According to Kevin Feige, Ant-Man has earned the right to jump-start the newest phase from Marvel Studios. Phase five is looking to take the superhero-shared universe into more psychedelic territory as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania takes place primarily in the Quantum Realm. The Quantum Realm is a microscopic universe, and the film’s writer, Jeff Loveness, is comparing the world to Jodorowsky’s Dune in a new story from Empire, with a new exclusive photo of the movie, featured above with Michelle Pfeiffer being featured in the realm, where her character was once stuck.
“It’s a fun place,” Loveness proclaims. “It’s a limitless place of creation and diversity and alien life. It’s Jodorowsky’s Dune within Marvel,” he adds. He is referring to the infamously ambitious attempt to adapt the novel Dune from Frank Herbert by French-Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, which was so insane in concepts and designs that it was deemed unfilmable.
The mystery of the Quantum Realm also introduces who is being described as the next Thanos for these newer phases. Kang is played by Jonathan Majors, who has already portrayed a variant of the character on the Loki series with a being only referred to as He Who Remains. Michelle Pfeiffer’s character, Janet Van Dyne, who plays the wife of Hank Pym and mother to Hope, has been consistently cryptic about the micro-universe, and now the movie will finally unlock her secrets. Pfeiffer teases, “She does have a very rich history with Kang, and unresolved issues. The Quantum Realm can change a person, and you can have a whole other life down there. It’s something that she hasn’t wanted to get into.”
Marvel head, Kevin Feige, also teases, “It’s about how these five family members deal with this environment and the new reality of what their mother/grandmother has been through, and that she’s a very, very well-known, very powerful freedom fighter in the Quantum Realm. Which none of them had any idea about until they get down there.”
Although there have been a few times we have been given a glimpse of the realm, including using it to time-travel in Avengers: Endgame, this is the first extended look audiences and fans alike will get.