The Russo Brothers Discuss 'Civil War,' 'Infinity War' And Reinventing Spider-Man
We're only a few short months away from Captain America: Civil War. The film made many of our most-anticipated lists for 2016, including Ethan's, Jacob's, and Angie's. It didn't make mine, but that doesn't mean I'm not looking forward to Joe and Anthony Russo's sequel to Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Marvel is clearly confident in the duo, as they've selected them to helm two Avengers sequels following up their work on Civil War.
After the jump, the Russo Brothers discuss Captain America: Civil War, how they are reinventing Spider-Man, and Avengers: Infinity War – Part 1.
The Russo brothers frequently stated 1970s political thrillers influenced The Winter Soldier. With Civil War, they told Collider they're making "a psychological thriller." So, potentially, we might see the Jacob's Ladder or Memento of the superhero genre, right? Probably not, but it's a nice thought.
The Captain America: Civil War leaned heavily on the drama. According to the Russo brothers, there is far more comedy in the film than the trailer implies:
There's a good portion of [Civil War] that's actually funnier than Winter Soldier, because there are characters in that film, that come from worlds where the tone is more comedic. Not all the characters in that movie have the same history as the Avengers. They're coming at the problem of the film, not embedded with that baggage. They're not tied to the central arc of the movie with the same motivation as the other characters, so they can be lighter. I think there are a lot lighter moments because there are much darker moments as well. We did have to work very hard at that.
By this point, we all know the new Spider-Man (Tom Holland) will be making an appearance in the film. From the sound of it, it's not a meaningless cameo, either:
It was a very long process. Kind of thing we had to lobby for for months. What happens during a long process like that, you're continuing to develop the movie and the character. During the time that it takes you to convince the powers that be to make the jump and let you do that, you've engrained the character so deeply into the story at that point that you'd have to destroy the story to take him out. So, by the time we found out that he'd be in the movie, it wasn't so much elation than like 'Thank God! We don't have to blow the whole movie up.'
The fact that they would've had to "blow the whole movie up" implies Spider-Man part isn't insignificant to the structure of the film. Some Marvel pictures have struggled tying together the MCU, but thankfully the Russo brothers actually see the character as an important piece of the puzzle.
After finishing Captain America: Civil War, the directors will go on to shoot Part 1 and Part II of Infinity War, and both films will be filmed concurrently. Recently it was said the movie would feature "67 characters," but that isn't the case:
We were being figurative when we said [67 characters] and people took it as literal but there's a lot of characters. Infinity War is meant to be the culmination of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe up to that point. It's very ambitious in its scope; it wants to take everything that you've seen before and coalesce into some kinda of climactic ending. It's complicated, ambitious storytelling...We're not talking about lead characters, just people that make an appearance. We start shooting both of them later this year in November and we're primarily going to be based in Atlanta again. That's where we'll do out stage work and some exteriors. There will be locations from around the world involved as well. We actually relocate to Atlanta in late July to finish up pre-production there. We don't come back to L.A. until the following June.
Captain America: Civil War opens in theaters May 6th.