Disappointed by the lack of dead Avengers in Captain America: Civil War? CURSE YOUR EVIL HEART! THOSE CHARACTERS ARE HEROES AN– Sorry, got a little worked up there. The Marvel blockbuster dealt death to a few characters, but played things conservatively when it came to giving high profile superheroes a dirt nap. There’s a perfectly sensible explanation why the Marvel Cinematic Universe ended up going this route and it goes beyond avoiding a potential box office shrink.
On Friday, a screening in Hollywood for the film included a Q&A that provided some A+ A. According to the lovely folks at HitFix, an audience member had a question about the (relatively) low Civil War death toll. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo and Marvel president Kevin Feige were able to respond with a surprisingly satisfying answer.
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.
Kevin 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.
You can partially credit the bummer hand dealt to James “Rhodey” Rhodes (a.k.a. War Machine) for putting the brakes on more superhero tragedy.
Kevin 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.
No colossal blockbuster details were dropped regarding what’s to come from Avengers: Infinity War, but we suppose that checks out with the films a few years away.
(Via HitFix)
