The film's director, Peyton Reed, says Marvel's smallest superhero (pictured) has always had a bit of an inferiority complex; Disney chief Bob Iger gave a preview this week of the long-in-the-works resort and theme park; Kristina Wong is out to destroy stereotypes of Asian women.
How Disney plans to lure tourists to Shanghai
This week, Bob Iger — head of the Walt Disney Company — revealed some of the key elements of Shanghai Disney Resort, the massive Chinese development that’s been 16 years and $5.5 billion in the making. It’s still not clear exactly when Shanghai Disneyland will open to the public next year, but Julie Makinen, Beijing Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times, was able to get some details on the development.
When Makinen joined us on The Frame, we asked her about how Disney will approach the branding of their new resort, the place of Disney characters in Chinese culture, and why "Tron" is the most anticipated attraction at Shanghai Disneyland.
Interview Highlights:
Bob Iger came to China to unveil some specifics of the new $5.5 billion resort, and one of the things that struck us back here is that he wanted the park to be “authentically Disney and distinctly Chinese.” What does that actually mean?
There’s no big roller coaster or anything. You’re not going to see a Monkey King roller coaster that’s out of character for Disney. But they’re trying in subtle ways to bring out the Chinese flavor. They’ve ditched Main St., U.S.A. and instead put in something called Mickey Avenue, which will be an introduction to Disney characters. They built a big garden with a tea house restaurant. So you'll see little flourishes like that.
I’m curious about theme parks in general in China — what are the differences and how popular are they compared to what we are used to here in the states?
They're kind of the equivalent to a local American theme park that has generic rides, that after a couple of years it’s sort of a tired place to go. Disney is really going to be a notch above in terms of branding and service and scale, but they've got some domestic competitors that are spending lots of money and will be coming out with new parks in the next couple of years that will really challenge them.
I was struck by a couple of things. "Tron," a movie that fizzled here and didn’t even do well enough to have a sequel, is going to have a ride devoted to it as part of this new attraction. Is that right?
Yes. Actually, "Tron" is probably the most anticipated roller coaster at this new park. It’s going to be Disney’s fastest coaster with top speeds of about 60 mph, their designer said yesterday, and it's going to have a much more open feel because you’re sitting on a motorcycle-type device. So I think they’re going to surround that less-strong brand with some very strong brands including Star Wars and Marvel.
What's the opinion on Disney and their characters like?
I think the Disney brand here is actually quite familiar, as Disney’s history goes back a long way. In 1938, "Snow White" premiered in Shanghai and it was a big deal, and over the years, Disney cartoons have been among the few foreign cartoons that have been allowed to run on TV.
Films like "Frozen," "Avengers" and "Big Hero 6" were all quite big here, but there is some confusion about how extensive the Disney brand is. I think, for example, some people think "Transformers" is a Disney brand. And Disney’s universe has been growing over the last couple years, so maybe some of that confusion is understandable.
Directing 'Ant-Man' a dream for self-proclaimed comic book nerd Peyton Reed
Marvel's Ant-Man was one of the original members of The Avengers, but he never quite managed to match the popularity of the other superheroes on the squad, like Thor, Ironman and Captain America.
Perhaps the powers of shrinking and controlling insects weren't as impressive as flight, superhuman strength and immortality.
As a fan of Marvel Comics since childhood, director Peyton Reed has a deep understanding and respect for Ant-Man's place in history, regardless of his diminutive size.
But unlike other Marvel films, which now run well over two hours and cost close to $300 million to produce, "Ant-Man" was filmed to be a lighter, faster Marvel movie at about half the typical Marvel budget.
When Peyton Reed joined us on The Frame, host John Horn asked him about the influence of classic heist movies, making Ant-Man's shrinking power seem real, and that hilarious scene with Thomas the Tank Engine.
Interview Highlights:
Let's talk about the theme or the style of "Ant-Man," which contains elements of both physical comedy and tropes from heist movies.
The score is by Christoph Beck, and I had first worked with him on my first movie, "Bring It On." For various reasons, mostly scheduling, we've never been able to work together again until "Ant-Man," and we talked a lot about it being a big, muscular orchestral score, but it also wanted to be jazzy and feel like a heist movie.
I also was really adamant about having a theme — one of my favorite movies growing up was Richard Donner's "Superman: The Movie," with that amazing John Williams theme. So I was really determined to do a recognizable theme for "Ant-Man," and one of the first things I said to Chris was, "Can this still be done in 2015?" His score for the movie is spectacular, I love it.
There's a lot of physical comedy, which was just inherent in the story. Paul Rudd is such a great guy to have play Ant-Man, because he really is the eyes and ears of the audience — he reacts to these very strange situations and powers the way that you or I would if we found this suit. And that's one of the things that makes the movie work so well.
When you're having conversations with your director of photography, Russell Carpenter, what are the important things that you're talking about, the look and feel of this film visually?
The first question I had for Russell was, "Hey, can I see your Oscar?" [laughs] We had a lot of philosophical discussions about what it would look like if you could actually shrink, things like, "Okay, when Ant-Man shrinks, is the camera shrinking with him?" We also talked about how light would play — Russell would take a little pen light out of his bag and he'd be like, "When I hold this light over the table, at our size it only makes a little dot of light. But if I'm an ant, it's like a giant sun!"
We talked about what it would sound like, and we talked about dust. There's a lot of dust in the air, and when you shrink down they become these pretty large-scale dust motes, so we wanted all these visual cues to make it as photorealistic as possible.
I brought my 10-year-old son to a screening of "Ant-Man" and he almost hurt himself laughing so hard at a sequence involving Thomas the Tank Engine. Where did Thomas come in in the design of this film? Did you inherit that, or was that something you cooked up on your own?
There was always a train set in Cassie's bedroom, and I also loved from the get-go that this was a superhero movie where the third act battle takes place in a little girl's bedroom. I remember that, as we were prepping and getting ready to shoot, we'd been in contact with the Thomas the Tank Engine people.
We needed the rights to Thomas for that scene, so there were definite things that Thomas was allowed to do and not do — he has a very specific rider about food he wants in his trailer. [laughs] There was seriously a thing that was like, No one can be tied to a track and have Thomas run over them. Thomas does not run over people.
You inherited this movie from Edgar Wright, who also shares screenplay credit. What was the tone that Edgar was after, and do you think it was consistent with the tone that you're after?
The comedic tone of the movie was always there from those early drafts of the script. When I came on, it was concurrent with Adam McKay and Paul Rudd coming on to write the revisions of the script, and we had certain things that we loved in the Ant-Man comics that had not found their way into those early drafts that we wanted to add.
We also really wanted to strengthen the character of Hope, played by Evangeline Lilly, because in those original comics, Ant-Man and Wasp are really a team. And I didn't know how we were going to do it, but I really wanted Wasp to be a presence in the movie.
I really wanted to strengthen the emotionality of the movie, because at the core it's two fathers and their daughters, and there's a real, compelling story there to be told, and it's a story that's inherent to the heist movie structure. I love the hero's dilemma being that he wants to be a part of his daughter's life, and that's his journey. He goes on an insanely crazy path to get there, but that's part of the fun of the movie.
Comedian and performance artist Kristina Wong targets stereotypes of Asian women
Kristina Wong is known for pushing buttons with her comedy and performance art.
For her graduate thesis at UCLA, she created a fake mail-order website where Asian brides — instead of being stereotypically “obedient” — were shown dominating and beating up their white husbands.
Wong wants her art to create a discussion on how Asian females are depicted in culture and the media. On July 19, she’ll perform at Step and Repeat — the music and performance art event at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary.
Wong spoke to The Frame about making white men feel uncomfortable, performing the same show for eight years, and why she chose comedy and performance art to get her message across:
Interview Highlights:
You're dressing up as a large vagina for your performance at MOCA this Sunday?
Yeah. I actually made it for a short film called "Asian Vaginas and Racism." That film was to address what I often hear people say: "I'm not racist. I once dated a black guy," or "I'm not racist. I once dated an Asian woman." And sort of taping into the logic of that.
When people are watching your act, who's more nervous? Asian women or caucasian men?
Both.
Is that the point?
Yeah. I kind of like watching white men squirm. Actually, I think that's an aphrodisiac for me. I kind of enjoy it 'cause I've been made so uncomfortable in so many situations. It's kind of fun to pull reversals.
What kinds of situations are you talking about?
Well, when I was in college, I remember going to parties and I'd have men come up to me and say, "I love Asian women." I was like, "Is this the '70s? What is this?"
What's an answer to that?
I don't know. I don't know what to do when people say, '"Asian people are so quiet and studious." I don't know what to do with that as a compliment. Like, You're a well behaved dog.
A lot of your comedy and performance art takes those expectations and subverts them.
It's the greatest disguise for a comedian to walk into a room or a space, and I play a lot in public space. For many years, I was crashing the Miss Chinatown Pageant as a fake Miss Chinatown named Fanny Wong, Former Miss Chinatown Second Runner-Up.
Playing with this idea that I'm this harmless, non-threatening person in the room and then, boom! — explode like a bomb on everyone. And I don't get reprimanded the same way — in ways it's like, Oh, that was so cute. Sometimes people are very offended, but they're not as quick to usher me out of the room because they're not quite sure what just happened.
Why did you decide comedy and performance art were the ways to tell your stories?
You know, I never thought of myself as a comedian. Originally, I watched other performance art as I got out of college in the year 2000 and I loved the idea that someone could jump around on a mattress and cover themselves in jelly and have public therapy. So I was like, Yeah! I want to do that for a living, not really understanding how difficult it would be to make a living at it.
The more and more I would do performance art, the more and more I found myself satirizing the performance artists around me, and I was beginning to be introduced more and more as a comedian.
You did a performance piece called "Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," for eight, nine years?
Eight years, starting in 2006. Can you imagine doing this exact same radio show every day? It really messed with me, and in it I play a character named Kristina Wong, an overachieving, very enthusiastic character who is setting out to save all Asian-American women from depression and suicide in an 85-minute theater show. That is an impossible task.
You need at least 90 minutes.
[laughs] That extra five wraps it all up. And Kristina insists that the subject matter of depression and suicide is all fiction — it's all based on research done on other women outside of the Wong family. In the Asian-American community, there's so much invisibility already that it's hard for people to understand that Asian-American women could possibly ever have problems, because aren't we just these cute, studious, non-threatening people?
But the character Kristina Wong falls apart during the show, and the ability to hold the show together as this fiction piece falls apart and it becomes very clear that she needs to get help. The struggle of that show was like, Wow, I'm a working artist but this show about depression and suicide is ironically killing me.
I began to feel like I was a substitute for a social worker, and I had a very tortured relationship with the show. I wasn't sure if I was doing enough, so I was becoming the character in that way.