‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ Director on Having to Follow ‘Avengers: Infinity War’

Ant-Man and the Wasp director Peyton Reed was unfazed by his smaller-scale Marvel movie having to follow sprawling crossover Avengers: Infinity War, he told Tech Crunch.

The first Ant-Man followed the earth-threatening events of Avengers: Age of Ultron, and its sequel comes after — but is set before — the devastating events of Infinity War.

"That really is part of the Ant-Man movies — the stakes are really high... they're just personal stakes," Reed said. "You know it's not a gigantic, genocidal villain like Infinity War. On that level, we don't want to top Thanos."

Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) will next be seen in Avengers 4, but Reed's mostly standalone Ant-Man movies have "very different storytelling ambitions" and "the most personal tone" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.

Asked how he considers the audience going into Marvel Studios' 20th movie and one that serves as another entry in a wider ongoing franchise, Reed answered, "I really just use myself the moviegoer, as a litmus test in terms of what they have and haven't seen. [At] Marvel, no one wants to repeat themselves, no one wants to bore an audience."

The story in Ant-Man and the Wasp is mostly self-contained, but particular developments and characters will go on to play a role in the Infinity War sequel.

"I can't say really what are seeds about Avengers 4, or about a potential other Ant-Man movie, but I can say that things are definitely in a movie for a reason," Reed told ComicBook.com. "I will say that, whether it's an actual Easter egg, or whether it's a misdirect."

The director feels a tinge of jealousy in having to watch Scott Lang and Hope van Dyne go off and join the fray against Thanos in the Avengers sequel, which has long been toted as the "final chapter" of the first ten years of the ongoing MCU.

"I think it's just something going into this situation, you know that that that's going to happen, but I do feel like it's cool that they go off and work in that ensemble," Reed told us.

"But I think I do like that when we come back and do tell the next chapter of the Ant-Man and the Wasp story, it does give us room narratively to really develop their characters in a way that I think is definitely more challenging to do in the larger ensemble movies. So, there's probably a little piece of me that will always die when they go off and do someone else's movie, but hopefully, at the end of the day, they'll come back home."

Ant-Man and the Wasp is now playing. Avengers 4 opens May 3.