'Captain America' Director Says 'Civil War' Is a Love Story
Although the Marvel Cinematic Universe boasts a number of couples — think Tony & Pepper, Thor & Jane, and Black Widow & Hulk — Marvel Studios has yet to put one of these duos front and center in a full-fledged love story. But that’s apparently set to change with Captain America: Civil War, which will explore the decades-spanning affection shared by well-preserved WWII veterans–turned–super soldiers, Steven Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America (Chris Evans) and Bucky Barnes, a.k.a. the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan). In a recent interview with Empire, Civil War co-director Joe Russo — who, along with his brother Anthony, helmed the 2014 blockbuster Captain America: The Winter Soldier — explained more about Cap and Bucky relationship. “What’s fascinating about the Cap-Bucky story is it’s a love story. These are two guys who grew up together, and so they have that same emotional connection to each other as brothers would, and even more so because Bucky was all Steve had growing up.”
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Unfortunately for the legion of #Stucky ‘shippers, in the same interview, Stan echoes some of those sentiments, but emphasizes the brotherliness of this particular love. “I think it’s easy and generalizing [sic] it to say that they’re lovers, when you’re forgetting that one has a lot of guilt because he swore to be the protector of the other, the father figure or older brother so to speak, and then left him behind. I have no qualms with it, but I think people like to see it much more as a love story than it actually is. It’s brotherhood to me."
Based on what we’ve seen in the Civil War trailers, Cap is going to need Bucky’s affection and support more than ever, since he’s feuding with half of the Marvel universe, including his old Avengers ally, Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr). In an interview with Forbes last week, Anthony Russo revealed that the Cap vs. Iron Man image that adorns the movie’s poster almost didn’t come to pass. “When we were [originally] going to do Captain America 3 it was not necessarily going to be Captain America: Civil War. Robert Downey Jr. needed to be involved, because he wasn’t going to be part of Captain America 3, [and] that changed the financial equation.”
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While Downey is scheduled to be a part of the Russo’s next Marvel project — the two part Avengers: Infinity War, a gig that they inherited after original Avengers director Joss Whedon decided that Age of Ultron would be his superhero swan song — they’re clearly preparing themselves for an MCU without Iron Man. “It’s almost impossible to replace Robert,” Joe Russo told Forbes. “If and when he is done with the character, I think you will find that Iron Man might disappear for a while. I think the only way that you could reboot that character is to give a generational gap that would allow another actor to at least have a chance to redefine that character.”
Several of those new characters who could potentially make an Iron Man-sized mark on the MCU going forward are introduced in Civil War, including Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther and Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. Speaking of ol’ Spidey — who will be fighting on Team Iron Man thanks to a lucrative deal struck between Marvel and Sony — the brothers promise that fans will be happy with his web-slinging, wall-crawling antics. “He does not have the baggage that all of the other characters have,” says Anthony Russo. “He enters the story after the conflict that is happening between the Avengers and that gives him a very unique place in the story.” A personal favorite of both brothers, Spider-Man’s future in the larger MCU has yet to be decided; they decline to say, for example, whether he’ll take part in Infinity War. That would be a shame, though, because Spider-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy bad girl Nebula are a super-cute couple just waiting to happen.
Watch the trailer:
