Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, including the identity of M.O.D.O.K.!
M.O.D.O.K. is a character that Marvel fans have been wanting to see in the MCU for years. But when he finally showed up in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania last week, reactions were noticeably mixed. In the comics, M.O.D.O.K. was introduced as the alter-ego of George Tarleton, an A.I.M. technician whose head grew to extra-large proportions as a result of experiments on his brain. However, the movie re-imagined him as the new alias of Darren Cross, with Corey Stoll reprising his role from the original Ant-Man in 2015. Now, Stoll is officially breaking his silence on the villain’s franchise debut.
Stoll has been making the rounds discussing his MCU return with a host of different outlets, including Entertainment Weekly, with whom he shared that director Peyton Reed pitched the idea of him coming back as M.O.D.O.K. before Quantumania’s script was even written. But in a separate interview with Variety, he addressed the divided response to his take on the character. And while he understands the passion fans have for the source material, he also thinks the changes make sense.
“I think these characters are very close to a lot of people’s hearts,” said Stoll. “Everybody’s trying to make this jump from a two-dimensional, static image on page to live action, and some things have to change. Jeff Loveness, who wrote the script, and Peyton and Paul made a very strong choice to retcon — is that the word? — this new reason for M.O.D.O.K. to be. I think it really works. It certainly works in the context of Darren’s arc.”
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The general absurdity of M.O.D.O.K.’s appearance was all Stoll needed to know before signing on. But although he appears in a sizable chunk of Quantumania’s two-hour runtime, it doesn’t sound like he spent a lot of time on the set.
“I wasn’t there while they were actually doing principal photography, but I was there right before they started,” recalled Stoll. “We just had some tables and chairs set up with scripts. I had the dots on my face for the performance capture camera. We just went through the scene and then after we got to a place where we thought the scene was good, we’d get up on our feet and we just filmed the scenes. It was all really organic. It felt closer to a workshop of a new play than a $200 million movie.”
“I was there at the very beginning for two days,” continued Stoll. “And then they shot for, I don’t know, six months, and then I came back. In L.A., we did reshoots, and that was just one day. And then I did a lot of ADR. But yeah, it was very time efficient for me.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is now playing in theaters everywhere.
Were you happy to see Stoll return to the MCU as M.O.D.O.K.? Let us know in the comment section below!
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