The upcoming Ant-Man and The Wasp is a direct sequel to 2015's Ant-Man, but the biggest difference in the approach is right in the title. Rather than just being another Scott Lang story, Evangeline Lilly's Hope van Dyne will be promoted to co-lead in the film, and she will personally be driving half the story. This means that she will have her very own personal motivations and goals she's trying to achieve, and as we learned from director Peyton Reed on set last year, a lot of it centers around her hope to rescue her mother, Janet van Dyne, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. Said the filmmaker,
The other questions we talked about, with the search and rescue aspect, is if it is trying to find Janet van Dyne, what does that mean to Hope? We kind of know what it means to [Michael Douglas' Dr. Hank Pym] from the first movie. What does it mean to Hope? If she's now finally a full-fledged hero in her own right, and you're in a position like that, you tend to look for mentors or role models, and the one person that she would really turn to is not there. Hank can do something. Scott maybe be a template of maybe what not to do [laughs]. But that person who I think she would ideally want there is not there, and that is a really important aspect of the movie.
In the first Ant-Man, Hope van Dyne primarily serves the story to help Hank Pym and Scott Lang orchestrate a heist, but from what I gathered while visiting the set of Ant-Man and The Wasp last year, the sequel will be quite different. While the movie will still see plenty for Paul Rudd's character to do, serving house arrest at the start of the story due to the events that played out in Captain America: Civil War, the story will give equal time to Hope's important mission, which will be finally rescuing her mom from the mysterious Quantum Realm.
Making sure that Hope had a strong plot line and arc in Ant-Man and The Wasp was seen as essential by Peyton Reed and screenwriters Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Andrew Barrer, Gabriel Ferrari, and Paul Rudd -- and perhaps even more important was making her independent. While there certainly will be plenty of team-ups in the film, it was key to not have her specific motivations entirely tied up in what's going on with the other key characters:
It's not Ant-Man With The Wasp, it's Ant-Man and The Wasp. It's important to tell those stories separately, and invest in each of the characters' journey and arc in the movie. One of the big things about this is what's going on with Hope... The mission that is happening with her, entirely separate of Scott, is vital and it's her mission. It's not her dad's mission. It's her mission. Hank and Hope are working together, but it's really Hope leading the charge, and that was an important thing when we started talking about what was going on, is the what and why of this mission.
Exactly how The Wasp, with help from Ant-Man and her father, will go about rescuing Janet van Dyne remains mostly a mystery for now, but from what I learned on set it sounds like she will have a very limited time window to get it done, and that it will involve a specially-designed pod that is set up in a Quantum Realm tunnel set up in Hank Pym's transportable lab. Beyond that, we'll just have to wait and see how the mission plays out in the film.
Speaking of which, Ant-Man and The Wasp, which co-stars Hannah John-Kamen, Walton Goggins, Judy Greer, Michael Pena, Laurence Fishburne, David Dastmalchian, Randall Park, T.I., will be in theaters on July 6th, and there is plenty more set visit coverage coming your way here on CinemaBlend.
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