Scott Lang (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

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Scott Lang
Marvel Cinematic Universe character
Paul Rudd as Scott Lang in Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
First appearanceAnt-Man (2015)
Based on
Ant-Man
by
Adapted by
Portrayed by
  • Paul Rudd
  • Jackson Dunn (young)
  • Lee Moore (old)
  • Bazlo LeClair (baby)
  • Loen LeClair (baby)
In-universe information
Full nameScott Lang
AliasAnt-Man
Occupation
Affiliation
  • Avengers
  • X-Con Security Consultants
  • Baskin-Robbins
  • VistaCorp
SpouseMaggie Lang (ex-wife)
Significant other
Cassie Lang
(daughter)
OriginSan Francisco, California, United States
NationalityAmerican

Scott Lang is a fictional character portrayed by

Hank Pym's technology and training, specifically the use of an advanced suit that allows him to change sizes, as well as communicate with ants. He is recruited by Steve Rogers to join the Avengers
.

Following

Kang the Conqueror
and prevents him from escaping.

As of 2023[update], Scott has appeared in five MCU films. Alternate versions of the character appear in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) and in the animated series What If...? (2021-2023), with Rudd reprising the role.

Fictional character biography

Early life

Scott graduated from

Cassie.[a]

Becoming Ant-Man

In 2015, Scott is released to

Hank Pym
.

Hank reveals that he had previously operated as the superhero named

nuclear missile
over 30 years prior. Hank warns Scott that he could suffer a similar fate if he overrides his suit's regulator.

Sent to steal a device from the

Hydra agents at the event and detonate explosives, imploding the building. Cross dons the Yellowjacket and takes Cassie hostage to lure Scott into a fight. Scott overrides the regulator and shrinks to subatomic size to penetrate Cross' suit and sabotages it, killing Cross. Scott disappears into the Quantum Realm, but manages to reverse the effects and returns to the macroscopic
world. Out of gratitude, Paxton covers for Scott to keep him out of prison.

Recruited by Steve Rogers

In 2016, Scott is recruited by Wilson to help

Raft floating prison alongside Wilson, Barton, and Maximoff. They are later freed by Rogers and Romanoff, and Scott, alongside Barton, negotiate a deal with Ross and the U.S. government, receiving a term of house arrest
.

Working with the Wasp

In 2018, Scott learns he has unknowingly become

Ava Starr. Her father Elihas
, another of Hank's former partners, died along with his wife during an experiment that caused Starr's unstable state.

Foster reveals that Starr is dying and in constant pain as a result of her condition, and they plan to cure her using Janet's quantum energy. Believing that this will kill Janet, Hank refuses to help them and escapes with Hope, Scott, and the lab. Opening a stable version of the tunnel, Hank, Hope, and Scott are able to contact Janet, who gives them a precise location to find her but warns that they only have two hours before the unstable nature of the realm separates them. Scott returns home before Woo arrives, while Hank and Hope are arrested by the FBI, allowing Starr to take the lab. Scott breaks Hank and Hope out of custody and they recover the lab with Luis' help. Starr, Burch and his men attack, but Hank and Janet return safely from the Quantum Realm, and Janet voluntarily gifts some of her energy to Starr to temporarily stabilize her. Scott returns home once again, in time for a now suspicious Woo to release him from house arrest.

Later, using a smaller quantum tunnel built in Luis' van, Hank, Janet, Hope and Scott plan to harvest quantum energy to help Starr remain stable. However, while Scott is in the Quantum Realm, he suddenly becomes trapped.

Time Heist

In 2023, Scott is released from the Quantum Realm after a rat inadvertently activates the quantum tunnel and he finds himself in a storage warehouse. He soon learns about

Avengers Compound. He explains to Rogers and Romanoff that he experienced only five hours within the Quantum Realm, theorizing it could serve as a means of time travel. The trio visit Stark at his house to explain their plan for a "Time Heist" to steal the Infinity Stones from alternate timelines and use them to undo the Blip, but Stark refuses. They then meet with Bruce Banner
at a diner and he agrees to help them at the Compound. However, their initial attempts at time travel are unsuccessful, and Scott is turned into a baby, child, and elderly man. Stark later relents and arrives to assist.

Once

Cull Obsidian
during the battle. After Stark sacrifices his life to save them, Scott returns home and spends time with Hope and Cassie. About a week later, Scott, along with Hope and a restored Hank and Janet, attend Tony's funeral.

Encounter with Kang

In 2025, Scott has written and released a memoir titled Look Out for the Little Guy. In 2026, as he walks throughout the city, he gets recognized and greeted by strangers and when going to coffee shops or restaurants, store patrons or other people pay for him. He also has maintained a friendship with Woo. After a book signing at a bookstore, he gets notified by the SFPD and goes to the station to get Cassie, who had shrunken a police car while trying to help a Blip-displaced homeless camp. They then return to Pym's house and have dinner where Cassie reveals that she, Hope and Hank have been working together on a quantum satellite in the basement.

Upon opening the satellite, a portal opens and Hank and Janet are pulled into the Quantum Realm. Hope, Cassie, Scott also go in after them. Scott and Cassie are separated from the others and run across different species of beings that live in the quantum realm. Scott is told that someone is looking for him because of his association with Janet and is eventually caught by soldiers and Darren Cross, who had survived their previous encounter and became a mutated, cybernetically enhanced individual with an oversized head known as

Kang the Conqueror
.

Kang interrogates Scott, revealing he needs him to reclaim a multiversal power core that powers his ship which will allow Kang to escape the quantum realm. Scott initially refuses, but later makes a deal with Kang in order to spare Cassie's life. While trying to get the multiversal core, Scott meets many other variants of himself. Scott, with the help of Hope, shrinks the engine down to its normal size.

Kang forcefully takes the engine from Scott without giving back Cassie, breaking their deal, and begins to try to make his escape. After Scott and Hope try to fight back, Kang knocks them out. Hank shows up with ants that have lived in the quantum realm and as a result have grown much smarter with their tech. Scott, Hope, and Hank then make their way to Kang's empire to try to prevent him from escaping and to save Cassie.

Scott engages into a brief fight with Kang until the ants swarm Kang, allowing Scott to have enough time to stop the ship from powering up. Janet is able to open a portal for them to escape, but before Scott can make it through he is confronted by Kang. Kang overpowers Scott and nearly kills him, but is saved by Hope and the two of them knock Kang into the engine, seemingly killing him. Scott and Hope then make their way through the portal and out the quantum realm.

Days later, Scott returns to normal life, but becomes paranoid and thinks back to when Kang said he was preventing something worse from happening and begins to question if Kang is really dead or if he may have accidentally caused something worse to happen, only for him to happily shrug it off.

Alternate versions

Other versions of Lang are depicted in the alternate realities of the MCU multiverse where they are also portrayed by Paul Rudd.

Zombie outbreak

In an alternate 2018, following

Wakanda
.

1602

In an alternate 1602, Lang,

Time Stone
, they learned that Rogers was the cause of the incursion. Carter used the Stone to send him back which also caused Lang and the others to return to their respective universes.

Probability Storm

In 2026, Earth-616 Scott Lang, is brought back into the Quantum Realm and is tasked by

Baskin Robbins
employee, and another Lang in giant form spaghettifying.

Concept, creation and casting

The character of Ant-Man was originally created by

Cassandra "Cassie" Lang from a heart condition.[4] Reforming from his life of crime, Scott soon took on a full-time career as Ant-Man with the encouragement of Hank Pym.[5] He became an affiliate of the Fantastic Four,[6]
and later became a full-time member of the Avengers.

In the mid-2000s,

Merrill Lynch, allowing them to independently produce ten films, including Ant-Man. Edgar Wright had begun developing a live-action film based on the Marvel Comics superhero Ant-Man with Joe Cornish in 2006.[8] However, in May 2014, Wright and Marvel Studios issued a joint statement announcing that Wright had exited the movie due to creative differences.[9] According to Wright, he had been hired as writer-director but became unhappy when Marvel wanted to write a new script. In 2017, he said: "The most diplomatic answer is I wanted to make a Marvel movie but I don't think they really wanted to make an Edgar Wright movie ... having written all my other movies, that's a tough thing to move forward. Suddenly becoming a director for hire on it, you're sort of less emotionally invested and you start to wonder why you're there, really."[10]

ComicCon
, for Ant-Man.

Wright was replaced by

Danny Ocean from Ocean's Eleven, saying, "He's a guy trying to create a new life for himself and find redemption". Rudd signed a multi-film contract with Marvel, with Feige saying it was "three [films]-plus-plus to appear in other things".[13]

Characterization

The character's first onscreen appearance finally came in 2015, with the release of

Darren Cross / Yellowjacket
.

In

Sokovia Accords. During the ensuing battle, he reveals that not only can he shrink using the Pym Particles, but he can also grow to giant-sized proportions, although doing so puts great stress on his body. Ant-Man director Peyton Reed had discussed the character and the way that the Ant-Man production had shot certain sequences with the Russo brothers, saying, "As we were doing [Ant-Man] and we were in post and they were getting ready to head out to Atlanta to do Civil War, we had a lot of conversations ... It's important because there's this continuity that has to happen in this universe".[20] On the decision to have Scott grow in size to become Giant-Man in the airport battle, Feige said, "It was just a great idea to turn the tide of the battle in a huge, shocking, unexpected way. We have a lot of ideas for [Ant-Man and the Wasp], none of which are contingent upon revealing Giant-Man, so we thought this would be the fun, unbelievable unexpected way to do that".[21] Anthony Russo added that the transformation was the continuation of Scott's character arc from Ant-Man, saying "He's just really impressed with Captain America, he just wants to deliver and he figures out a way to deliver where he might actually tear himself in half but he's willing to do it and it works".[22] At the beginning of Spider-Man: Homecoming, it is shown that Peter Parker shot video of the Berlin Airport fight, including a glimpse of Ant-Man in his giant form from a different angle.[23]

Rudd next reprised his role as Ant-Man in

Bill Foster. Rudd was interested in Scott being a regular person rather than "innately heroic or super", driven by his desire to be a responsible parent.[28] In the post-credits scene, while trying to collect quantum particles from the quantum realm, he is trapped there after Janet, Hank and Hope disappear because of Thanos' actions in Avengers: Infinity War
.

Rudd reprised his role in Avengers: Endgame.[29] In a key scene in the film, in which attempts to send Scott through time instead drastically change his age, Scott is portrayed by twins Bazlo and Loen LeClair as a baby, by Jackson A. Dunn at age 12, and by Lee Moore at age 93.[30] This was Moore's final film before his death in August 2018.[31] Markus and McFeely explained that adding Scott helped with implementing time travel into the film, saying, "we had access to him in the second movie, and the fact that he was bringing a whole subset of technology that did have something to do with a different concept of time was like a birthday present".[32]

In November 2019, it was reported Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is to be helmed again by Peyton Reed with Paul Rudd expected to return as Ant-Man/Scott Lang.[33][25]

In the comics, Hank Pym's Ant-Man is a founding member of the Avengers, whereas in the MCU, Pym is initially distrustful of the Avengers, Stark in particular. No iteration of Ant-Man becomes involved with the Avengers in any capacity until Scott teams up with Steve Rogers during the events of Captain America: Civil War, and Scott does not become an official Avenger until the events of Avengers: Endgame. Furthermore, in MCU continuity, Stark and Bruce Banner, rather than Pym, create Ultron.

To get in shape for the role, Rudd worked with trainers and cut alcohol, fried foods, and carbohydrates out of his diet.[34] Rudd stated that in preparation for his role, he "basically didn't eat anything for about a year ... I took the Chris Pratt approach to training for an action movie. Eliminate anything fun for a year and then you can play a hero".[35]

In Captain America: Civil War, Rudd's suit "is streamlined and more high-tech" than the one seen in Ant-Man.[36]

Reception

Ant-Man suit at a McDonald's
restaurant.

The consensus of review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reads, "Led by a charming performance from Paul Rudd, Ant-Man offers Marvel thrills on an appropriately smaller scale – albeit not as smoothly as its most successful predecessors."[37] Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter remarked, "Although the story dynamics are fundamentally silly and the family stuff, with its parallel father-daughter melodrama, is elemental button-pushing, a good cast led by a winning Paul Rudd puts the nonsense over in reasonably disarming fashion."[38]

For Ant-Man and the Wasp, the critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes reads, "A lighter, brighter superhero movie powered by the effortless charisma of Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly, Ant-Man and The Wasp offers a much-needed MCU palate cleanser."

Rolling Stone, gave the film 3 out of 4 stars and praised Rudd and Lilly,[41] as did Manohla Dargis at The New York Times, who praised Rudd, and felt Lilly found "her groove" in the film,[42] while Stephanie Zachareck, writing for Time, thought the film had reasonably fun action and stand-out moments between Rudd and Abby Ryder Fortson as daughter Cassie, but felt the focus on Lilly as a better hero than Rudd was "just checking off boxes in the name of gender equality."[43]

Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times also praised the cast, especially Rudd and Fortson,[44] while Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post called the film "instantly forgettable" and criticized its plot, but still found the film enjoyable, particularly praising Rudd along with the action and effects.[45]

Accolades

Year Film Award Category Result Ref.
2015 Ant-Man Teen Choice Awards Choice Summer Movie Star: Male Won [46]
2016 Critics' Choice Awards Best Actor in an Action Movie Won [47]
Saturn Awards Best Actor Won [48]
MTV Movie Awards Best Hero Won [49]
2019 Ant-Man and the Wasp Teen Choice Awards Choice Action Movie Actor Won [50]
Avengers: Endgame
2023 Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania MTV Movie & TV Awards Best Hero Won [51]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ As depicted in Ant-Man (2015).

References

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External links