‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ director Peyton Reed felt a huge responsibility in bringing Wasp to the big screen.
The new Marvel movie sees Evangeline Lilly’s Janet van Dyne share top billing with Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man and filmmaker Peyton Reed was excited and worried about maintaining Wasp’s legacy.
He told MTV News: "I felt a great responsibility and a tremendous amount of excitement to be the person who was able to bring Wasp to the screen. In terms of the legacy of that character and Janet Van Dyne, there are a lot of people who know the MCU movies but don’t know the comics so well. Some people get shocked when you remind them that on the cover of Avengers #1, Ant-Man and Wasp — Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne — are there. And Janet was the one who named the Avengers. She’s part of the Mount Rushmore of Marvel Comics characters. So when it came time to do our movie’s versions of those characters, yeah, I took it really seriously."
However, he felt extremely lucky to have Evangeline taking on the iconic role as he knew it was in safe hands.
He said: "I had a really deadly weapon in my arsenal with Evangeline Lilly. Evangeline was really clear from the get-go about what she wanted to do and what she didn’t want to do. She wanted this hero to feel very practical. She wanted to sweat when she fought, and she wanted to have her hair in a very practical ponytail so it wouldn’t get caught in things. It really annoys her in action movies when women are in one giant sequence and their hair and nails are perfect and beautiful. She wanted it to have a very down-and-dirty feel to it."