One of the most shocking moments in Avengers history came when Hank Pym struck his wife Janet during an argument, and that's something which has haunted the character ever since. In The Ultimates, an alternate universe version Hank took things even further when he attacked Janet Van Dyne with bug spray, something which led to him receiving a brutal beatdown from Captain America.
During a recent interview, Ant-Man and The Wasp director was asked why that isn't touched on in the sequel as it would go at least some way in further explaining Hank and Hope's fractured relationship in the first movie. Ultimately, it sounds like it was simply too dark a subject for the MCU to tackle.
"There’s never been an onus on us in the MCU movies to have any real fidelity to specific stuff in the canon," the filmmaker explains. "Fans may want certain things but it really never occurred to us from the very beginning to be a part of it, even as far back as Edgar [Wright] and Joe [Cornish]’s original drafts for the first Ant-Man." He went on to add, "that wasn’t the Hank Pym that we wanted to tell."
The Wasp actress Evangeline Lilly elaborated on that, by explaining the subject of Hank's past was at least touched on before they started shooting the first movie. "The issue of the domestic violence that existed in the original comic books was something that was talked about at length before they started the first Ant-Man film," she confirmed before adding the following: "Hope was estranged from her father, she hated her father and there was a very big question. I posed the question: Is part of that hatred to do with the fact that he was a drunk and he was violent towards her mother?"
Michael Douglas reiterated that point by noting that the franchise simply doesn't fit that darker interpretation of Hank Pym. "We seem to be going in a more humorous, comedic, familial sense. There is more than enough darkness to go around in the Ant-Man world so it may, but I don’t imagine it will happen that way." What do you guys think? Let us know your thoughts down below.
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