Marvel Studios, since its release of "Iron Man" in 2008, has always been the company that plays the long game. In October, the studio showed its hand by unveiling the slew of new movies and heroes it will bring to life between now and 2019. Marvel's "Phase Three" of connected movies begins in 2016 with "Captain America: Civil War." This has led many MCU devotees to wonder why exactly "Ant-Man" is getting such prominent placement as the anchor to Phase Two.
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige explained why he decided to finish things up with the Paul Rudd-led superhero origin story. "It really is the movie that closes out Phase Two. Phase One ended with Avengers. So some people thought that Phase Two would end with an Avengers film," Feige said. "But the truth is, there is so much in 'Ant-Man': introducing a new hero, introducing a very important part of technology in the Marvel universe, the Pym particles.
Ant-Man getting on the Avengers' radar in this film and even - this is the weirdest part, you shouldn't really talk about it because it won't be apparent for years - but the whole notion of the quantum realm and the whole notion of going to places that are so out there, they are almost mind-bendingly hard to fathom. It all plays into Phase Three."
Later in the interview, he added that the existence of different dimensions is "essentially the whole crux" of Doctor Strange and that what we see from Ant-Man's Quantum Realm "is essentially the tip of the iceberg for the stuff in Strange." While Kevin Feige didn't explicitly say it during our interview, there is an explanation how Ant-Man shrinking down too small winds up leaving him in what is essentially an alternate dimension. It all comes down to the fact that when Ant-Man goes down to insect size, it's actually physically impossible that he is reducing his mass. Instead, there is an idea that what the hero is really doing is sending elements of himself into an alternate dimension (or, as we can call it, "the Quantum Realm"). When he shrinks down to be small enough to fit between molecules, what essentially happens is that more of his physical existence enters the Quantum Realm than what is in our world - which is what we see portrayed in the third act of the film.
