No matter what you may have thought of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, you have to admit the first end-credit scene, in particular, was awesome. It beautifully put into motion not just the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but tied up a few loose ends that had been set up in the film itself. When both of those things happen, Marvel’s end credits scenes are at their very best.
However, the scene certainly created some… challenges, let’s say, in terms of filming. So, when io9 sat down to talk with the film’s director Peyton Reed, we asked about the process to shoot the scene and well as the intention and inspiration. You can read and watch his reply below. Obviously, huge spoilers to follow.
To recap, the scene begins with the reveal of three different Kang variants meeting up: Rama-Tut, Centurion, and Immortus. They’re meeting to discuss the fact that Kang the Conquerer, who they banished to the Quantum Realm, was killed by an Avenger. Realising that humans are now beginning to discover the multiverse, the Kangs call every Kang that exists across the multiverse for a meeting about mysterious future plans. The camera pulls back and reveals an arena filled with thousands of different Kangs. So how did it happen?
“We knew we wanted to sort of dip our toe in the idea of like, ‘Oh, we hear about these variants, when are we going to see some of these variants?’” Reed told Gizmodo. “There’s one really iconic panel which appears to be sort of a bunch of Kangs up in the cheap seats at the Council of Kangs. And the idea [was to] sort of recreate that.” Here’s the image Reed is referring to.
“We did motion control, particularly for that last shot. A very simple camera move that we repeated,” the director continued. They repeated the camera move over and over, each time with Jonathan Majors as a new Kang. “Jonathan was on, I think it was maybe 25 or 30 different versions of Kang in that thing. There were a couple [that used] prosthetics and there are a couple that… we added stuff to in all different versions of the Kang Suit. [The idea] was certainly, for me, to be able to recreate that comic panel. But Jonathan, man, he came in, he would have a specific energy and backstory for each one of those Kangs that we were plugging in there.”
“We shot this pretty quickly in just a couple of days, but it was the idea of hinting at what are the politics of Kang-dom? And we talk about the fact that Kang the Conqueror in our movie was exiled into the Quantum Realm. Who exiled him? It was like, well, introducing this sort of shadowy room, like a star chamber where there’s a triumvirate of, is that Rama-Tut? Is that a Centurion? Is that Immortus?
“And this idea of, are they the ones who banished him, or what are the politics of it? And we don’t really answer all those questions, but we see, ‘Oh, it’s out there,’” Reed said. “And they are now aware that the Avengers are aware, and certain Avengers are starting to make their way into the multiverse and this is a threat. So that was really fun to do.”
Really fun to watch and hypothesize about too. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is now in theatres.