Captain America: Civil War – Russo Brothers Talk About Not Killing Anyone Off

Civil War

Cultured Vultures spoilers

Despite enjoying critical acclaim upon release, one of the major gripes from Marvel fans and cinephiles alike, including yours truly, was the lack of any meaningful consequences as a result Marvel’s Civil War. In contrast to the apocalyptic overtones that saturated the films marketing, the end result of Civil War was relatively benign; Steve Rogers and Tony Stark seem to make up after a bloody, angst ridden fist fight, Rhodey is implied to make a full recovery from his injuries and all the renegade heroes are busted out of the super-clink.

Granted, folk aren’t exactly happy, but nothing that was broken seems unfixable and, most importantly, nobody’s dead. Given the leitmotif of irreversible consequence that cropped up incessantly throughout the film’s running time, it struck as a bit of a tease that no one got axed.

Because there is no meaningful, irreversible long term consequence quite like death. Unless you’re a superhero, in fairness.

With that in mind, we finally got something of an explanation from the Russos and the head of MCU Kevin Feige himself. At a recent Marvel event in Hollywood, Hitfix managed to squeeze in a question about whether or not they’d considered 86’ing any of the leading cast. The answers reveal an interesting perspective.

Anthony Russo: We never talked about killing Cap in this one, right? no.

Joe Russo: We did for a beat. We talk about everything.

Anthony Russo: I think the thing to remember is, we do talk about every possible scenario over and over and over again for months and months and months. We talked about it. But it never made its way into a realistic outline.

Feige: Well, the ending was always more about fracturing the team completely before getting into Infinity War.

Joe Russo:
We talked about lots of potential characters dying at the end of the movie. And we thought that it would undercut what is really the rich tension of the movie, which is this is Kramer vs Kramer. It’s about a divorce. If somebody dies, it would create empathy, which would change and allow for repair, and we didn’t want to do that.

Feige: In the amazing comic book story, which certainly the conceit of this movie is based on and some of the specifics — during their big battle, which has a hundred times as many characters, a character dies. And we talked about that for a while. And, ultimately, we thought what happened to Rhodey would be enough of a downer.

Anthony Russo: The tragedy is the family falls apart. Not that the family falls apart and then somebody dies.

Personally, I don’t share Feige’s position that Rhodey’s partial, seemingly temporary, paralysis is enough of an emotional gutpunch to legitimise the cataclysmic aspirations of Cap 3. What I will concede is Joe’s point that a death could complicate the moral dilemma that serves as the thematic throughline of the film. The opposing ideologies of Stark and Rogers, of responsibility vs freedom, are enough to legitimately keep the characters at arm’s length from one another and hence keep the audience conflicted . A death could undermine that dilemma and conflict, in that the audience may ultimately side with whatever faction lost one of its own.

Though the letter from Cap at the film’s finale seems to imply everything is rosey between the Avengers, half of them are still on the run and Rogers seemingly ain’t Captain America anymore. So whilst Civil War may have not been the earth shattering upheaval we expected, it at least sets the scene for a perhaps more weighty outcome in Infinity War. To be honest, with newcomers Spider-Man, Black Panther and Doc Strange all being shepherded into the MCU, I wouldn’t be surprised if Infinity War spelled the end for some of Marvel’s mainstays. These characters need room to grow and I’ve a funny feeling the older characters whose stories have been told will need to slip the mortal coil to give them that space. I’m looking at you, Steve Rogers.

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