SINGAPORE – Will Ant-Man finally get some respect?

After all, in the Marvel superhero blockbuster Avengers: Endgame (2019), it was the size-changing hero who had the idea and the tools for time travel, which turned out to be the ticket to saving the world.

American actor Paul Rudd, who plays Scott Lang, also known as Ant-Man, does not believe respect for his character is coming any time soon – and that is just fine with him.

“If I go into a store, I see all the Marvel action figures and I see Iron Man, the Hulk, I always see Thor and Captain America. Occasionally, but not that often, I see Ant-Man,” the 53-year-old, who was named American magazine People’s Sexiest Man Alive in 2021, says with a laugh.

In the latest sequel Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, which opens in cinemas on Thursday, Lang is as humble in it as Rudd is in real life.

In one scene, a cafe owner shows his gratitude to the superhero who saved the world by saying: “Thank you, Spider-Man!” Instead of correcting him, Lang – ever the nice guy – winces, waves and walks out.

The social embarrassment makes Lang funny, which makes Rudd happy.

“That’s probably my favourite part of the character,” he tells reporters at a virtual press conference.

Other Avengers are super smart or born as demi-gods. Lang is a man who found his way into the pantheon because he found a super-suit, he says.

“He’s a reluctant superhero, a regular guy with no innate super abilities. He’s conflicted. He makes mistakes, he wants to be a good person and a good dad. I like those qualities. Audiences get to experience these crazy scenarios in superheroic adventures through the eyes of someone who isn’t so different from them,” says the father of a 17-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl.

 Quantumania, his third movie as the eponymous featured hero, sees him team up with romantic partner and villain-fighting ally Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), also known as The Wasp; and her father, the scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), inventor of the size-changing suit and the original Ant-Man.

Pym’s wife Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) has also returned home after being trapped for 30 years in the Quantum Realm, a world that exists at the sub-atomic level.

Scott’s teen daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) accidentally opens a portal into the Realm. After falling through it, the family discovers secrets about Janet’s 30-year sojourn that she has been trying to hide, including one about the presence of Kang The Conqueror (Jonathan Majors), a multiverse-travelling being with dark motives.

Rudd took on the role of the normal guy in a super-suit in Ant-Man (2015), followed by Ant-Man And The Wasp (2018).

Looking back at how far he has come over three movies, as well as appearances in Captain America: Civil War (2016) and Endgame, Rudd thinks about how uninformed he was when he was first cast as Lang.

“I did know about the Avengers, but I didn’t know much about Ant-Man. Then I was told by friends of mine who were real comic-book enthusiasts that Hank Pym created the Avengers. I thought, ‘That seems like a good thing.’

“Now, it’s pretty great that Phase Five starts with an Ant-Man movie and the hero has to go against Kang, who is arguably the greatest villain we’ve seen in the Marvel universe,” he says.

And what a universe fans will get to see in Quantumania.

An animated short film shown on Netflix, Dog And Boy, was recently outed as having used an artificial intelligence (AI) bot to generate backgrounds, as a way of getting around what its makers claim is a labour shortage in the animation industry.

Users give verbal instructions to such bots, which then generate new artwork by blending images contained in its database.

Quantumania director Peyton Reed, who helmed all three Ant-Man films and spoke to The Straits Times at a separate online interview, says no bots were used to create the surreal backgrounds of the Quantum Realm, a world filled with plants and animals that do not exist anywhere else.

“The bulk of the movie takes place in the Realm, which we obviously had to create from scratch. We have a team of incredibly talented concept artists who designed everything, all the creatures and beings. There was no AI involved,” he says.

The 58-year-old film-maker and the team drew on a slew of influences, including electron microscope photography, science-fiction magazines from the 1970s and 1980s, as well as art from popular sword and sorcery entertainment.

Reed is pleased that they were given the chance to create their own corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

“None of the other movies have dealt with a Quantum Realm. As we kick off Phase Five, making it feel like this is not something you saw in another movie is really fulfilling.”

• Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania opens in cinemas on Thursday.

In the Marvel universe, a new phase begins

The new Ant-Man movie kicks off Phase Five. In Marvel parlance, phases are storytelling chunks focused on a struggle or villain, usually climaxing with an Avengers film.

The phase that preceded it, Phase Four, was messy, consisting of Marvel films and Disney+ shows that touched on the idea of the multiverse, and others that ignored it altogether.

What sets Phase Five apart is the villain He Who Remains, or Kang The Conqueror, played by Jonathan Majors. A version of his character – known in the multiverse as a “variant” – made an appearance in the Disney+ series Loki (2021 to present).

All you need to know going into Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania is that Scott Lang/Ant-Man is a hero in his home town of San Francisco, because he is an Avenger who helped restore the world during the events of Avengers: Endgame (2019).

In Ant-Man And The Wasp (2018), the second film in the Ant-Man franchise, Lang, Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) and her father Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) rescue Pym’s wife Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) from the Quantum Realm, where she had been lost for decades.

In the new film, it is shown that Janet’s time in the Realm is a sensitive area and no amount of probing can draw out what she witnessed there. But it becomes clear that she is carrying a secret that could have consequences not just for Earth, but all the possible variations of Earth that exist in the multiverse.

This sequel continues Janet’s adventures in the Realm, but this time, she is not alone. Through flashbacks and verbal explanations, her secret past, and the rules of the Realm, are spelt out.

Kang The Conqueror: Move over, Thanos – a new baddie rises

In Marvel comics, Kang is a villain with many faces who can appear in the past or future because of his time-travel powers.

The multiverse concept allows for different realities. As shown in the film Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (2022), the same person can be good in one reality and evil in another.

In the new Ant-Man film, the crew run into Kang, the most dangerous version or “variant” of a character. Jonathan Majors plays all versions of the character.

While the film does not lay out Kang’s full plan, it becomes apparent that the only thing standing between Kang and his conquest of every world in the multiverse is something that Janet holds. Her family become obstacles to his ultimate victory, causing him to wish them harm.

In the Disney+ series Loki, viewers met a variant known as He Who Remains, formerly called Nathaniel Richards, a scientist from the 31st century.

There is a complicated backstory to how this version of Richards came to be where he is in the Loki series and what his goal is. But, as he explains in the show, his job is to prevent the malevolent versions of himself from defeating the good ones in a multiversal war. His death at the end of Loki’s first season foreshadows the rise of Kang, the most evil variant.