Evangeline Lilly finally “gets” Hope Van Dyne thanks to Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania
It's her fourth Marvel movie, but Evangeline Lilly finally thinks she understands her character
Aux News Ant-Man
Female characters are often underserved in Marvel movies, serving as supporting characters who don’t always get to grow or have arcs like the male characters do even as their intelligence or general competence helps save the day in a way that the male characters couldn’t have done on their own. That’s one of the many reasons why Gwyneth Paltrow is completely justified in having no memory of being in Spider-Man: Homecoming, since it’s not like she gets to do anything in most Marvel movies other than “be right about something” and “politely smile at Tony Stark when he finally realizes she was right about something.”
Similarly, despite being in the middle of filming the fourth movie of her Marvel career, Evangeline Lilly says she’s just now getting a handle on what the deal with her character is. That comes from an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, during which Lilly excitedly noted that, after reading the script for Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, she had a “eureka moment” and told director Peyton Reed, “Oh my god, I think I finally get her.” (The “her” being Hope Van Dyne, a.k.a. The Wasp).
Lilly says that she’s hoping she’ll see “the difference” when filming is done and she can watch the finished film, but she adds that she doesn’t think anyone else will notice any change in her performance from one movie to another. “I think I’m a good bluffer,” she says, implying that she was just pretending to “get it” in the other two Ant-Man movies and that she at least know she “had a better handle on [Hope] in this one.”
It’s an interesting thing for her to bring up, since it’s sort of a running thread in the Ant-Man movies that Hope is much more well-suited (so to speak) to be a superhero than Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang. He gets to have an arc where he learns how to fight and become a better role model for his daughter, but she doesn’t get to do nearly as much stuff.
The second movie tried to rectify that, which is why it’s Ant-Man And The Wasp and not Ant-Man 2, and it sounds like she finally found something to latch on to while making this third movie.
104 Comments
You know there was this source material called “comic books” that already existed that might have helped speed up the process …
Great point, let’s all talk about our favourite classic Hope Van Dyne comics!
Well, I found the Red Queen an interesting idea but I’ve always liked alternate universe ideas from the What If …? comics and show to things like the TV show Fringe interesting because they really can cut loose in a way they can’t in the main universe.
I prefer Nadia from Unstoppable Wasp personally, but in the MCU it seems more likely that they’d just give any of those attributes or story elements to Hope or Cassie rather than make Nadia a character at all.
Eh, Hope predates Nadia, so you could make the argument that Hope is one of the rare instances where they ported a character from the MCU to 616 instead of the other way around. Though, as I double check my math, I see that they’re both just versions of a character from the MC2 continuity.Though you’re absolutely correct that Unstoppable Wasp was an absolute delight.
Smdh
Strangely enough, not all of us jumped onto the MCU train when it became fashionable and used to actually even buy their comics and other merchandise back in the days when Marvel was selling off everything that wasn’t nailed down in order to stave off bankruptcy.
One does not need to ever read comics in order to enjoy Marvel characters. Is as if.People can enjoy this things without your gatekeeping and weird elitism.
Yes, there’s certainly no way that anything I said could be construed as saying there’s this large active of source material she would have known that the MCU movies were once derived from that could have been voluntarily accessed in her own time if she wanted to that were in existence before the script for Ant-Man 3 was even thought of, let alone written.No, it was definitely “FBI, open up!” and then we burst into her house through the doors, windows and roof while smashing all the cakes and vases along the way before chaining her to a helicopter as it flew her away to an undisclosed location where she wasn’t allowed to leave until she’d read every since Hope appearance in every comic (both main and alternate universes) before we let her out. Only possible interpretation, you got me.I also still maintain that the Thanos/Thanos Wins 18 part limited series was better than Avengers: Endgame too, though.
“No, it was definitely “FBI, open up!” and then we burst into her house through the doors, windows and roof while smashing all the cakes and vases along the way before chaining her to a helicopter as it flew her away to an undisclosed location where she wasn’t allowed to leave until she’d read every since Hope appearance in every comic (both main and alternate universes) before we let her out. Only possible interpretation, you got me.”
This version of Hope van Dyne does not exist in the comics.
Good heavens, man. The poor woman doesn’t need to be put through that.
I said they were interesting times, not that they were good times.
You know, the evidence of you being Chinese is really stacking up.
Well, that doesn’t prove anything in and of itself. May you live in interesting times isn’t really a Chinese curse, none of the (scant) evidence supports that. They did find a Chinese expression that roughly translates to “Better to be a dog in a peaceful time than a man in a chaotic time.”, though…. wait.
and you know the Comics mean jack shit right? Toss them all away, throw them in a fire, forget about them. What exists in the comics has no bearing on what happens in the MCU. The writing, motivations, and character growth are all different for very obvious reasons.
THOUGH NOT DEFINITIVE AS ULTIMATELY THE MCU MOVES TO THE BEAT OF ITS (OR AT LEAST KEVIN’S) DRUM, THE COMICS CAN PROVIDE SOME IDEA OF CHARACTERISTICS THEY DRAW FROM TO FORMULATE THEIR DIRECTIONS WHICH ARE NOT ENTIRELY DISSIMILAR AND ALSO SO I HEAR ARE SOMETIMES DECENT READS IN THEIR OWN RIGHT.ALSO, THERE’S A CHANCE MY CAPS LOCK IS STUCK!
It’ll be nice to get to know (a new) teenage post-Blip Cassie, but Kathryn Newton has some big shoes to fill, because Abby Ryder Fortson was maybe the most adorable kid in the entire MCU. She steals almost every scene she’s in through both of those first two Ant-Man films.
That is the thing that makes me sad about the time jump; that little girl was so damn good (especially in the sequel) and I will miss her presence very much.
There’s never going to be any getting that little girl back. Abby is 13 now.
Wait they picked a third different Cassie? We already saw the 19 year old aged version in Endgame, played by Emma Fuhrmann.
Yep, and I didn’t know myself until I Googled. Fuhrmann wasn’t in very many scenes and didn’t have very many lines (although her presence at Tony Stark’s funeral was memorable) so I suppose they decided they needed something different in the new film.
When Scott hiked up his trashy street and met Cassie at home, it was kind of a big deal, in that short segment at least. I’m just surprised because the MCU is usually better at planning ahead than to pick a throwaway actress for the adult Cassie and then recast a “leading woman” type 2 years later.
I am so sad that she won’t to be in any more Marvel films because the moment she showed her infinite love for that creepy bunny doll and calling her dad “Grandma,” I was sold and she never disappoint.Maybe we’ll see her again as part of flashback recounting how she lived through 5 years of Decimation.
Have you seen Big Little Lies? Newton is quite good.
Ant-Man & The Wasp is my favorite MCU film, just putting that out there. Inventive action, fun characters, great jokes, and it’s one of the few MCU movies (including its predecessor) where the fate of the world isn’t on the line; it’s just about Hope/Hank trying to find Janet and Scott trying to not get caught evading house arrest.
That’s a take.
Not a bad take though, they showed their working.
Absolutely. It’s nowhere near the top of my MCU list, but film appreciation is subjective. I only get annoyed when people act like it’s patently obvious that a particular film is good/bad, and anyone arguing is just a fool. But, as you say, It’s-A-Shame argued their case and I’m glad they have a favourite.
I LIKE THIS or I DON’T LIKE THIS are both the dumbest fucking takes, but welcome to G/O Media commentators.
I love both antman movies, and a big reason is how much “smaller” the stakes are. Pun unavoidable. Plus all the things you said. I finally watched Black widow and the first 2/3 are GREAT. They’re also “smaller.” It’s a total fucking shame the third act has to make it of “global proportions.” Shit villain, stupid thesis (ANOTHER superpowerful secret organization?), Lame ass gigantic setpiece. They couldn’t just let it stay focused on the characters.
I do think the stakes in the first one are kinda forced (“if Darren Criss mass-markets the Yellow Jacket, the world will fall arse over teakettle”).
The ability to shrink or enlarge anything could immediately give us a post-scarcity world by enlarging any of the world’s resources. It would completely change the face of every industry, from transportation to waste disposal to medicine. Entire economies would collapse and new ones would be rebuilt. And that’s all without all of the risk and potential of the quantum realm. The entire world would be thrown into immediate chaos, with the potential for great near-utopian advances matched equally by the threat of total annihilation.
So it’s pretty funny that with the Pym particle technology, the best idea an evil executive can come up with is “let’s make a suit with lasers.”
So it’s pretty funny that with the Pym particle technology, the best idea an evil executive can come up with is “let’s make a suit with lasers.”I did really like that the “crazy Hank Pym” episode of What If showed how goddamn terrifying and borderline unstoppable a Yellowjacket assassin would be.
You think marketing the Undetectable Assassination Machine™ isn’t a big deal?
Small stakes in the Ant Man films and yet Scott Lang personally saves half the universe in Endgame.
Still would have been better had he flown up Thanos’s ass while super small and then made himself super giant.
Well, Scott Lang and a rat.
Ratty was the hero in us all along.
That’s endgame. And that’s America’s ass.
Marvel has so many super-secret evil organizations, even they can’t keep track of them!
Agreed. I loved when I thought that Dreykov and the remnants of the Red room were just a sad excuse for a KGB replacement, with a small, petty man turning young women into killers mostly for his own sense of self-importance. The fact that he’s “only” killing hundreds of people over the decades, by making slaves out of dozens more, is still plenty of reason for an Avenger to stop him.
This is a great take. He is a vile petty many trying to cling to a sense of importance. Should not have had an insane sky castle When be said “with a single word, I can topple global oil production and ruin the world” or whatever my eyes rolled so hard they fell to the floor.
I agree. I was blown away by the opening sequence when they escape. David Harbour was hilarious claiming he had gone up against Capt America and trying to squeeze into that old outfit. And that they use a couple tricks that Black Widow had used in previous films. The ending is a rip off of the Hanna movie and series, IMO. At least in The Americans, the kids really were theirs. I do like the sister character I hope they use her again.
I’m not big on AM&W because it uses my least favorite trope, villain that was a key part of the hero’s past that was never mentioned before with a heaping help of said villain that knows exactly what and where the good guys are because of said knowledge.
I enjoyed going to see Ant-Man and The Wasp because I’d just finished catching up with the MCU including the original Ant-Man in early 2018 thanks to one of the last of the Blockbusters and the scene at the start reminded me of this really cool maze my primary school had made out of cardboard for our open day or something like that back in 1982 (the 1983 maze was nowhere near as good).Also at the end in the post-credits scene after you know what happened, there was a moment’s silence before some girl in the audience gave out a strangled cry and went “Oh my Goddddddd!!!!!” and the whole audience cracked up.So there were a couple of things on top of just the film content at least which enhanced the experience for me overall.
A couple people in my audience let out a “Fuuuuuuuuck” under their breaths during that post-credits scene.
It’s interesting that people had an “oh, fuck.” reaction with the post-credits scene. Mine was ,”So that’s how they’re going to fix things in the next movie.” It seemed so obvious.
Yes! A whole bunch of teens were at my showing of AW&W. “OH MY GOOOD THE SNAP!!!!!!”It was awesome.
I remember enjoying both Ant Man films, but god damn if I can remember much about them at all.
I just remember the fight with the rapidly expanding Thomas the Tank Engine in the first movie. That movie gets high marks for me just because of the fun of that.
A lot of people don’t like it b/c the “stakes weren’t high enough”. One of the many reasons it was really good.
I get so bored about how every movie, not just the big Avengers tentpole ones, has to end up being so mass scale. Civil war works so well because in the end three dudes beat the living crap out of each other due to *personal* issues. Ragnarok is a good blend of both. It literally ends with, well, the end of the “world” (and reality that an all-powerful Hela will probably go on a rampage) but it’s rooted in Asgard and specifically Thor’s relationships and his reckoning with the past and what the present can be.
It’s not my favorite, but it’s certainly up there for the reasons you cite. The plots are more personal than world-shaking, and the stakes haven’t been unnaturally inflated to fit the formula (unlike the first and its “oh no Hydra might be back and the plank of wood we cast as the villain might give them the suit” plot). It hit all the right beats. And I appreciated it even more at the time it came out, when it was a perfect palate cleanser after Infinity War (though I still remember the audible collective gasp in the theater at the post-credits scene).
Yeah it leans into being a bit silly and fun and that works for me better than the stuff that’s sposed to be serious but also look pretty silly and should be fun. ~
Whilst I enjoy the Marvel stuff to an extent I’ve never been the biggest fan but the Ant Man films really shine through. I’m always more into the stuff with “real” people and their struggles (as opposed to gods etc), Paul Rudd is endlessly engaging as a performer and the action is also really unique and distinct. I’ll take grow/shrink fight scenes over sliding down a sky castle then clinging on to a bit whilst other bits fall off any day
It’s my favorite too. It helps that there’s a smaller cast and the stakes are actually stakes. And Luis gets me every time.(We actually saw it in the theater twice, or maybe three times, because I missed Luis scenes when I went to the bathroom.)And I love that it works as a standalone. Avengers movies are all “here’s 15,000 characters and half of them are going to die, and you need to have seen all 52 previous MCU movies to get everything.”
Also, I’m just gonna say that the Ghost storyline really got me.
The scene where Scott is channeling Janet makes the film IMO. It would have been so easy (and might have been tempting) to mine it for laughs, but instead it’s wonderful.
It’s not one of greatest Marvel films and the original was better in many areas, but I agree that Ant-Man and the Wasp has cool actions, great character works, funny jokes, and a rare story that doesn’t have central villains bent on control or destruction. It’s honestly refreshing and joy to watch every time. Hell, even the Pym family get the larger spotlights here than Scott Lang, which is quite a reversal from the last film in which Scott was the one headlining the story. I was totally invested and wasn’t disappointed.Even that end-credit scene was a gut punch, which was a perfect lead-in to Endgame in which their technology proven to be crucial to the Avengers.
So it’s not my favorite one, but it’s in my top ten, which is saying something given my absolute least favorite is Ant-Man.Turns out when you have a bunch of fun characters and are trying to make a lighthearted comedy, it’s way better to break the standard superhero mold than it is to shove them into the most formulaic movie in a formulaic franchise.
ANTS!
Her character notebook has one line in it. “Hope ruins everything.”
Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.
Hope is a good thing, maybe even the best of things and good things never die.
It’s the Hope that kills you.
It’s an interesting thing for her to bring up, since it’s sort of a running thread in the Ant-Man movies that Hope is much more well-suited (so to speak) to be a superhero than Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang. He gets
to have an arc where he learns how to fight and become a better role
model for his daughter, but she doesn’t get to do nearly as much stuff.
This explains that: Scott has an arc because he has much to learn. Hope has no arc because she has nowhere left to go.
Tony Stark was an arrogant jerk, Steve Rogers was idealistic but naive, Thor was irresponsible, Bruce Banner had no confidence… All the male heroes in the MCU have important flaws they have to grow out of, and are often surrounded by female heroes who were built to look as cool as possible but who – with the exception of Nebula – have no journey to go to because they’re already at destination.When you hire Paul Rudd to play a hero and Evangeline Lilly to play the other, you clearly don’t have the same expectations for both character, and that’s a big problem.
She’s the Asami, basically.
Yeah, it seems kind of like a positive discrimination thing. On the one hand, cool independent badass hyper-competent near-flawless Strong Female Character who effortlessly shows up / eyerolls at flawed male character is an obvious point of contrast (and, more cynically, is an excellent way of scoring some easy Grrl Power pop-feminism points). But there’s no room for character development when your character has fully developed, unless you go for some weak sauce like “I need to stop eyerolling at male character and lighten up some!”
I think you’re right that some of it is benevolent sexism. Filmmakers (and audiences) looking for positive representation, so just starting at badass and competent and etc. See, we’re not sexist. We think women are super capable.Then some of it is just regular old sexism. I remember reading in the context of job interviews that men tend to be judged on their potential and women tend to be judged by their accomplishments, so men get jobs they’re presumed to one day be a perfect fit for and women get those jobs when they’re already a perfect fit—and then head to head often lose the job, because they’re viewed as already having met their potential. I kind of wonder if there’s some of the same attitude at play here. When a male lead is introduced as the hero, it’s presumed he’ll be qualified for the role by the end of the movie, whereas when a female character is introduced people (be they audiences, or producers, or script writers, or whoever) are more inclined to respond like, “What is this chick even doing here?” if she’s not already up to snuff.So you end up with female characters whose primary plot momentum is the mystery of how they got there, which is true of Hope, and Natasha, and Gamora, and is literally the plot to Captain Marvel. But since that’s backward looking—obviously they DID get there so how necessary is knowing their past REALLY—it doesn’t have the same impact, and it doesn’t necessarily drive the same kind of plot arc.And I hasten to say, that can be interesting. I think Natasha’s arc was pretty inconsistently handled, but overall I enjoyed her, and that kind of set up makes sense for a super spy. It could have been executed better and more intentionally, but sketched out it’s not so bad and there is actually a character arc of her going from this person who’d murder people and do shady missions without questioning it to someone who learns to read her moral compass and sacrifices herself for others.But when “why are you like this” is the primary stab of every female characters’ plotline it does point to a problem.
I think Black Widow needed an origin movie as much as any character in the MCU – ideally one released before Iron Man 2. So much of her character arc is in reaction to a past the audience never sees, except briefly in flashbacks. Gamorra and her both have a past that is way darker than any other MCU superhero but when we meet them, they’re already “normal”, or at least balanced enough to “eye roll” their male colleagues.
A film where Hawkeye chases Widow, “turns” her, gives her a chance to redeem herself – which she takes – and where they become close enough friends that later, they each would be willing to risk their lives to save the other, is absolutely a film I would’ve liked seeing. Instead, I was asked to immediately believe that the actress from those Sofia Coppola and Woody Allen movies was portraying a ruthless killer.
I don’t know that I would have exactly wanted an origin movie for Natasha in the traditional sense, but what we got definitely isn’t what I’d have wanted in an ideal world. The ruthless killer part isn’t even really the part that bugs me. It’s Clint and Natasha’s friendship that drives me bonkers. There are ways to do the character’s past catches up with them and now we have to revisit some of that that can work, John Wick style. And characters like Black Panther and Spider-man are introduced introduced in other movies successfully without being quite so in the final stage of their life cycle.But we’re TOLD Clint flips Natasha, we’re TOLD they’re great friends, and then in the end we see Natasha die for this guy, but I never really felt their friendship. Natasha and Steve’s friendship is 100x more believable because we actually see it develop across the movies, so I never have to ask myself what they bonded over or what they’ve been through together or what they see in each other. We don’t even really see them as friends like with get Steve and Bucky.It’s not a plothole per se, but it does feel like a huge hole in the storytelling.
It truly is a shame that both Natasha and Clint get their own solo outings – Clint even getting a multi-episode series where there will presumably be plenty of time to develop characters and relationships – but one is post-Infinity War and one is post-Endgame, and so neither of them appear in the other’s story.
Most female leads do have their own character arcs, even if they’re not as prominent as the male leads’.But yeah, I agree with your takes on Hope Van Dyne. She’s already a fully-formed hero and didn’t have much of character growth and arc in that film, even if I love her for being such a cool badass. That must be what Evangeline Lilly felt with the script for new film and that gave me hope to see what made Hope Van Dyne ticks for her.
It just dawned on me that Hope’s character has basically been the romantic interest from a romantic comedy… like, she’s kinda like Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up or Sandra Bullock in The Proposal in these movies: very serious and focused on career, fully formed powerful woman who needs a man she views as dopey and beneath her to soften her up and show her how to love and all that crap.
Hope has no arc because she has nowhere left to go.I’m not 100% sure of that. She’s not “learning to be a superhero”, or anything, but at the start of Ant-Man she’s someone who is damaged by basically losing both parents at a young age, her mother to “dying”, and her father to his obsession with getting her mother back. Add that to 20+ years of not telling her about why he was so absent from her life and lying about how her mother died, and she’s rightfully pissed off and has a big chip on her shoulder. The only reason she even speaks to Hank is because she recognizes the damage the Pym particle could cause. Add to that Hank chooses some rando as the new Ant-Man instead of her, and she’s got a lot to deal with.
I hope she got vaccinated. I wouldn’t want to be her if Disney finds out she’s responsible for any production shut downs.
They tied a vaccine to a bee and had it sting her.
But… Jack… wouldn’t they use, y’know… a wasp? And call it important to her character?
OK, I like the MCU movies, but they aren’t Shakespeare. Is she just not bright?
Is she still denying that COVID exists? I feel like I lost track of that story.
No, she is not and actually never did. She made a post underestimating the danger early in the pandemic but rectified her views and apologised not even 2 weeks later.
As I recall, she had a 1 minute cameo. That sounds more like “random Marvel fatigue due to it just being like any other set with the same actors” and not “my character was very underwhelming because it was a woman who was underserved just like the 1 second glimpse of everyone at the end of Endgame which was so much more important from an actor’s perspective and not just because of the logistics and actors involved.”
I wouldn’t really count Endgame as much towards her character development at all. She has about as much to do as, say, Wong.
Wong did more though. Well, said it anyway!
She was supposed to have a larger role, but someone vetoed it:
Take your damn star, you monster.
I always thought they’d really done a great job with Hope, and it’s interesting that she says this. I hope it means we’re going to get a very interesting film.
Still wish they’d put a proper Janet in the original Avengers and given her a personality that was something other than the mother, sex toy or scold. Like actually fun and funny like Janet is.
I enjoyed the sequel thoroughly on rewatch. I appreciate it’s distinct feeling within the MCU, even with the banter and action. It’s more character-centric and focused on personal growth than a lot of their other films. The score is also excellent and suits the “heist-iness” of the series well. I’m excited to see what Loki’s Jeff Loveless brings to the table, as McKenna and Summers have a very MCU-y kind of dialogue (where Wasp benefits from Rudd’s co-writing and thus more natural)
Not that any MCU science makes much sense, but Ant Man may be the worst at not following it’s own rules, or any rules really. Do they retain their mass when they shrink? Sometimes it appears so, like breaking a tile and denting a car when falling on them or when punching people while small (though in reality that much mass, in that small of a volume, at that velocity would, for instance, pierce the entire car and continue a few feet into the ground). But at all other times they seem to have the mass suggested by their size. Obviously an ant couldn’t carry a 185lb human. The reverse is true when Scott grows as well. If his mass was retained he’d blow away in the wind like a giant balloon.
Yeah, I always feel like getting punched by shrunken Ant-Man would be like getting shot clean through the head with a tiny bullet
I feel like the decoder ring to any Peyton Reed movie is: watch 50s cinema.I agree with everyone here that the smaller stakes of Ant Man is the charm, along with the ease of the burden of being super serious all the time brought partially by him being called Ant Man and that being inherently silly. With all the world killing and stuff, MCU threatened to turn into DCU for a second there and disappear into self-seriousness and portentousness. And now again we have Scarlet Witch with apocalyptic powers, Kang with infinite realities of totalitarianism…and hopefully another giant pez dispenser in Quantumania. I just hope they keep it light and don’t turn it into a sequel to Inception…I’d prefer a sequel to Innerspace right now, thank you. I am concerned with adding Kang they are bringing it more into that main flow narrative…I wish they could have done something with Sarah Paulson as a villain, Peyton Reed used her better in Down With Love than Ryan dude ever has.
I hope that the next film has lots of fun and comedy like the first two. But will it have Scott’s three bumbling buddies?
One of the bumbling buddies did a bad bad thing and won’t be back for the new one.
If David Dastmalchian hasn’t gotten too famous/expensive in the interim.
T.I. won’t be in it after he and his wife had sexual assault allegations leveled against them.
Did she also finally “get” vaccinated?
Female characters are underserved in the MCU, except of course when Nebula, a female character probably got one of the best story arcs in the entire Infinity Saga.
Doesn’t Hope kind of have an arc where she gets over her anger at her father?
This is why she and I stopped dating. She just didn’t “get” me.
i can’t actually believe they are doing an ant man trilogy
But did she get a vaccine?
In the original Hollywood Reporter article, Lilly is quoted as saying “Oh my God, I think I finally get her.” But when you copy-pasted this bit into the AV Club article, you changed “God” to “god”.What is the reason for this? If you really thought capitalizing God was an error in the original article, you should have quoted it as “Oh my God [sic], I think I finally get her.”
Gwyneth Paltrow is completely justified in having no memory of being in gJeez. Here I go again, and y’all can correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think I am:At NO point in Spider-man: Homecoming does Pepper interact at all with Spidey/Peter Parker. She comes in, has a scene with Tony and with Happy, they talk about “where’s the kid?” and she goes back in to deal with the press. This is AFTER Peter has split, thinking there’s no Avengers announcement, decides he’ll be a neighborhood Spider-man instead anyway.Paltrow might not have been told that that scene was for a different movie, they might have filmed it the year before, or years before. She had no reason to think she was in the coda of a Spidey movie that, frankly, they might have not even announced was in the works yet.