Behind-The-Scenes Facts From The Ant-Man Movies That Demand A Rewatch

If you know anything about the making of the MCU's films, you probably know that CGI is the name of the game. Most behind-the-scenes pictures or videos show actors wearing motion-capture bodysuits in front of green screens, leaving the VFX artists to work their technical wizardry to bring the scenes to life. While that's true of nearly every large-scale shot in the MCU, there are practical sets and effects in the movies, as well, including Ant-Man and the Wasp.

Inside Hank Pym's lab, which is one of the coolest elements in the film, there exists a large Quantum Tunnel. It was constructed with the help of some oversized ants, and while it certainly could have been created via CGI, it wasn't. Not only is it a real set piece, but it remains the largest physical set in the MCU. Think about that for a moment - the largest set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is in a movie all about people who can shrink down to the size of an ant... there's some irony in that.

After the events of Captain America: Civil War, Scott Lang was imprisoned and eventually placed on house arrest. While confined to his home, Lang found himself with a lot of time on his hands, so he learned how to do close-up magic tricks. He demonstrates his new skill throughout Ant-Man and the Wasp, and when he shows Agent Woo a trick, it really impresses the G-Man. 

Woo doesn't buy Lang's story, but he is interested in the magic trick, and he asks him how he does it. While it doesn't take place on-screen, Lang must have shown him how to do it after the events of Ant-Man and the Wasp, because the next time Woo appears in WandaVision, he deftly performs the same trick.

The first Ant-Man movie begins with Hank Pym storming into a conference room, upset over S.H.I.E.L.D.'s attempts to uncover the secret of Pym Particles. When he appears, Michael Douglas looks as if he were 30-40 years younger than he actually was. The MCU has embraced cutting-edge digital de-aging techniques in its movies to depict older actors in flashback scenes. It's nothing new for the MCU, but one part of Ant-Man and the Wasp was done differently.

Most people probably assumed that Laurence Fishburne was digitally de-aged for his flashback scenes. After all, he looks a lot like he did decades earlier, and there's more than enough old footage of the man to realistically de-age him. Despite this, the filmmakers went a different way; instead of de-aging Fishburne, they hired his son. Langston Fishburne looks a lot like his father, so he was cast to play him in the flashback, and hardly anyone realized it when the movie was released.

When she is first introduced in Ant-Man, Hope van Dyne is working surreptitiously with her estranged father to stop her evil boss from introducing Pym Particles to the dregs of society. Over the course of the film, her character evolves into a more likable hero who eventually accepts Scott Lang for who he is. The next time the audience sees her, she's a full-fledged hero, battling bad guys as the Wasp, and she's very different from who she was in the beginning. The character has some evolution on the screen, so you might think Evangeline Lilly truly understands her, but according to Lilly, she doesn't.

During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Lilly was asked if she felt like she knew Hope as well as Kate, whom she played on Lost for several years. Her quick answer was "No," followed by a laugh before she went on to say, "Hope is an odd enigma for me. I wish I could say otherwise because I want to honor her; I want to honor every character I ever play. But the truth is that I find it harder to know and understand Hope than any other character I've ever played before."

One of the biggest hurdles the filmmakers had while filming Ant-Man and the Wasp was that they had to film it while Avengers: Infinity War was also in production. If that doesn't sound like a problem from the outside looking in, according to director Peyton Reed, it was the source of many "headaches" during filming. The biggest problem was juggling the two movies' production schedules because Paul Rudd had to disappear from one film set and work on another.

This happened throughout filming, and while it was challenging to manage, Reed explained in The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that they were able to sort it out... eventually. "We were shooting our movie, in which Paul is the main character. He is Ant-Man. But that stuff was sorted out because the Avengers movies shot for months and months and months. So they were able to [work] around us, which was great."

Scott Lang's boredom during his house arrest afforded him the time he needed to learn close-up magic. It helped entertain his daughter when she visited him, and it kept him busy. Some of his tricks are relatively pedestrian, while others are well-executed feats of prestidigitation!

If you watched the movie and thought the tricks were executed via CGI, you'd be forgiven for thinking that, but in reality, there's no digital trickery behind the tricks... it's legit trickery. According to Paul Rudd, he did all of the tricks himself. He related, "I really did learn some of the magic. I haven't really kept it up. But then again, trying to learn to be really good at magic in a short amount of time is like trying to learn violin in a short amount of time."