The Russo Brothers Considered Killing Captain America In ‘Civil War’

For a brief moment, directors Anthony and Joe Russo considered giving the Captain America: Civil War film a comic book-accurate ending, where the titular character died.

This revelation occurred last night at a “For Your Consideration” screening of Civil War, in preparation for awards season. Following the screening, the Russo Brothers engaged in a Q&A along with Kevin Feige, where they dropped this bit of news to the audience, which included a presence by HitFix, who reported this.

“We never talked about killing Cap in this one, right? No?” Anthony asked his brother. “We did for a beat. We talk about everything,” Joe replied.  Anthony continued: “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.”

At the end of the original Civil War comic, Captain America is assassinated by the character, Crossbones. In the film version, Crossbones is played by Frank Grillo who attempts to kill Captain America in a suicide bombing, but is thwarted by Scarlett Witch at the last second, which results in the villain’s death.

Speaking on the subject of how none of the heroes died in the film at all, Feige talked about the goal of Civil War:

“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 went on to reference the popular comic and how the consequences in that book had to be different in the film:

“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.”

Captain America: Civil War is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray.

Source: HitFix