There are so many superhero characters in the upcoming Captain America: Civil War movie that it might as well be titled Avengers 2.5. With a full trailer released and a ton of concept art floating around on the internet, the one thing we haven’t seen anything on yet is Spider-Man.
Comicbook.com recently interviewed the Russo Brothers, who talked at length about their thoughts on the Friendly Neighborhood Webslinger’s long awaited appearance in the MCU.
“We took a very personal approach to the character,” explained Joe Russo. “He was my favorite character growing up, so the opportunity to bring Spider-Man to the screen is a dream come true. It’s something that I spent a lot of time thinking about as a kid. We had thought back to the things that excited us about him as a character when we were younger, and one of the most important components of that was that he’s a high schooler burdened with incredible powers and responsibility. That really differentiates him from every other character in the Marvel universe as opposed to other superheroes. For us, it was extremely important that we cast somebody very close to the age of a high school student. The previous films had adults playing a high schooler. We wanted more of an authenticity to the casting. We were very specific about that. We wanted an energy and charisma from the character, an energy, but also an insecurity that would make him fun to watch in contrast to the confident superheroes.
It was also important to us that the actor that was cast feel contemporary because the other films that portrayed where he lived is more… they honored the comic books in terms of the choices. But you go look at the home that Tobey Maguire lived in in Raimi’s Spider-Man was… those were very expensive homes. We wanted to relate it to the reality…”
Considering we are blowing right past his origin story (for which Uncle Ben is surely relieved) it will be interesting to see how Spidey appears in the MCU. Where has he been all this time, what has he been up to? How will the events of Captain America: Civil War lead into the Spider-Man solo film that is slated for 2017?
One of the best part of the Russo Brothers directing our beloved Marvel characters and movies, is that they themselves grew up fans of the material and are still fans today:
“We’re fans, also. I still go to midnight screenings of movies when they come out,” said Joe Russo. “I’m still first in line to buy the new issue of the book. I still have my entire collection in my closet. It takes up entirely too much space in my closet but I’ll never give it up.
These things are really important to us and because we have a history with these characters, all of them, I read almost every comic book character you could think of when I was a kid. I have at least several histories of every character. There’s a deep history that we can draw upon where we had great emotional and strong psychological connection to the characters as a child. We want to reach into that and understand what elementally motivated you to love the character. That’s what we try to bring out in the characters now. There are certain things. We talked about Cap. There are things that bothered me as a kid about him. We tried to correct those things in our interpretation of the character.
I want to be clear. We’re not trying to denigrate other interpretations of Spider-Man. Raimi’s movies are fantastic. Spider-Man one and two are amazing. Two, is one of if not my favorite comic book movie of all time. But he made a very strong choice with those movies from a color palate standpoint to a costume standpoint, execution standpoint, camerawork standpoint to honor the feeling of the comic book. We’re trying to honor the feeling of naturalism and to honor the feeling of reality. The harder we can pull these characters into reality, the better for us, especially because we’re all so connected now through social media, the Internet. We’re all so dialed in to what’s happening in current events. That it’s important for us that these characters live in the world that we live in because it makes them more real and it makes our experience of watching them more passionate and more well-rounded.”
Based on how amazing Captain America: The Winter Soldier was, we have to believe that Civil War will be as good, if not better! The Russos then expanded more into the groundwork for how we will see Spidey, and Peter Parker when he appears on screen for the first time under the Marvel Studios banner:
“A character growing up with his aunt in New York, a single income family… Where would they live? What would that look like? Where could they afford to live? We asked ourselves all those questions,” continued Joe Russo. “We try to take a very logical and realistic and naturalistic approach to the character. Again, in combination those are all of the things that we try to do, and of course, to bring our own touches, too.”
“I would also add, again, we’re introducing this character in a Captain America movie,” said Anthony Russo. “If you look at what we did with Winter Soldier with the Cap character in terms of bringing him into the modern world, trying to ground the movie tonally into something that was a step toward real-world, at least to the degree you can do that in a superhero movie, that’s still the tonal universe that we’re playing in in Civil War. We’re bringing a character… we’re bringing Spider-Man into the movie in that universe, now, in that specific tonal stylistic world. I think underscoring everything Joe was saying about your question in terms of how were we thinking about the character in relation to past interpretations of the character, part of our choices were all so colored by the specifics of the world what we were playing in with these two Captain America movies, meaning Winter Soldier and Civil War. It’s a very specific tonal world. It’s a little more grounded and a little more hard-core contemporary. That was also coloring our choices a lot about the character on Spider-Man.”
Finally my favorite part of the interview, Anthony and Joe Russo were asked if we would see Spider-Man in an upcoming trailer or merchandise? There has been a lot of speculation regarding the costume, would we see Iron Spider (which would be amazing by the way)? Their reply was just enough to whet your appetite:
“No. We really can’t comment on that,” replied Anthony Russo.
“Part of making these movies is maintaining surprise so that everybody’s excited and that’s one we’re going to make fans surprised,” added Joe Russo.
Anthony and Joe Russel will be appearing this weekend at Wizard World in New Orleans this weekend, along with Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Anthony Mackie, Jeremy Renner and Frank Grillo.
They will also be attending a special IMAX screening of Captain America: The Winter Soldier in Los Angeles next Wendesday. An event that we ourselves will be attending. Stay tuned for more!
Captain America: The Winter Soldier arrives in theaters on May 6th, 2016.
