There have been some infamous instances of MCU movies being changed thanks to test screening reactions — like when Loki’s Avengers: Age of Ultron cameo had to be removed because early audiences were convinced that meant he was the secret brains behind Ultron. It turns out that Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was the victim of a similar situation, with a major Ant-Man and the Wasp plot point left on the cutting room floor because it was apparently “confusing” viewers.
While speaking to Backstory Magazine, screenwriter Jeff Loveness revealed that Janet Van Dyne’s Quantum powers originally factored into Quantumania, as Michelle Pfeiffer’s Wasp would have even developed “phasing powers” alongside her healing skills:
“Janet’s got obviously those healing properties, but I looked it as more of like, less healing, and more of like, ‘Oh, she’s got a bit of that inter-dimensionality phasing as well, and she was able to almost like stabilize Ava.’ We wrote that. It was in there, and I think it just it was just confusing the viewers in our test screenings like, ’Wait, she has phasing powers?’”
It’s unclear why audiences were so confused by this as Loveness went on to add that Janet’s power-upgrade was even perfectly well explained within the film itself, as she would’ve had a Captain Marvel-alike moment that gifted her additional abilities:
“A little bit. That was kind of it. And it came from the core, actually, when she touches it, and steals it from Kang, and they’re in that big fight scene. When she blows the core, and she’s like grabbing for it, that almost like gave her those powers, almost in the Captain Marvel way, like getting that raw energy kind of destabilized her hands. And then when Scott [Lang] going down there into the eye of the storm kind of destabilized him, and split him off into all those variations…”
Needless to say, the fact that Janet was depowered, leaving her arc in Ant-Man 2 completely open-ended, because of test screening viewers getting unnecessarily muddled is not going down well with the hardcore fans.
“It’s so painfully obvious that this movie got botched up in post,” decried one commenter.
Is The Marvels going to be botched too if audiences haven’t seen WandaVision?
And would fans have preferred the original, untampered version of the film?
To be fair, though, taking on board “the opinions of a few random people” is kinda the whole point of test screenings.
And these audiences have to be casual fans in order to reflect general movie-goers.
If you’re still wanting an explanation for what the heck happened to Janet’s powers, though, this compelling headcanon may just do the trick.
And, you know what, maybe the test audiences were right about this scene.
Some days we really wish Marvel Studios made “Snyder Cuts” of its own movies…