Jonathan Majors is set to appear in the upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania as Kang the Conqueror, a villain that’s prepped to loom large over the Marvel Cinematic Universe for the next few years.
During a recent interview with CinePop, Majors was asked what he would be drawing inspiration from when it comes to his performance as Kang the Conqueror, a character that will essentially act as the next “big bad” of the MCU. According to Majors, he did look at a handful of past MCU villains, including the likes of Ultron and Thanos.
“It’s funny, because I did go through and I did look at Ultron, I looked at Loki, I looked at Thanos,” said Majors. “And I had an idea of, just for me, what I wanted to bring to the MCU through Kang. And there’s a certain requirement that has to happen. I think Ultron, Loki, and Thanos, I think those would be the quintessential baddies or anti-heroes. They all had very interesting qualities to them, and some of them shared qualities, which is just a necessity for taking up the mantle. And so once I took those out and put those in the Kang soup, I then looked at, ‘What is it we need for this time period?’”
Majors also discussed what it means to be a “big bad” villain in this generation, and talked about how, since so many different people will be watching these films, it’s important to find a way to represent “so many things,” and connect with a lot.
“Our generation, what we represent, what is a big bad to us,” Majors said. “What are our children going to see? What are our partners going to see? What are our leaders going to see? What is it that our zeitgeist, quote unquote, needs? What are we conjuring up? What’s in the unconscious of our time now? And Marvel has the, in my opinion, the largest platform in entertainment. And so to bring the big bad, the big bad has to represent so many things and has to be connected to so many things. So I read the newspaper, I looked at history books… I talked to people, I look at my child, talk to my partner. What is it we’re afraid of in this time? What is it that’s scaring us? Because Kang has to be… any big bad is a manifestation of our deepest insecurities as a society.”
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is set to premiere on February 17, 2023.