Although we’re yet to see Avengers: Age of Ultron and where it takes us in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Robert Downey Jr. has been talking about the next step – Captain America: Civil War.
“I’m crazy about [Chris] Evans. I really am,” Downey Jr. told Empire. “I don’t know why or how to explain this particular kinship we have. By the way, he hasn’t called me in six months. Honestly, in order for this whole thing to have worked, I did my part, [Chris] Hemsworth knocked it out of the stadium and then it fell on Cap [with Captain America: The Winter Soldier]. That was the riskiest. It was the one that had the highest degree of difficulty in making it translate to a modern audience. It was the Russos and Chris who, I think, really hit the line drive and won the series. I remember glancing through it going, ‘Wow, that’s a different way to go’. They said, ‘If we have you, we can do this or Cap 3 has to be something else’. It’s nice to feel needed.”
“At this point it ceases about being about announcements of contracts and deal points and Forbes and all that,” he continued. “And to see Chadwick [Boseman] being announced for Black Panther, I go, ‘Wow, man, Marvel is making all the right moves and they’re not doing it because it’s PC, they’re doing it because it’s exciting’. So why would I be the one to go, ‘I’m not going on the road. I don’t get along with the keyboardist’. Who cares? Who cares? And look, I also recognise that I’ll be turning 50 by the time I promote this movie. The clock is ticking down on the amount of memories and participation that I would allow myself and not embarrass the medium with. And when they pitched it to me and when I had a couple of ideas and when they said we like those ideas, let’s do those. Then there’s all this competition too. I don’t do this because I look at it as a competition, but I look at the marketplace and go, ‘Maybe if these two franchises teamed up and I can take even a lesser position in support, with people I like and directors I respect, maybe we can keep things bumping along here a little longer than they might have’.”
Downey Jr. was also questioned about Tony Stark’s character changing as we move into Phase Three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“It’s natural to change your views,” he said. “The main thing to me is, and this is where I think the Russos are quite brilliant and where Kevin [Feige] backed the play, is what sort of incident could occur and what sort of framework could we find Tony in? The clues are in Avengers: Age of Ultron about where we might find him next. But what would it take for Tony to completely turn around everything he’s stood for, quote-unquote, because he was the right-wing guy who could still do his own thing. When the first Iron Man came out the liberals and conservatives were both like, ‘You’re our guy’. Yes! Score! But the idea of Tony being able to march into Washington and say, ‘I’ll sign up’, wouldn’t have made sense if the political climate in the real world hadn’t shifted the way it has. It’s a little bit of things following a real world continuum in, ‘What would you do?’ There’s always the bigger overarching question, that Joss [Whedon] brings up all the time – it’s kind of weird that these guys would have all these throw downs all over planet Earth and it looked like a little collateral damage happened over there, and yet when the movie’s over, it’s like nobody minds. You have to figure, ‘Were you to ask the question, what would the American government do if this were real? Wouldn’t it be interesting to see Tony doing something you wouldn’t imagine?’
So, is Stark going to be the bad guy?
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Downey Jr. claims. “Ultimately it’s Steve’s story; it doesn’t say Iron Man 4: Civil War. I think that’s great too. I think Chris [Evans] has been hungry to bring even more of an underside and some shadow to that. I remember the comics – on the surface you got the sense that Cap was baseball and apple pie, but underneath there was all this churning stuff of being a man out of time. Now we know he’s made his peace with that. What’s the bigger issue? It can have a little something to do with the past, but it can be about someone becoming more modernised in their own conflict.”
Captain America: Civil War is set for release on April 29th 2016 in the UK and May 6th in the States, with a cast that includes Chris Evans (Captain America), Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Anthony Mackie (Falcon), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Sebastian Stan (The Winter Soldier), Frank Grillo (Crossbones) and Daniel Bruhl (Rush).
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Originally published February 16, 2015. Updated April 13, 2018.
