Ant-Man’s Paul Rudd says Kang a bigger deal than Thanos

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Up to now, Paul Rudd’s Marvel hero Ant-Man hasn’t had to battle super-villains looking to end life as we know it.

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Rudd’s Scott Lang is just a regular guy, who takes on the low-stakes baddies and acts as comic relief as he helps out the Avengers from time to time. When he’s fought alongside Captain America and Iron Man, he’s just the wisecracking fanboy who was once turfed from his gig selling ice cream at Baskin-Robbins.

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That all changes with his third solo outing, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which is now in theatres.

As the film that kicks off Phase 5 of the ongoing Marvel Cinematic Universe, the tiniest Avenger gets to be the first one who goes up against Kang the Conqueror — the villain who is about to unleash a world of terror in a multiverse saga that will culminate with 2025’s Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and 2026’s Avengers: Secret Wars.

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“Knowing how big of a deal Kang is, it’s kind of exciting that the first Avenger he’s going to have to face is Ant-Man,” Rudd, 53, quips in an early evening video call from Los Angeles.

“As much as I love the first two movies, we were more of a minor chord in the MCU. Even though we were a part of it, it wasn’t like we were facing any Thanos-like threat. Yet, now, in the third instalment, we’re facing the biggest baddie that anybody has ever faced.”

As the Peyton Reed-directed Quantumania opens up, Scott is plugging his new memoir, Look Out for the Little Guy, living his post-blip life with the theme to Welcome Back, Kotter acting as his go-to music while he strolls the streets of San Francisco.

But his idyllic existence his thrown into disarray when Scott; his daughter, Cassie (newcomer Kathryn Newton); his girlfriend, Hope (Evangeline Lilly); and Hope’s parents, Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne (Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer), inadvertently open a portal into the Quantum Realm where they meet a new antagonist (and an old acquaintance of Janet’s) looking for a way out.

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Kang (played by a menacing Jonathan Majors) is a time-travelling madman, who in the comics has battled the Fantastic Four and the Avengers. After his introduction in the first season of Loki, where he appeared as the variant of the character He Who Remains, Kang is poised to be the next Thanos-like threat that will loom large over the MCU for the next several years.

But Rudd suggests Kang is a bigger deal than Josh Brolin’s Thanos, who in Marvel’s first wave of film’s gathered Infinity Stones with the goal of killing off half the universe.

“I think Kang might be a little bit more threatening than Thanos is — crazy as that sounds,” Rudd says. “Marvel fans know — and fans of the comics know — what Kang’s place is in Marvel history. He’s a very threatening figure.”

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After his introduction in Fantastic Four No. 19 in 1963, Kang, who was created by Marvel greats Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, became a force of evil with different versions of himself plaguing multiple timelines.

Following early screenings, Majors became Marvel’s “highest-testing villain.” The news doesn’t surprise Rudd, who thinks the character is a great follow-up to Thanos.

“Jonathan is such a skilled actor and he’s great in the movie,” he says. “I can’t imagine anyone else playing that character. He can be scary when he wants to be.”

But his confrontation with Kang was equaled by the challenge of spending most of the movie acting terrified alongside green-screen fakery and CGI make-believe.

“There was stuff going on in the quantum-scape where I had to just wonder what it would look like,” Rudd says with a grin.

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Of course, getting in shape was tad harder than it was when Rudd first started playing the Marvel hero nearly a decade ago.

“It becomes so time consuming,” he says, despite there being no shirtless scenes this time around. “All of the training and diet … then I had to try and keep doing that while we’re filming, which I did.”

Not that Rudd, who achieved heartthrob status after he made his acting debut as the charming Josh in 1995’s Clueless, is complaining.

“The actual filming of the film was a little more challenging than some other times,” the Marvel vet smiles. “But it’s OK. It’s doable and you do it.”

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is now playing in theatres.

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