To the surprise of absolutely no one, Avengers: Age of Ultron is raking in hundreds of millions of dollars after a stellar opening weekend. It still didn’t beat The Avengers, but I guess we’ll just have to let that caveat slip by. Meanwhile, Marvel’s first production for Phase Three is already under way in Atlanta, and everybody’s been asking about it during the press tour.
Including local outlets like Philly.com, who managed to get a sizable chunk of spoilery information about Captain America: Civil War out of producer-turned-overlord Kevin Feige this past week. It all started when a possible disconnect between Iron Man 3 and Age of Ultron came up in the discussion:
[At] the end of “Iron Man 3,” it looks like Tony Stark has decided to stop being Iron Man, but the beginning of “Age of Ultron” shows the team together, with Tony back in the suit, with no explanation about what happened in-between.
Turns out, this could be integral to Civil War‘s main plot. Warning, possible spoilers ahead:
“There will be storytelling about that [in future films], as a matter of fact,” Feige said. “In terms of Tony’s . . . journey, the fact that he’s having a hard time putting down the suit will come into play.”
So will Stark’s continued arrogance, on display when he created Ultron, which Feige said could foreshadow what gets Captain America and Iron Man to come to blows during “Captain America: Civil War.”
“I think you could say ‘yes’ to that,” Feige said. “Iron Man is still funding a lot of the Avengers’ activities but will stop flying around in the suit.”
Maybe we should rewind a bit and take another look at that last line from Feige. Yes, Marvel’s primary puppeteer (just behind invisible CEO Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter) admitted that Stark is still funding the team, but isn’t using the suit.
What can we take from this? Does Feige’s admission, if credible, mean that we won’t see Iron Man at all in the film adaption of the Civil War comics? It’s a sure way of making Robert Downey, Jr. earn his paycheck, but it leaves him at the mercy of Steve Rogers’s brute strength. Also, it diverges significantly from the source material.
However, let’s not forget what Feige said prior — that Tony is “having a hard time putting down the suit.” This was one of the major plot points in Iron Man 3, and after the events of Age of Ultron, maybe its returns with a vengeance in Civil War.
We won’t know for certain until Captain America: Civil War hits theaters on May 6th, 2016.
(Via Philly.com)