Paul Rudd upstaged by Michael Douglas and Michael Peña in Marvel’s new film Ant-Man
IF Marvel’s latest superhero Paul Rudd didn’t want his thunder stolen in Ant-Man, he should have banned the casting of anyone named Michael.
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IF Marvel’s latest superhero Paul Rudd didn’t want his thunder stolen in Ant-Man, he should have banned the casting of anyone named Michael.
As it is, while Rudd — as the just-out-of-jail Scott Lang — is busy saving the world, two Michaels are busy bagging all the best moments in the movie.
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On one hand, there’s a legend in the shape of Michael Douglas, who, as gruff scientist and original Ant-Man Hank Pym, mentors Lang to take over the Ant-suit.
On the other, there’s the less famous but no-less-familiar face of Michael Peña, a stellar supporting player (Crash, End of Watch, American Hustle, Fury) who is unstoppably hilarious as Luis, chief waffle-cooker in Lang’s motley crew of loveable crooks.
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For both Michaels, entering the universe of Thor, Iron Man and Captain America is unexpected territory.
So unsure was 70-year-old Douglas when he was offered Ant-Man, he called his old mate Jack Nicholson — The Joker in Batman — to ask what making an effects film would entail.
“I wanted to know if there’s a special technique for acting against nothing,” he told UK magazine Empire, “because it’s hard for us control freaks to trust that it’ll end up looking all right.”
Douglas’s son Dylan, for one, is glad Nicholson convinced his dad to give it a go.
“My 14-year-old’s reaction was like an agent: he said, ‘You know Dad, this could be a whole new audience for you’,” Douglas says with a grin. “So I took that to heart and here I am.”
It may be a long way from Wall Street, Basic Instinct and Falling Down, yet the Hank Pym of the comic books is a man with a rough history, so Douglas was playing well within his comfort zone.
As co-star Tip “T.I.” Harris puts it, Douglas is “just the right amount of a-hole to where it comes out great on screen”.
“Are you suggesting typecasting?” asks Douglas, archly raising an eyebrow. “You know, I was not familiar with Ant-Man before this movie. Marvel were kind enough to send me about two years of comic books, to catch up on this history and background.
“There are echoes (in the movie), certainly, of the loss of his wife and the distance between he and his stunning daughter, played by Evangeline Lilly. I don’t think we wanted to dwell on it, but it pays off a little later in the picture.”
While Douglas was looking at the source material, 39-year-old Peña found inspiration for Luis at home in Chicago.
“It’s a real person I’m imitating. His name is Pablo, he’s a criminal — not bulls---ting at all. He’s the kind of guy, swear to God, when I’m like, ‘What’d you do this weekend?’ he’s like, ‘I went to jail, dawg’. Like, who really says that?”
As for getting most of the big laughs in the film, Peña reckons he just “got lucky with those scenes”.
Douglas quips that not only were Peña’s funniest moments not in the script, Peña “never even saw a page”.
“I basically wouldn’t shut up,” Peña admits with a laugh.
A lover of Marvel comics from way back, Peña still sounds childishly thrilled about being part of what he calls “the Ant-ourage”.
“Literally, the first day of shooting I was like scared out of my pants. My son was like, ‘Don’t mess this up, Da’. So I want to be the cool dad, but I was a nervous wreck.
“Paul, he’s like, ‘Just do what you want, man. Let’s explore and let’s have fun’. After the first week, it got to be a lot of fun ... like, too much fun. Thank God, you know, we did all right.”
ANT-MAN OPENS THURSDAY (JULY 16)
Originally published as Paul Rudd upstaged by Michael Douglas and Michael Peña in Marvel’s new film Ant-Man
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