It Was Paul Rudd's Idea To Explore Quantum Mechanics For Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania
Quantum mechanics: it's a fun and freaky field of science that's nonetheless extremely tough to explain. It's also the driving force behind "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," the latest Marvel movie that sees Paul Rudd's Scott Lang visiting the subatomic "quantum realm" in a journey that'll somehow see him face off against Jonathan Majors' Kang the Conquerer. While I can't say I entirely get the finer points of quantum mechanics, apparently Paul Rudd himself does. According to Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, Rudd himself came up with the idea for an Ant-Man plot set in the quantum realm.
Feige, Rudd, and other members of the cast and crew spoke at a press conference for the movie today that was attended by /Film's Jeremy Mathai. There, Feige was asked about what exactly the quantum realm is and where viewers may have caught it mentioned before, and the exec revealed that Rudd broached the topic of taking the story to the quantum realm before production even began on 2015's "Ant-Man."
"We first saw it in the first 'Ant-Man' film, and I was sort of reminded recently that this was an idea that Paul had early on, before we started filming the first 'Ant-Man' film," Feige explains. He recalls Rudd saying, "What if we explore this, you know, quantum mechanics?" The Marvel President quips that he's happy to get into the details of quantum mechanics "at length," but the short version according to Feige is that "things act very differently at the quantum level, and Paul was talking about the amount of storytelling and imagination and fun that you could have there."
Scott Lang gets subatomic
It took eight years and some "Avengers" side quests before Rudd's kernel of an idea came to fruition, but it finally will in the film that sees Scott, his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton), Evangeline Lilly's Wasp, and her parents (Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas) deal with some reality-bending fallout when Cassie's quantum satellite project goes awry.
Feige says the quantum realm is "a place that's on the subatomic level where space and time act differently," and points out that it's the same space that allowed heroes to navigate through the time-hopping plot of "Avengers: Endgame." It sounds like the quantum realm is also prone to some instability, though, as Feige mentions a "manic quantumness" that only Pfieffer's Janet has ever experienced before. "There is an entire universe below the surface where we meet all sorts of fun, crazy characters," he explains.
While Marvel's vision of the quantum realm may not be appearing in science textbooks anytime soon, it is a real place where particles act in ways that are counter-intuitive to what centuries of knowledge once told us. Quantum mechanics is still a developing field, but what we know so far is pretty trippy. Quantum entanglement, for example, is a phenomenon in which two particles are linked across time and space, while quantum superposition involves (in the simplest of terms) particles that initially appear to be in two places at once.
Rudd's comments about the potential for imaginative storytelling in the quantum realm, then, likely come not from any Marvel comic book (though "Ant-Man" comics have a similar space called the Microverse), but from prior knowledge of quantum mechanics. He's talented and charming and he can probably explain Schrödinger's Cat?! What can't this guy do?
"Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" hits theaters on February 17, 2023.