As one of the first films to arrive post Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War was always going to garner a lot of excitement from Marvel fans, though this early buzz was compounded when the studio confirmed that Robert Downey Jr. would play an integral role in the upcoming threequel, teeing up a decisive war of ethics that would have serious ramifications for the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole.
Coming on board proved to be huge news in the studio’s ever-evolving cinematic blueprint, but for Downey Jr., it proved to be a no-brainer. Speaking to Empire, the actor touched upon how Marvel approached him for the part.
They said to me, ‘If we have you, we can do this, or Cap 3 has to be something else. It’s nice to feel needed. And at this point it’s about helping each other, too. I look at it as a competition and I go, ‘Wow, maybe if these two franchises teamed up and I can take even a lesser position, with people I like and directors I respect, maybe we can keep things bumping along.
Further in the extract, Downey Jr. described Tony Stark’s part in proceedings, and how his clash with Chris Evans’ Cap will be seeded in this summer’s Avengers: Age of Ultron.
It’s natural to change your views. The main thing to me is, what sort of incident could occur, and what sort of framework could we find Tony in? The clues about where we might find him next are in Ultron. But what would it take for Tony to completely turn around everything he’s stood for? Joss brings this up all the time. It’s kind of weird that these guys would have all these throw downs all over planet Earth and yet when the movie’s over, nobody minds. What would the American government do if this were real? Wouldn’t it be interesting to see Tony doing something you wouldn’t imagine?
The biggest question is, for Chris and for Cap, how do we bring Cap to a place where people go, ‘Man, I never thought I would see such a vast change in Steve.’ After you see Snowpiercer, you’re like, ‘I want to see a little bit of that guy.’
Captain America: Civil War is scheduled to blow the MCU wide open when it arrives on May 6, 2016.
