Russos Say ‘Captain America: Civil War’ Will Be A “Psychological Thriller,” And Funnier Than ‘Winter Soldier’

“…’Winter Soldier’ was a political thriller. We think of ‘Civil War’ as a psychological thriller. It’s a complicated movie. And yes, it divides these people that you’ve known to not only be a team, but Cap and Natasha, in this movie, they’re evolving into a surrogate family for each other. So, it’s a closer group of people that’s being divided. That’s a difficult thing to do,” they explained. “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,” they added.

It’s probably safe to guess they’re talking about Spider-Man, Black Panther, and Ant-Man, however, when it comes to the webslinger, the duo revealed they really had to work hard to get permission to bring the character in.

“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," they shared. "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.’”

Interesting stuff, but take that tone talk too much to heart. ‘Winter Soldier’ was only vaguely a ’70s style conspiracy thriller, and my guess is that ‘Civil War’ will only have a whiff of political thriller texture. But using that template as a way into the material is still an interesting and smart way to create a good story, which at the end of the day, is what we really want.

"Captain America: Civil War" opens on May 6th.