'Ant-Man and the Wasp' Director Explains the Origin of the Malfunctioning Suit

Some of the best and funniest moments in Ant-Man and the Wasp center around one thing: the malfunctioning of Scott Lang's Ant-Man suit. Now, director Peyton Reed explains where the inspiration for the suit and all its shenanigans came from.

Speaking with the Empire Film Podcast, Reed explained that the original inspiration for the suits malfunctioning came from the amount of size changing Scott (Paul Rudd) experienced in both Ant-Man and Captain America: Civil War and what the natural extension of that kind of technology might bring.

"It came from the idea that we did so much shrinking in the first movie and of course there was a lot of Giant Man, relatively speaking, in Civil War, and how could we do something that was different in this movie and we said let's apply Pym particle technology not only to people but to vehicles and buildings, let's go nuts with that," Reed revealed. "But then also with Scott it occurred to us, well since the first movie Hank and Hope have really been obsessed with building this quantum tunnel and that is their mission so maybe the Ant-Man technology's kind of been put on the back burner so we see that Hank Pym has been developing a new Ant-Man suit but currently there's not really anyone to wear it and we liked the idea of when he first puts on the suit he's saying it's still a work in progress."

The malfunctioning suit ended up being central to one of the funniest scenes in the film. In the scene, Scott is unexpectedly stuck roughly the same size as a small child -- around three feet tall -- while he and Hope/Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) are trying to, ironically, infiltrate a school. The scene, which Rudd described as one of the most complicated to shoot in the entire film, gave the film an opportunity to really play with size and dimension. It's something that Reed explained gave them a lot to work with through the course of the film, both visually and in terms of overall story.

"Having fun with this malfunctioning suit it seemed like a really fun comedic conceit for obvious reasons, but it also gave us a lot of different visuals and things to play with and then in the third act it presents more of a dramatic challenge that he's got this goal and its being foiled by this suit," Reed said.

Of course, Scott's malfunctioning suit wasn't the only kind of play with size that the film considered. Reed also revealed that, at one point, the filmmakers planned for Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne) to show off his own size-changing skills as Goliath.

"At one point we were going to have one brief flashback with young Hank Pym and young Bill Foster where he reaches 21 feet in trying [to grow]," Reed said. "And it just felt, narratively, it just was too much of a left turn. As much as we felt like it might get a cheer from a small percentage of Marvel Comics fans, it just was too far a reach. But who knows for the future."

Ant-Man and the Wasp is now playing in theaters.