I was invited by Disney on an all expenses paid trip to cover the #CaptainAmericaEvent. All opinions are my own.
Can you believe it? CAPTAIN AMERICA CIVIL WAR opens in theaters everywhere tomorrow!!! And it is such a good movie! You will definitely want to go see it this weekend. Stay tuned for our review of the movie tomorrow as well.
I always love getting to hear about the behind the scenes aspects of movie making, so talking to the Captain America Civil War Directors Anthony & Joe Russo was really fun. They started out the interview by asking us if we had seen the movie. We told them we had and then they asked us if we were #TeamCap or #TeamIronMan. When they saw we were a divided group Joe’s response was:
JOE: That’s what we were hoping for. That was the intent with the film was, hopefully when you’re done watching the movie you leave the theater and you argue with your family and friends. We didn’t want to make a declarative statement one way or the other. We just want to represent both as accurately and emotionally as we could. It’s more fun that way. It’s not the kind of story that the directors need to be too firm with their point of view and because I think it would close off the opportunity to have a conversation after the movie.
Was there any rivalry between you guys writing the script and thinking out the process of the movie between Captain and Ironman?
ANTHONY: No, I don’t think there was rivalry just because we both love both characters. Our process has always been, we like very layered storytelling so often times when we’re breaking the story or prepping a movie we’ll sort of step through the story from different characters points of view. We’ll take a pass where it’ll just be all about this character. And then we’ll take a pass where it’ll be all about that character. We work with ensembles a lot in our work. And so it’s become part of our process to really have moments where the whole movie belongs to somebody else, just one particular character for a moment as we’re thinking about the film from beginning to end. I think that’s the process we went through on this movie as well with the writers, Markus and McFeely and the producer, Nate Moore from Marvel and Kevin Feige. They’re both very near and dear to our hearts. We love them both. We love characters who are exciting and fun and cool and all that, but also are very human and vulnerable. We always look for that side of the character. So for us it was very important to find where’s Steve Rogers vulnerable? Where is Tony Stark vulnerable? And sort of play to those in this movie in a way that would put them in conflict with one another.
Spider-Man in the movie, where did you find him and are you going to hold onto that kid?
ANTHONY: Yeah. We’re more in love with him than anybody.
JOE: Oh my God, doing everything we can to hang onto him. There was a really exhaustive audition process for that role. We saw him for the first time in our office in Atlanta, it was Anthony and I. We were doing work sessions with all the actors. And he came in and –, you know Spider-Man was a very important character to me as a kid. I was a big comic book collector. I still have my collection in my closet, to my wife’s dismay. That character was my favorite character growing up. So to be able to interpret him on screen was like a dream come true.
The things that I loved about him as a character when I was a kid were his vulnerability, his insecurity, his sense of humor. But I loved that his sense of humor in the books was a very self-aware. He was a smart alec kid, but he was a kid. And we felt that our interpretation of the character, we wanted to have an actor very close in age to Peter Parker. And Tom’s a young actor. And we also wanted to make sure that the actor had both the vulnerability and a confidence at the same time. It made him accessible. But also would allow him to stand in contrast to all these other really experienced superheroes who are running around dealing with a very adult problem. And then you insert that a kid, who’s trying to improvise his way through the situation but doesn’t really understand the stakes and couldn’t understand the stakes because he’s a kid. And Tom Holland just embodied all of that. He brought a real authenticity. That was the other thing too is that we really wanted him to feel like he was of New York today, right now and not about comic book New York. He was a kid living in Queens who had a certain energy to him and that feeling that you get or that the shift in your personality that happens when you do live in New York City. So that was everything we were looking for and the kid just embodied it so well and he is amazing in the film.
What was your vision going into this movie?
ANTHONY : You can’t do a movie called Captain America without thinking about the politics of it. It’s at the center of the character, who the character is from inception and obviously in his name. So while there are still elements of the political thriller that carries us forward and kind of maybe even launches us into this movie, we always thought about this movie as a psychological thriller. That shift was very important to us. The heart of this movie for us, is the relationship and the conflict between Captain America, Bucky Barnes and Tony Stark. What has to play out between those three characters in the climax of the film that we are driving towards as storytellers for the whole movie? We are setting up that sort of awful reveal and that awful tension that plays out between those characters in that moment. So that’s why we always thought of it as a psychological thriller in terms of what happens to these characters on a psychological and emotional level when this horrible revelation comes through at the end of the film. So that was, that was the heart of the film for us this time around.
When you guys are taking stories that are from the comic books and there are so many fans that are loyal to these comic books, how are you able to translate part of that story in keeping with the comic books and then deciding to kind of go away from that? What’s involved with deciding what you’re doing with that?
JOE: Well, as comic book fans ourselves and I was a huge comic book fan, I’m the first guy to line up to see the midnight screening of a movie I’m excited about. And I’ll drag my son out with me and sit there till 2:30 in the morning and watch the film just because I want to have that immediate response to the movie the same way that everybody does want to be part of the cultural conversation about that movie. As a diehard comic book fan I’m not interested in seeing a straight interpretation of a comic book. I already know the story. So why would I go see the movie? The Marvel cinematic universe is also building its characters in a very specific way that is very different than a comic books. Film is a very different medium then comic books. We have 2 ½ hours to tell a story in. And we can only put out one of those movies you know once a year, every two years to move these characters forward. So we have to make choices that are servicing the storytelling that is built up in the Marvel cinematic universe. And so Civil War in the Marvel cinematic universe is very different than Civil War in the comic books. We don’t have the same characters, we don’t have the same storytelling. So for us, we borrowed the concept and applied it to our characters. But we also needed what we felt was a very emotional reason that would drive the story on both sides.
What was the hardest scene to shoot? And what was the best scene to shoot?
ANTHONY: It depends on what you’re focusing on at any given moment. These actors are all so good. They’re easy to direct, their amazing actors. So getting the emotional stuff, like the performance stuff out of them is easy. The execution of action though is very, very hard. And we are action fetishists we always say. So we love action. And we use action very specifically to find ways to express character and express narrative through action. So, that airport scene was about the biggest thing we’ve ever attempted to do. I mean, it was the biggest thing. It was almost like a mini movie within the movie. It took months and months and months to prepare that sequence. It took us an extremely long time to execute that sequence. And that sequence was built in many different ways. There’s some practical shooting we did at a location in Germany called Leipzig at an actual airport there. We had to build a huge what they call a back lot outside our studio in Atlanta where we just put down an enormous slab of concrete, surrounded it with green screen. Some of those characters are really physically there and are highly trained to do very difficult stunts with the stunt team as well. And then some of those characters are entirely CG. So they’re interacting in the fight.
JOE: Plus 110° in Atlanta. We would take the temperature of the asphalt we were standing on and it was close to 125°. Chris Evans and Chadwick Boseman in full costumes standing out there. Poor Paul Bettany, I remember one day where he was hanging on wires out there in full vision outfit. And he moved his arm in a way that like his sleeve opened up and sweat just squirted out. That’s true. So certainly uncomfortable circumstances but yeah, they’re very difficult sequences to shoot.
ANTHONY: The Romania sequence was really thrilling to be in that tunnel. We love cars, we love vehicle chases, car chases. The moment where winter soldier grabs the motorcycle. Also we love fighting. We like hand-to-hand fighting which is what we focused on in the winter soldier with Captain America. So to bring him forward and have a fight with him and Bucky Barnes fighting their way out of the apartment through the stairwell, that was another thing that’s very cool for us.
–SMALL SPOILER–
The love story between Captain America and Agent 13, are you looking forward to furthering that and sharing more of that with the audience?
JOE: Yeah. We’re sitting down and breaking into new war stories now and might be the next time that you see a lot of these characters on screen. So everything’s in the conversation. Where do these characters go? Where do we want them to be? The interesting thing about Civil War for us is, and the fact that we knew we were going to be doing the infinity war films, there’s really a connection between the winter soldier, Civil War and the infinity war movies. It’s an arch and that arch is of this family. And this movie it’s a downbeat in this family’s existence in the avengers. And what we thought would be most interesting heading into infinity war would be putting these characters in the most complicated position they could possibly be in to face the greatest threat that they’re ever going to face. Can they pull together? Can they forgive each other? Will they forgive each other? Should they forgive each other? Can they ever work together again? And so I think you’ll see some fracturing as we move forward, this Civil War isn’t over. And it’s certainly going to carry forward. In the fracturing you will see characters, camps of characters dealing with each other and moving forward. And certainly Captain and Agent 13 will be part of that.
–END SPOILER–
It was very cool to be able to hear their thoughts about the making of the movie. Here is our group photo with them both.
CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR opens in theaters everywhere TOMORROW, May 6th!
Purchase your tickets: http://www.fandango.
Watch the trailer…
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“Marvel’s “Captain America: Civil War” finds Steve Rogers leading the newly formed team of Avengers in their continued efforts to safeguard humanity. But after another incident involving the Avengers results in collateral damage, political pressure mounts to install a system of accountability, headed by a governing body to oversee and direct the team. The new status quo fractures the Avengers, resulting in two camps—one led by Steve Rogers and his desire for the Avengers to remain free to defend humanity without government interference, and the other following Tony Stark’s surprising decision to support government oversight and accountability. Get ready to pick a side and join the nonstop action playing out on two fronts when Marvel’s “Captain America: Civil War” opens in U.S. theaters on May 6, 2016.“-Marvel
