How Star Wars Influenced the MCU and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Marvel Studios is about to start their fifth Phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the release of Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is already getting some great reactions and will probably go down as the best in the Paul Rudd-led franchise. The film serves as the introduction to The Multiverse Saga's main villain, Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), and he is set to be one of the most menacing villains to grace the MCU. When we meet Kang, he is in the Quantum Realm, which looks a heck of a lot like a planet from Star Wars, and it seems that the MCU may have been inspired by the Lucasfilm franchise. While speaking with ComicBook.com's Brandon Davis, director Peyton Reed discussed the Star Wars inspiration.

"Well, what was exciting to me is, you know again, it was a thrill to work on Mandalorian. Obviously, as a lifelong Star Wars fan, and certainly the environments George Lucas kicked off many many years ago have made an indelible stamp on generations," Reed told us. "Now what was cool about Quantumania is, you know, the MMO has kinda Owen the Quantum realm. I mean, they passed through it and used it for the time heist in Endgame, but we were free to create whatever. So I assembled this team of artists from all over under our production designer and just like, you know, went through all their art and talk to them and like show me some of the most whacked out creations you had, and maybe we can just work this in and like, you know, it can be anything we want it to be. We have to figure out sort of what the internal logic and the internal history of the Quantum Realm is and what are the laws of physics. And what do these various areas look like. And that was the most fun we've had because we didn't go to anything else that appeared in the MCU. It was our own little corner that we could carve out."

The next Marvel Studios film to be released will be Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quatumania. Empire Magazine recently had a chat with director Peyton Reed about how the stakes have risen going into Quantumania. "People felt like, Oh, these are fun little palate cleansers after a gigantic Avengers movie," Reed told the outlet. "For this third one, I said, 'I don't want to be the palate cleanser anymore. I want to be the big Avengers movie.'"

"I grew up a real Marvel comics nerd, and there are a handful of antagonists in the Marvel comics universe who are all-timers," Reed continued. "Loki, obviously. Doctor Doom from the Fantastic Four. And Kang the Conqueror. In conversations with Kevin Feige and Marvel, it was like, I want to put Ant-Man and Wasp up against a really formidable villain in this movie, and so we're doing Kang the Conqueror." 

"In the comics, Kang has dominion over time, he's a time traveler. His situation is a little bit different in this movie, which I won't spoil for you, but he's someone who, [while] we live very linear lives, from childhood to death, Kang doesn't exist that way," the director smirked. "It struck me as interesting to take the tiniest Avengers — in some people's minds maybe the least powerful Avengers — and put them up against the most powerful force in the multiverse."

The studio describes the film as follows: "In the film, which officially kicks off phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, 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 Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), 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 was possible. Jonathan Majors joins the adventure as Kang."

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will hit theaters on February 17th!

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