Paul Rudd in Ant-Man. Photo / Supplied
"When kids walk out of the cinema, it'll be great if they're like, 'Ants are awesome!'" After landing the lead in Marvel Studios' latest superheroic offering Ant-Man, Paul Rudd didn't just have to improve his strength and fitness for its numerous fight scenes.
Cast as an ex-con who is endowed with the ability to shrink to an infinitesimal size, he also read up on the under-rated insects his character Scott Lang's controls telepathically. He learnt all about the various breeds and their inherent qualities.
"What's interesting is that people often discount ants," he says. "What I hope we accomplish with this movie is that people afterwards will have a newfound respect for them, which I now do. They're fascinating creatures that are not as powerless as you might think. The amount of what they can carry about is pretty impressive in relation to how big they are and their weight, and how they operate as a colony is something that we could maybe take a lesson from."
For New Jersey-born Rudd, best known for comedies like Knocked Up and Anchorman, Ant-Man would seem something of a departure, although the Marvel movies' trademark humorous tone is in keeping with his previous work. However, Rudd begs to differ. "When I'm playing a part, I'm not really thinking about genre or whether it's going to be dramatic, if there's just going to be action or if I'm going to tell some jokes and be funny as I don't compartmentalise it like that," he says. "In this film, I'm playing a guy who is dealing with whatever conflict he has in the same way that I would deal with any other part that I play in any other movie."
For several years, Rudd also enjoyed a recurring role as Bobby Newport in popular NBC sitcom Parks & Recreation, which significantly is also where Chris Pratt first cut his teeth before his bravura turn as Star Lord in last year's sleeper hit Guardians of the Galaxy helped turn him into one of the most in-demand actors of the moment. "It's like he's now the salty old vet and I'm the newcomer," he laughs. "I ran into him a while ago, when he'd already shot Guardians but it hadn't actually come out yet. I talked to him about what it's like working in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and how he prepared for it. We kept in touch after we started shooting Ant-Man, and it was really cool to talk to him about all this stuff."
With Rudd having done very little green screen performance in the past, Pratt was able to supply some useful tips about how to cope with the unusual demands of CGI. "One of the things he said that stuck with me was that when he saw Guardians, he was really overwhelmed because he'd finally seen what it actually looked like," he says. "Doing the motion capture was challenging because I hadn't done it before, and it was also tiring with all the dodging and flips that I had to do over and over again. You're having to imagine absolutely everything that you're doing, and I was doing all these sequences where I was meant to be running around with ants, which was a unique experience."
Having co-written the 2008 film Role Models, Rudd also helped revise Ant-Man's screenplay following the controversial departure last year of original director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead), who was subsequently replaced by Yes Man's Peyton Reed.
"We just wanted to get the script right and move it to a place where we would all feel like we were all on the same page," Rudd says. "All the while we used Edgar's script as the template of the story that we wanted to tell, and the dynamic and the spirit of it also came from there. We built on what Edgar did, so in the end it felt very much like a collaboration."
Wright's exit was also a blow to Michael Douglas, who plays revolutionary scientist Hank Pym, Scott Lang's predecessor as Ant-Man. "Edgar is a very talented guy and I was really pleased that he'd chosen me," he says, having been thrilled to be asked to appear in a superhero blockbuster in the first place.
"When my agent called me and said they were sending the script over, I was like 'Yes, finally!'" he laughs. "I've been waiting to play a part like this for a long time and it was kind of hurtful that nobody had asked me to do one of these films before now. Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito are two of my oldest friends and I asked them about the fun they had with their Joker and Penguin respectively. It's slightly theatrical and larger than life, and I was really looking forward to being in a big special effects movie."
Present at Ant-Man's London premiere despite the death of his mother, Diana Dill, last weekend, Douglas channelled his own views about fatherhood into not only Hank's turbulent relationship with his daughter Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) but also his even stormier rapport with Scott, whom he takes under his wing. "I've been very fortunate as I have an older son, who is 36, and now I have Dylan and Carys in my life," he says, referring to his two children with his second wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones.
"My career is now at the stage where I can spend a lot of time with them," he continues. "But having said that, I'm probably an old-fashioned kind of father. It's like I'm their father, I'm not their friend. I'm happy we get along but I don't make any special effort to be their buddy. Hank was probably very much like that, a strict disciplinarian. But he was at the crux of his career, so he didn't have so much time for his child, so Hope probably suffered from not enough parental guidance."
Ant-Man opens on Thursday.
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