Ant-Man 2: Hank Pym’s New Lab Is a Portable Office Building

The shrinking structure prominently featured in several Ant-Man & The Wasp trailers and TV spots is apparently Hank Pym's newest office building, as revealed by Marvel Studios' production designer Shepherd Frankel. Helmed by Peyton Reed, the forthcoming sequel will see the return of Paul Rudd's shrinking hero and the debut of Marvel's first female co-headlining superhero in Evangeline Lily's The Wasp. But, while the two takes on the lead roles in the movie, Michael Douglas' Pym's is also expected to play a major role in the narrative.

Tackling another character-driven plot, Ant-Man & The Wasp will center on the team's excursion into the Quantum Realm as they attempt to rescue Michelle Pfeiffer's Janet van Dyne - the original Wasp - who has been trapped there for decades. Considering that it's his wife's life that's at stake, Hank is understandably eager to partake in this brand new mission, so much so that he even created a whole building that can shrink.

Speaking with Screen Rant and other news outlets during the Ant-Man & The Wasp set visit last year, Shepherd Frankel talked about the thought process of designing Pym's office space. As it turns out, the idea to create a shrinking building (other than the fact that it perfectly ties into the capabilities of the Pym Particles) comes from the creative team's eagerness to give Hank a laboratory that's very different from Tony Stark's, as well as the Avengers' facility.

"So, one of the coolest things about his technology is he can shrink, and -- We thought it'd be cool for him to hide in plain sight. So when we were talking about what kind of facility he has to service his storyline, which is the storyline of the movie, which is to reconnect his family, we thought, let's have a -- We, he needs a facility to do this, and we don't want it to be your average lab, or your Tony Stark lab. We really want to pull and draw from the Hank Pym that we know, whose kind of heyday was in the '70s and '80s, when he was an Avenger, and when he was with S.H.I.E.L.D. But his loyalty is to science, physics, And engineering. And we know him as a scientist, physicist, and engineer. We thought he could create a facility that has everything he needs inside of it, but he can hide in plain sight.

"So the best way to hide in plain sight is we're coming up with laboratories, it gets very S.H.I.E.L.D.-like, it gets very Tony Stark-like. It gets very Avenger-y. And we thought, wait, that's not our storyline. How does he hide in plain sight? And we started talking about the buildings that you drive by everyday that you never notice. The places you go into to get your accounting done, and you're, like, wait! Is this my dental? Is this my dentist office or my dermatologist? Like, what is this? Wait, was this building always here? And we thought that's a very cool way of create a building that you forget is there, and you don't -- And you're, like, was that building always there? I don't believe it. So Hank Pym as a engineer, the idea is that he's created a building that he can use his shrink tech on. And shrink it and put it in a parking lot, and also have it move when he wants to move it.

"So this is an example of what that building is, and this is an example of things that are going on inside of his laboratory. So it's a multi-floored building that is basically a computer and it's an engineered event to service the stuff that he has inside of it. And you can see Hank building that facility on his workbench. So he would shrink it and grow it, shrink it and grow it, have his assistants of -- his army of ants helping create this world."

Not only is a portable work space convenient considering that Hank and Hope are on the run in Ant-Man & The Wasp, it also fits within the shrinking heroes' code of hiding in plain sight, as Frankel mentioned. Although it appears that someone else also knows about its existence as trailers show Walton Goggins' low-level criminal character, Sonny Burch, trying to snatch it away. It's interesting to know when Hank exactly created a properly working building that can shrink at a push of a button. There was no mention of it whatsoever during 2015's Ant-Man movie, as he mainly worked in a secret laboratory in his San Francisco home. Furthermore, it's curious as to why he would suddenly need such a huge working space when he seemed to be perfectly fine working in his own house.

While Ant-Man & The Wasp previews haven't explicitly shown the interior of the building, it's safe to assume that the said structure houses the Quantum Realm exploratory vessel and is the setting for the titular characters' fight with the movie's main villain, Ghost, played by Hannah John-Kamen. If the structure survives the events of the upcoming film, it would definitely a cool new hangout space for the good guys in the MCU.