367 days to go.
Marvel just had a pretty great weekend at the North American box office, clocking in at $187 million with Avengers: Age of Ultron, just below The Avengers with $207 million, but above Iron Man 3’s $174 million. That means Marvel Studios currently holds the top 3 spots, and the only films that look like it could beat it anytime soon are Disney’s own Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and the next big Marvel movie, Captain America: Civil War. So, let’s get right down to it then, shall we?
This seemingly confirms that Robert Downey Jr. will indeed put on the suit for next year’s outing. Captain America: The Winter Soldier already kind of felt like a pseudo Avengers movie, and I stated in my Age of Ultron review, the seeds of conflict between Steve Rogers and Tony Stark have already been planted for what’s looking to be an actual Avengers movie, just a year after the last one. Cap, once again straying close to his Ultimate Comics outfit (though thankfully not that version of the character), and his suit’s got way more colour to it, just like the Iron Man suit seems to be looking sleeker, and more futuristic with all those crazy looking arc reactors.
The film is being written by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, essentially the architects of this universe, who got their grubby little mitts on Thor: The Dark World and Agent Carter, in addition to having written the first two Captain America movies. AND it’s being directed by Joe & Anthony Russo, who not only directed The Winter Soldier, arguably the best Marvel movie till date, but are also going to direct Markus & McFeely’s screenplays for Avengers: Infinity War Parts I & II. In total, that’s five years of this team moving the pieces on the Marvel chess board, leading up to a resounding culmination of all the things that began back in 2008. Civil War is going to be their trial run, but it’s also going to be a hell of a movie in its own right.
I don’t expect it to follow the comics. After all, they changed a lot of things from Brubaker’s Winter Soldier comic for the movie to work a full decade later, which is about the time gap between the Civil War comics and their movie, but we’ll get in to those potential differences and similarities as we get closer to the actual film. For now, I’d just like to leave you with the most exciting Marvel call-sheet till date:
Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America
Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man
Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier
Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow
Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson/The Falcon
Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff/The Scarlet Witch
Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye
Chadwick Boseman as T’challa/Black Panther
Daniel Brühl as Helmut J. Zemo/Baron Zemo
Frank Grillo as Brock Rumlow/Crossbones
And, even though we don’t have 100% confirmation yet (they just started shooting a few days ago), I’m sure we can expect to see the likes of The Vision, War Machine, Maria Hill, Agent 13 and even Spider-Man show up in some capacity, and these are just the characters we know of. There’s no telling who else they’re going to pull from the corners of the Marvel Universe to be a part of this bonanza, but one thing’s certain. Phase 3 is about to get off to a flying start.