Here’s Why ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ Cut Several Flashback Scenes

Ant-Man and The Wasp was originally going to include several flashback scenes with Hank Pym and Hope van Dyne but cut them in favor of its central narrative according to director Peyton Reed.

“It’s tricky, because we talked a lot about how to introduce [Hank and Janet], and I always wanted to see some glimpse of them in the ’80s,” Reed told CinemaBlend. “We talked about doing action sequences, we shot some stuff, and it just felt like… I think I’ve learned this along the way – as much as, as a fan, I want to see flashbacks, the present tense story is the thing. That’s the thing that really matters to me – and also that I felt like it didn’t want to be action. It really wanted to be emotional grounding, because after all, this is a movie called Ant-Man And The Wasp. It really has to be about the emotion of a daughter finding her mother after all this time.”

Based on how well Marvel Studios‘ effects teams have the de-aging work developed at this point, the action sequences might have flawlessly brought Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer back to their earlier Hollywood years. Moviegoers, however, only got one sequence with the actors getting such a treatment in Ant-Man and The Wasp.

Reed, instead, wanted to focus on following up the story teased by the original Ant-Man film from 2015.

“This movie was always going to be Hope finally having the thing that she wanted so badly in the first movie: to be a hero,” Reed said. “But it occurred to us along the way, and I talked to Evangeline [Lilly] about this a lot as we were developing the story and then the script, which was she’s finally Wasp. Scott has Hank as a mentor, and the one person that Hope would want to turn to who’s been there and done that is her mom, and she hasn’t been around for 30 years. And now that there’s actually this kernel of a chance that she could still be alive, and they could actually find her, it’s not only about a reunion with her, but this person who is the ultimate role model for her.”

Avengers: Infinity War is available on DigitalHD on July 31 and Ant-Man and The Wasp is now playing in theaters. Captain Marvel will follow it on March 6, 2019, with the untitled Avengers 4 set to tie everything about the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a bow on May 3, 2019.