Stan Lee Believed Paul Rudd's Ant-Man Movies Would Do For The Hero What Marvel Comics Never Could

"Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania" is hitting theaters later this month, and Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is returning as Ant-Man, who has been reunited with his family after his triumphant return from the quantum realm (with a bit of help from a rat) that eventually led to the defeat of Thanos and the reconstitution of those dusted in the blip. 

As can be seen from the trailers, Scott, Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton), Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), and Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) have been sucked into the quantum realm and are about to face Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors). Janet hasn't told her family much about her time in that wild place, but three decades allowed her to make a lot of friends ... and enemies. 

This is, of course, the third film featuring Ant-Man as the lead, though he's shown up all over the place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since his debut. Rudd recently sat down with GQ to discuss his most memorable characters, and he had a lovely story about joining Marvel as a superhero. That story was about meeting comic book (and movie/TV cameo) icon Stan Lee. 

Paul Rudd spoke about meeting Stan Lee and the reason why he was so excited to see Ant-Man on the big screen. As he recalled: 

"One of the most incredible experiences I've had working on the Marvel films is getting to meet Stan Lee. One of the things he told me was how happy he was they were making Ant-Man as a film. He felt in the comics; it was very tough to really gauge the scale. If you're drawing Ant-Man, you can't really draw other things at the proper scale. So audiences were going to finally see Ant-Man in the way that he always envisioned Ant-Man."

That makes total sense. Comic book panels are small, and if you're going to have your hero big enough for readers to make out on the page, you're not going to be able to get a lot of clear background in when he's shrunk down. When he's Giant-Man, anything below him or around him would be very tiny. 

Just adding a little story of my own here, I used to co-host a web series with Stan Lee called "Cocktails with Stan." We talked about Ant-Man once, long before the film was announced, and he said that was one of the characters he really wanted to see done on camera in some way. He said he never thought it would happen but joked, and I quote, "They'd better give me a good cameo in that one!" He was the best!

"Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania," which is directed by Peyton Reed, will hit theaters on February 17, 2023.