…I was banging this drum from the beginning of like here’s the things I want of Ant-Man: I want it to be under two hours, I want it to be tight, I want it to be funny, I want it to be kinetic and move to the rhythms of a heist movie. And it had to work for someone who hasn’t seen another Marvel movie or read another Marvel comic.”
Marvel could have gone the easy route and hired a director that just executes what they wanted, but in reading interviews and early reactions, it sounds as if there is a lot of Peyton Reed in the final film. The ghost of Edgar Wright is still felt throughout different aspects of the film, but that’s to be expected. For a film that had more early negative press than any other Marvel film, all signs are pointing to another hit for Marvel Studios.
Ant-Man will hit theaters July 17th.
