What is the Quantum Realm? During Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania press conference, Kevin Feige and Peyton Reed explain inspirations.
What Is The Quantum Realm? Inspirations & Explanations
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania takes a deeper look at the Quantum Realm. Many critics have said that this movie is like Marvel meets Star Wars because of the way it turned out. So what exactly is the Quantum Realm, and what inspired the look and feel of it that we see in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania? Marvel President Kevin Feige and Director Peyton Reed explain it all during the global press conference.
Feige explains how we were first introduced to the Quantum Realm in Ant-Man, albeit briefly. He says that he was reminded recently that this was an idea that star Paul Rudd had before they even started filming the first film. “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.”
He goes on to breakdown the Ant-Man franchise, “The first Ant-Man movie was mainly about meeting the characters and the origin story, but at the very end of that, we got a taste of [the Quantum Realm]. And that is what led to where we took it in Avengers: Endgame. It is a place that is on the subatomic level, where space and time act differently. And that allowed us to time travel, at Scott Lang’s suggestion, in Endgame. And it allowed us to have this entire manic quantumness in this film, where we go to a point where only Janet had ever seen before. Where there is an entire universe below the surface where we meet all sorts of fun, crazy characters.”
It was also revealed that the design was worked on for three and a half years so that Marvel could take audiences to a place they have never been before. Parallels to the Wizard of Oz were discussed, in terms of taking and meeting a family down there. The visuals were worked on for a very long time.
Peyton Reed explains that the visuals were based on a number of things. They looked at everything from electron microscope photography to heavy metal magazines from the 70s and 80s. “We wanted to bring in all these elements — like a sword and sorcery element and a mobius element.”
He explains that they brought in a team of artists and allowed them to create a vivid world with its own internal history and logic, since none of the other Marvel movies have really dealt with it before. They tackled questions like who are the creatures and who are the people there? And how do you travel? What are the laws of physics?
“We assembled this insane group of visual artists, and we said, just bring some of your most fantastic ideas to the table, and let’s figure out what it can be because we want to take these characters that the audience has come to know and send them on this journey, and traverse these very strange lands and just have fun with it. It was it was a part of the MCU that we were free to create on our own. And that was one of the most exciting things about it.”
Quantum Realm Inspirations
To go more in depth with that, the actual inspirations in terms of previous films and television series for the Quantum Realm were a lot. Peyton Reed explains that they looked at a lot of stuff like Flash Gordon, Barbarella, and other “wacked out” things.
“There are a lot of great artists who would paint the covers for these things. They would be on the newsstand and that cover had to grab you. A lot of them were creating these really strange worlds that if you were looking at paperbacks, that one would pull you in.” So they looked at those, and not even just from the States, but from France and Germany as well.
But specifically, they were sure to look at the real deal. They took inspiration from micro photography, electron micro photography, which gives a look at things that are incredibly small. “You print them out and they look like landscapes. Just set your mind thinking, which is where all of our minds had to be, all of this movie is taking place in your fingernail somewhere. It’s the subatomic world, it’s all the stuff is going on, in the fabric of space time outside of space and time, but in the quantum realm.”
Janet Van Dyne describes at one point in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania that it’s worlds within worlds and so the idea that there is this infinite world, and worlds, down there, that are inhabited by creatures and beings was at the forefront of everyone’s mind.
Paul Rudd Weighs In On The Quantum Realm
Ant-Man himself, Paul Rudd, confesses how crazy it actually was as they were building this world and this story. “At the beginning, because we have no idea really what this is going to look like, when we started going into Marvel and seeing some of those photographs on the wall, I thought, wow, these are incredible mock ups! This is the craziest landscape! And [they]say no, no, that’s actually an electron microscope. That’s that really is what it looks like.”
Rudd says that it seemed like an embellishment, but it really isn’t much of that at all. It is insane to think that this is what it really looks like that close up.
Get a closer look at the Quantum Realm in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania when it hits theaters on February 17th!
NEXT: Creating MODOK For Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
About Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Super-Hero partners Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) return to continue their adventures as Ant-Man and the Wasp. Together, with Hope’s parents Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), and Scott’s daughter Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton), the family finds themselves exploring the Quantum Realm, interacting with strange new creatures and embarking on an adventure that will push them beyond the limits of what they thought possible.
Directed by Peyton Reed and produced by Kevin Feige, p.g.a. and Stephen Broussard, p.g.a., “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania” also stars Jonathan Majors as Kang, David Dastmalchian as Veb, Katy O’Brian as Jentorra, William Jackson Harper as Quaz and Bill Murray as Lord Krylar.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is in theaters 2/17/23.
Tessa Smith is a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer-approved Film and TV Critic. On Camera personality and TV / Film Critic with 10+ years of experience in video editing, writing, editing, moderating, and hosting.