Ant-Man And The Wasp: Trailer Breakdown And Secrets
On the face of it, this first trailer doesn’t give away much of the plot. Instead, it confirms a lot of what fans either already knew or had already guessed. Its focus is more on the film’s tone and style, blending powerful music with character moments and exciting, creative fight scenes. Dig a little deeper, however, and there are a lot more awesome details and plot clues.
18. AN ALTERNATE AIRPORT BATTLE
Ant-Man & the Wasp is scheduled to release in July this year, months after Avengers: Infinity War. In a quirk of Marvel continuity, though, the film is actually set shortly after the events of Captain America: Civil War. The trailer drives this point home right from the start, with a cool bit of dialogue between Ant-Man and the Wasp. Scott imagines another world, one in which he’d asked Hope to help Captain America out when he needed it. It’s reinforced by flashbacks to the Airport Battle, where Ant-Man became Giant-Man for the first time.
Amusingly enough, Hope doesn’t answer the question of whether she’d have sided with Cap directly, instead saying that if she’d turned up, Scott wouldn’t have wound up trapped in the Raft. While this is a fun line, given the likely time travel plot of Avengers 4, it could wind up being some very smart foreshadowing.
17. SCOTT’S UNDER HOUSE ARREST AFTER CIVIL WAR
The first Ant-Man film introduced us to Scott Lang as an ex-con who was trying to make his way in the world. Unfortunately, the events of Civil War have made that a whole lot more difficult. After all, not only did Ant-Man reveal himself to the Avengers, he was also broken out of a top-secret international prison. It’s clear the decision to side with Captain America has cost Scott greatly, and the trailer shows us Lang under house-arrest, wearing an electronic tag to track his every move.
How will this affect Scott’s relationship with his ex-wife Maggie and their daughter, Cassie? A brief scene shows just how much Cassie still loves her dad, but there’s an ominous voice-over suggesting “the people I love the most, they pay the price.” The trailer seems to suggest that Scott will break his house arrest in order to help Hank and Hope. So far, Scott has often failed to think through the consequences of his decisions. Hopefully, he’s learned his lesson; he won’t want to hurt Cassie again.
16. THE FBI ARE HUNTING THE PYMS
But the Langs aren’t the only family affected by Scott’s decision to side with Captain America. It seems Hank Pym and Hope Van Dyne have been forced to go on the run, hunted by the FBI. Superhumans are heavily policed after the passing of the Sokovia Accords, and Hank and Hope possess size-changing technology that helped Ant-Man take on the Avengers in Civil War. It’s worth noting that Scott name-dropped Hank Pym while he was imprisoned in the Raft, perhaps explaining what tipped them off.
Of course, just because the FBI have Hank and Hope surrounded, it doesn’t mean they’ll manage to bring them in. Hope is a formidable warrior, and Hank is possibly the most meticulous planner we’ve seen in the MCU to date. Meanwhile, set photos have actually show Hank wearing an FBI jacket. Either he ultimately forms an alliance with the FBI, or he manages to pretend to be an agent at some point in the film.
15. A PORTABLE OFFICE BUILDING
Ant-Man & the Wasp promises to use size-changing technology in radical new ways. The first film showed Hank Pym carrying a tank on his key-chain, but Ant-Man & the Wasp goes one better: Hank actually has a portable office building. He flicks a switch outside his office, and the entire structure shrinks down to size; he then pulls a suitcase handle out of the shrunken roof. It’s a brilliant and creative idea, and so true to Hank’s character. Indeed, the idea of a portable lab is subtly lifted from the comics, where Hank’s Ant-Man helmet once contained an entire laboratory.
In true Marvel style, the scene is complemented by a panicked and confused pigeon, no doubt wondering where its’ perch has just gone.
14. A CRAFT TO THE QUANTUM ZONE
Next up is what appears to be Hank’s latest creation: a craft that he can use to travel into the Quantum Zone. In the first film, Hank believed entering the Quantum Zone was fatal. After all, he’d lost his wife when she shrank to a subatomic level. Scott’s experience of the Quantum Zone proved that people could actually survive there, and Hank’s clearly dedicated his time to exploring that mysterious realm. His dear hope is that Janet Van Dyne has somehow survived.
The ship’s design seems very much reminiscent of the Fantastic Four’s exploratory vessels, which they used to explore the Negative Zone. Marvel may be combining the concept of the Quantum Realm with the traditional Negative Zone from the comics.
13. GHOST’S CREATION
The key villain of the film is Ghost, a sneak-thief who possesses the power to turn intangible. From a thematic point of view, it’s possible Ghost’s powers will actually be linked to the Quantum Realm. One scene looks something like an origin moment and shows her in a lab remarkably similar to Pym’s. What’s more, the idea that she is somehow “out of phase” with reality is a smart way of explaining her ability to turn intangible without adding too many new pseudo-scientific concepts to the film.
As we see later, although Marvel has gender-swapped the villain, the suit is very much comic-book-accurate. The mask is particularly distinctive, hiding Ghost’s identity, although she’s actually played by Hannah John-Kamen (Game of Thrones, Black Mirror, Ready Player One).
In the comics, Ghost is one of the Thunderbolts, a team of reformed super-villains who are – in some incarnations – forced by the government to act as heroes. She’s the second member of the Thunderbolts to be reinvented for the MCU, and as Marvel chose to leave the first (Zemo in Civil War) alive, there’s hope we could get an alt-Avengers in Phase 4.
12. LAURENCE FISHBURNE AS BILL FOSTER
Bring on Laurence Fishburne, playing the character of Bill Foster. In the comics, Foster was a scientist who created similar size-changing technology to Hank Pym. He used this tech to become a superhero, taking up the rather on-the-nose title of “Black Goliath.”
The MCU has reinvented Foster as one of Pym’s former assistants. Significantly, the trailer shows him in a lab that looks similar to Hank’s own, suggesting he’s been researching the Quantum Realm. Crucially, the trailer placed that clip straight after one teasing the Ghost, suggesting Foster has actually created Ghost (but that may simply be misdirection on Marvel’s part).
11. THE ANTS ARE BACK
It had to happen; you can’t have Ant-Man without his beloved ants. The trailer doesn’t put much of a focus on the mounts this time round, perhaps assuming fans got the idea in the first film. In fact, the only scenes with an ant in are ones where Scott is using a flying ant as a mount. Regardless, fans of Anthony are sure to smile.
10. CHASE IN THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO
The trailer opens with some beautiful shots of San Francisco, but things get a bit messier as it goes on. Midway through we see footage from a chase scene, with Scott and Hope pursued by gunmen and motorbikes. The trailer doesn’t give viewers any clues as to why Ant-Man and Wasp are coming under fire, but it does show some great examples of the film’s “mind-blowing action“.
9. THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING VAN
The San Francisco chase sequence takes a fun twist when Scott and Hope reveal they aren’t the only ones who can change size. It seems Hank has outfitted a lot of their equipment with size-changing technology, including the van they’re driving. It shrinks down to size at the press of a button – and then pops up when it’s underneath another vehicle, tossing it aside with ease. The power to change size doesn’t sound the most impressive at first glance, but creative uses of the ability like this make Ant-Man one of the most formidable heroes in the MCU.
8. THE RETURN OF GIANT-MAN
One of the most exciting plot twists in Civil War was the moment where Ant-Man turned Giant-Man. It left Iron Man’s team reeling, with Scott sacrificing himself to buy Cap time to escape. That technology hasn’t been forgotten in Ant-Man and the Wasp; it looks as though at some point Scott has fallen into the San Francisco river, and he’s survived drowning by changing size until he looms over a ferry. If Scott Lang is trying to keep a low profile, this is not the way to do it. It’s safe to say the FBI will hear of this particular (Gi)ant-Man adventure.
It remains to be seen if Ant-Man and the Wasp will provide some more pseudo-science to explain just how Giant-Man’s powers work. Ant-Man established that Scott’s shrinking means his molecules compress, granting him increased strength. By that principle, when Scott turns Giant-Man he should actually be weaker than normal, as his molecules are further apart. In reality, Civil War saw him tearing the wings off planes, so Giant-Man clearly possesses superhuman strength.
7. THE MOST MYSTERIOUS VEHICLE – WHAT’S WITH THE FLAMES?
Perhaps the strangest scene in the trailer is a focus on a mysterious purple car with flames painted down the side. It’s given a lot of attention and appears in the background of several other shots, suggesting the car is being driven by somebody important to the plot. It’s possible that the car is connected to Luis, who’s glimpsed just a few moments later running near the vehicle.
6. LUIS IS BACK!
Michael Pena’s Luis was a fan-favorite element of the first film, and he’s set to reprise the role in Ant-Man & the Wasp. Although Luis is sure to be a source of rich humor in the sequel, the trailer avoids revealing any of his gags. Instead, the trailer’s tone is generally more “serious,” with dramatic music at odds with some of the more hilarious ideas (such as the Pez dispenser). The last year has seen Marvel criticized for focusing too much on humor, so the trailer may be an attempt to show they’ve struck a balance.
5. INTO THE QUANTUM REALM
Ant-Man introduced fans to the concept of the Quantum Realm, a subatomic dimension with no concept of time or space. The reason the heroes are heading sub-atomic is simple – save Janet Van Dyne – but with Captain Marvel also visiting the Quantum Realm, there’s sure to be some long-term impacts. Indeed, in an interview last year, Evangeline Lilly noted, that this would open up “a whole entire new multi-verse to enter into and play around in.”
On the way to the Quantum Realm, the shrinking ship is passing through a group of tardigrades. These microscopic creatures are about 0.5mm when they’re fully grown, and are one of the most resilient animals in existence, giving a terrifying sense of scale to this shot.
4. DAUGHTERLY ADVICE
In what is easily the cutest scene of the trailer, Scott’s daughter Cassie gives him some much-needed advice. She feels he needs “someone watching your back, like a partner.” This is very important: Wasp isn’t Scott’s “sidekick“, she’s his equal.
Of course, given Ant-Man & the Wasp is supposed to partly be a romcom, it’s likely Cassie doesn’t like her dad being on his own. She wants him to have a partner in more than just the one sense. Rudd and Lilly didn’t spend much time together in Ant-Man, but the film did end with a promising kiss (and are certainly a lot of sparks between the two in the sequel’s trailer).
3. WASP IN ACTION
Now let’s focus on the real highlight of the trailer: Evangeline Lilly’s Wasp. Her showcase action sequence is tremendous, showing Hope develop a unique fighting style. It’s smarly familiar: in Ant-Man, Hope was the better hand-to-hand combatant; now she has a Wasp outfit, she’s blended her fighting style with size-changing. It’s clear Hope has been practicing her combat strategies, as she shifts size and launches powerful attacks with effortless ease. At the same time, some of the “stunts” do give a sense of just how many risks she’s taking; at wasp-size, that knife would literally have cut her in half.
2. WINGS… AND BLASTERS
It would seem that action scene is relatively early on in the film, as Scott is watching it with Hank. He’s clearly impressed, and more than a little envious. Learning of her wings and blasters, he asks, “So I take it you didn’t have that tech available for me?” Hank just glances at him, and clarifies: “No, I did.” It’s certainly a stinging rejoinder.
More than comedy, though, this establishes that Ant-Man and the Wasp have subtly different skills and powersets. That’s a smart move on Marvel’s part, ensuring the two size-changing superheroes complement and contrast, rather than simply mirror.
1. PEZ DISPENSING
The entire trailer is exciting, but the post-title stinger is the definitely Ant-Man and the Wasp‘s most talked-about moment; Hope tosses a Pez dispenser out the back, then shoots it to change its size, startling one of their pursuers off his bike. Clearly part of the car-chase in San Francisco, and it’s an amusing one that highlights just how cool size-changing can be and, more tongue-in-cheek, is a sly callback to the giant Thomas the Tank Engine from Ant-Man‘s finale. What makes it so neat, though, is that the Pez dispenser is a Hello Kitty model, meaning it actually belonged to Scott’s daughter, Cassie.
No comments