Ranking The New Characters Of Captain America: Civil War

3) Helmut Zemo

In Civil War, Daniel Bruhl plays Helmut Zemo, the man responsible for manipulating the Avengers into turning on each other. Thankfully, he gives a strong performance, which somewhat makes up for the character being quite far removed from the source material. Rather than a German nobleman with ties to the Nazis, here Zemo is an ex-mercenary with a surprisingly sympathetic backstory – another tragedy caused by the Sokovia incident.

Once again in the MCU, the villain is one of the less fleshed-out parts of the film, though in this case the bad guy was merely a means to get the heroes fighting one another. In that respect, Zemo did his job with aplomb. Kudos to the Marvel marketing people for keeping a tight lid on the character beforehand, as well. It’s just a shame he never wore the signature pink mask that we saw on the comic book version of the character.