SPOILER ALERT: This article contains some SPOILERS for the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well as the upcoming ‘Luke Cage’ Netflix series. Proceed with caution!
“We’re alive, and we’re still working, motherf—ers!” Sharon Stone defiantly declared at a gathering involving actresses of a certain age. Stone met with the likes of Jane Fonda and Alfre Woodard to discuss working in Hollywood once females pass the age of portraying the nubile ingenue love interests in films. Stone, who is 58, made her name as a femme fatale in the classic thriller ‘Basic Instinct’ before going on to win a Golden Globe for her role in the Martin Scorsese film ‘Casino’.
Now both she and Woodard are set to make an impression on younger folks in different Marvel projects. Woodard had a cameo in ‘Captain America: Civil War’ as Miriam but has a much more substantial role coming up in Netflix’s ‘Luke Cage’ on which she will play Mariah Dillard (who it was revealed IS in fact a villain, despite the way she may come across at first). (If you needed further proof that the Marvel movies and TV shows were separate entities, there you go.)
Stone is much more coy about her involvement in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. About a month ago, she let slip:
“I’m just doing a wee part in a Marvel movie, upcoming, and I can’t tell, because you know, you have to sign confidentiality agreements.”
She recently opened up during this summit and it was revealed:
Stone has been cast as a superhero — she’ll only reveal that her secret power is heat — in a yet-to-be-named movie, also for Marvel.
Heat, huh? Well that narrows things down somewhat, but some of the most prominent heat-based characters are licensed out to 20th Century Fox, like teenage mutant Firestar or Frankie Raye, a.k.a. Nova, a ‘Fantastic Four’ character connected to Galactus.
Who is Stone playing? I’m sticking with my original guess: Janet Van Dyne. Janet, the wife of Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and mother of Hope (Evangeline Lily) was an early experimenter with Hank’s size-changing powers and was believed to be dead after shrinking out of existence. But as we learned in ‘Ant-Man’ there may be more to that than we expected as the film revealed the existence of a Microverse, sort of a parallel dimension that can only be accessed by shrinking smaller than believed possible.
We already know that Hope will become The Wasp in ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ but in the comics, Janet was the first Wasp and a founder of The Avengers. She even came up with the name! She deserves better treatment in the films than to be a discarded cameo. Perhaps ‘Ant-Man’ was just the set up and that Janet will have a bigger role in the sequel.
And let’s not gloss over the fact that this would be a meta re-teaming of Stone and Michael Douglas who played lovers in ‘Basic Instinct’!
You may be wondering about the “heat” comment. Well, The Wasp can fire energy “stings” which could certainly be described as being hot, right?
That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it, just because it sounds like such a brilliant idea. But there are thousands of Marvel characters and Stone could be playing any one of them. It’s not unusual for Marvel to tweak characters when they transition from the comics page to the big screen. There are even characters in the films that don’t exist in the comics. So anything is possible.
What do you think? Do you want to see Stone as Janet Van Dyne? Or would you prefer she play a different character?
‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ directed by Peyton Reed, starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lily and Michael Douglas (and maaaaaaybe Sharon Stone) hits theaters on July 6, 2018.
Source: AARP
