‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ Director Peyton Reed Talks Scratching His ‘Fantastic Four’ Itch and Paying Tribute to ‘Back to the Future Part II’

20 years ago, Peyton Reed developed a 1960s-set Fantastic Four film at Fox that never quite came together, but now, with Reed’s third MCU movie, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, on the verge of release, he’s finally able to close the book on “The Four.” Reed is now tied with Jon Watts and James Gunn for directing the second-most number of MCU films behind the Russo Brothers’ four titles, and Quantumania really allowed the filmmaker to incorporate some of the elements he loved from his days of reading Fantastic Four comics as a kid.

“My first memory of reading about the Microverse in the comics, which became the Quantum Realm, was a Fantastic Four story where Dr. Doom shrunk the Four down into the Microverse,” Reed tells The Hollywood Reporter. “So I really took that passion and transferred it into this thing. And honestly, now that they’re actually making a Fantastic Four movie, my feeling is that I’ve already scratched that itch.”

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At the beginning of his career, Reed directed behind-the-scenes material for the Back to the Future franchise, and those efforts included Back to the Future Part II. Well, early on in Quantumania, there’s a moment involving a pizza that will surely remind fans of Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale’s second film in the Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd-led time-traveling franchise.

“I did the making-of documentaries for Back to the Future Part II and Part III. So I was on set when they did [Part II’s pizza] scene, and yes, [Quantumania’s pizza scene] is a little tip of the hat to it,” Reed shares.

In a recent conversation with THR, Reed also discusses the character overlap between Scott Lang in Quantumania and the original plan for T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Well, considering that you’re the guy behind Bring It On’s toothbrushing scene, I thought it was interesting that you told Marvel you didn’t want to be the MCU’s “palate cleanser” anymore. 

(Laughs.)

So what was their reaction to that?

Well, don’t get me wrong, I loved being a palate cleanser or people considering it that. I liked that we were working in the margins of the Marvel universe, particularly with the first two movies. Scott Lang was on the fringes of that. He was not a super scientist or a billionaire, and he really had no powers. But I love that over this now eight or nine year arc, we’ve put Scott and Hope front and center, and I felt like if we were going to do a third movie, we really had to differentiate ourselves. So I really liked the idea of bucking the trilogy trend of, “The first two are great, but the third one, whatever.”

I liked the idea of making the third one something altogether different and making it as epic as possible, as if these heroes were suddenly in a Lord of the Rings movie or something. (Laughs.) But I love the idea that we’re kicking off phase five and that we’re able to introduce Kang the Conqueror, who was such a compelling antagonist when I was a kid and reading the comics. I love that character. And when we cast Jonathan Majors in the role, that changed everything. I loved the idea of bringing that energy up against Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang.

Is Quantumania‘s pizza scene your tribute to “hydrate level four, please” from Back to the Future Part II?

Well, when I was much younger, I started out directing making-of documentaries. That was where I started, and I did the making-of documentaries for Back to the Future Part II and Part III. So I was on set when they did that scene, and yes, that is a little tip of the hat to it. It’s one of my all-time favorite trilogies. I worked with Bob Zemeckis on those movies, and I did the [behind-the scenes] thing for Forrest Gump as well. His style as a director was very influential on me as a kid because those movies were big and fantastic and introduced these science fiction concepts. But they were also funny and kinetic, so there was this sweet spot that I just responded to.

So Ryan Coogler said that the original version of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was going to be T’Challa grieving the five years he lost with his son, and your film also explores that territory with Scott (Paul Rudd) and Cassie (Kathryn Newton). Was this just a coincidence since these characters have shared experiences?  

Well, the Scott-Cassie relationship has always really been the spine of the Ant-Man movies. He’s gotten sucked into this world — and certainly being an Avenger now is a big deal to Scott Lang — but his number-one priority in life is being a good father to his daughter. So the thing that all the movies inherited from the events of Avengers: Endgame was this five-year period. How did this affect these individual characters, these Avengers? And for Scott, he lost a very crucial five years with his daughter. She’s now 18, and she’s no longer a little girl. She’s a young woman. So that seemed like really strong dramatic fodder for our movie.

Scott has always had an uneasy relationship with time, even back in the first movie. He’s done prison time, and he just hasn’t had enough time with his daughter. And in the first movie, he had to earn that time together. So now that they’re going up against the villain Kang the Conqueror, who has dominion over time, it struck us thematically that it made perfect sense to have this villain in this world.

Cassie is now a young woman who has her own ideas about what it’s like to be a hero, and those are not always the same ideas that Scott Lang has. We also liked the idea that she’s at an age now where she can be critical of her dad. She looks at him and says, “What are you doing with your life? You’re signing books. You’re looking in the rear view mirror, and there’s plenty more injustice out there that needs to be dealt with. Why aren’t you doing anything?” So that struck us as a great progression of that relationship.

Given the Quantum Realm setting, his absence makes sense, but were there ever versions of this movie with Michael Pena’s Luis?

There were no versions of this movie [with Luis]. There are a lot of characters in the movie. We obviously have our Lang, van Dyne and Pym family, but then we also introduced Kang, MODOK and all of our Freedom Fighter characters. So we had to make decisions early on about what stories we could tell and what stories we couldn’t tell. I love those characters. They were really, really fun and part of the Lang family, but as we got further and further into [development] and knew we wanted to bring the family into the Quantum Realm pretty early in the movie, it just didn’t make sense [to include Luis and co.].

You pitched Fantastic Four back in the day, so did you ever sit down over bottled water and spitball some ideas once Marvel Studios acquired it? 

Yeah, I developed Fantastic Four for about a year back in 2002, 2003 when I was finishing up Down with Love, and I chased it. I love Fantastic Four. It was my favorite comic growing up, and at the time, it was pre-MCU, obviously. But it became apparent at the time that Fox didn’t want to make the same movie I wanted to make. So when I came on board Ant-Man — and now that we’ve had a chance to do a third one — I really funneled a lot of my Fantastic Four love into Ant-Man. I mean, they are both about dysfunctional families who are superheroes. In this movie we go into the Quantum Realm, which is a bizarro world, possibly not unlike the Negative Zone in Fantastic Four.

My first memory of reading about the Microverse in the comics, which became the Quantum Realm, was a Fantastic Four story where Dr. Doom shrunk the Four down into the Microverse. [Writer’s note: Reed is describing events that occurred in Fantastic Four (Vol. 1) No. 16.] So I really took that passion and transferred it into this thing. And honestly, now that they’re actually making a Fantastic Four movie, my feeling is that I’ve already scratched that itch, so I really look forward to seeing Matt Shakman’s version of Fantastic Four. I think it’ll be a delight to see it on a massive IMAX screen and just enjoy it as a moviegoer.

I’m a big fan of Better Call Saul, and they had these toothbrushing scenes that reminded me a lot of Bring It On’s aforementioned toothbrushing scene. And what I learned from your scene is that I’m a rather messy toothbrusher. So how much discussion was there at the time as far as how foamy to make that scene? 

(Laughs.) Well, one of the things about that scene is you are telling character by this action of brushing your teeth, and Kirsten Dunst’s character is a very private, dainty toothbrusher. She’s very mannered about it, whereas Cliff [Jesse Bradford], he just gets the job done. So we were exploring their personalities through toothbrushing, and it’s been interesting to see how people watch the movie and compare the toothbrushing styles to their own. I never really gave my methodology of toothbrushing much thought until we started talking about it for that scene all those years ago. Clearly, you’re a toothbrushing obsessive, which I appreciate. But it’s funny how many people over the years have come up to me and talked about their style of toothbrushing.

Well, congratulations on Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and thanks for all the entertainment over the years.

Thank you. I appreciate that, and keep brushing your teeth!

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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania opens in movie theaters on Feb. 17th. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

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