Attention comic book movie enthusiasts! While we were all chowing down on turkey and cranberry sauce this long weekend, the powers that be sent Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans to Jimmy Kimmel Live with the official promotional posters and the first teaser trailer for Captain America: Civil War, due to hit theaters May 6th, 2016. For those not all that familiar with Civil War’s premise, or at least the comic version, here’s the low down.
When the government wants to push a bill that would require all super humans to register, Captain America and Iron Man fall on opposite sides of the argument. Cap doesn’t want super humans to register, being a World War II veteran he’s seen the ramifications of such a process. While Iron Man believes they should register so all the super humans fighting crime are ‘sanctioned’ and not thought of as vigilantes, while the super villains can be kept in check. Queue Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” playing quietly in the distance.
The teaser, however, isn’t emphasizing the bill, though it’s mentioned briefly. The real highlight seems to be Bucky, and the strain the former Winter Soldier’s presence is putting on Steve and Tony’s relationship. A couple things could’ve called for this change in plot:
1. The X-Men aren’t present in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A similar bill is put forward in the X-Men comics, appropriately named the Mutant Registration Act, and the Superhuman Registration Act is commonly thought of as an extension of the earlier bill. And with Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver being products of an Infinity Stone experiment instead of Magneto’s children, it doesn’t seem like the X-Men will ever enter the universe due to licensing issues, making the original introduction of the bill impossible.
2. Captain America and Iron Man aren’t as close in the films as they are in the comics, or even in present cartoon adaptations. Two-dimensional Steve and Tony place bets on things like ‘whose behind this takeover the world scheme’, where the loser pays for lunch or indulges in the other’s workout regimen. Always talking each other up, always comforting each other. Best bros. There’s even an alternate timeline where Tony is a woman and married to Steve who is still Captain America. MCU Steve and Tony lack this component, at least on screen. Their infamous arguments in the first and second Avengers films can account for that. So, on top of their differing views on the bill, there is this disagreement on how to handle Bucky and his past offenses, which to people who only watch the films, is just another heated argument between the two on a much larger scale.
3. Or both sides could be turned against each other by the politicians and whoever else is backing the bill for their own gain, using Bucky as a scapegoat, and seeing if the superheroes will wipe themselves out, giving a lot of weight to the film’s promotional quote: Divided We Fall.
Courtesy: Now This News
Comic Civil War takes a dark turn, like ‘main character death’ dark, so the actual plot of this film is more up in the air than anyone could think. And for those who have read the comic or at least know the premise, they don’t seem all that worried. After all, Disney has a budget to keep to, not to mention a two-hour time bracket and a third Avengers movie to shoot, so deaths of major characters is highly unlikely. We’ll have to wait and see! Can May get here any faster?!