Captain America: Civil War Initially Had A Bigger Role For The Frozen Winter Soldiers

Though the airport fight scene between the assembled Team Cap and Team Iron Man grabs all the attention, the final – and more emotional – action sequence of Captain America: Civil War is the climactic battle between Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes and Tony Stark, as the latter attempts to murder Barnes after finding out he killed his parents. In contrast to the superhero fun of earlier in the film, it’s tough to watch the Avengers fighting each other so viciously and it brings the movie to a close in an effective, MCU-shattering way.

Originally, though, this wasn’t how things were going to play out. Remember the batch of cryogenically-frozen Winter Soldiers that Zemo unearths in Siberia? It seems they were going to be awoken from their sleep and the heroes were going to have to battle them instead. In the final film, the twist is that – after a lot of hype – Zemo has already killed the soldiers before Cap and the others find him.

This interesting detail was revealed by actor Scott Adkins while chatting on the Empire podcast. The British performer and martial artist went on to appear as Lucian, one of Kaecilius’s acolytes in Doctor Strange, but he told Empire that he initially spoke with directors the Russo brothers about playing one of these super-soldiers. He explained that it fell by the wayside though when the script developed and the focus was zeroed in on Cap and Iron Man’s conflict.

“I was almost in Civil War. There was a part… the Super Soldiers. They were meant to be a bigger part of the movie at one point, possibly, and I met with the [Russo Brothers] about that. But they decided to lessen those parts and make it more about Captain America, Winter Soldier and Iron Man. That fight at the end.”

It definitely would have been interesting to see Cap face off against a bunch of Russian assassins with similar abilities to him, but it’s hard to feel cheated when the eventual ending worked so well. What’s more, it also wouldn’t have provided such a perfect lead in to Avengers: Infinity War, putting the heroes at their lowest ebb before their greatest challenge arises. And we’ll get to see how that works out for them when the next MCU movie arrives on April 27th.