Production Starts On CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, Synopsis And Cast List Released

The promotional rounds for Avengers: Age of Ultron has just finished and the cast already has to go back to work. Marvel has announced that Captain America: Civil War has started production, and if you were like me and thought Avengers: Age of Ultron had too many characters, well, Marvel seems willing to show what too many characters really looks like.

The cast list takes up three full paragraphs in the press release (well, on small paragraph, one normal sized paragraph, and one enormous paragraph). I put them here in list form, so you can see the sheer volume of characters.

1. Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America
2. Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man
3. Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow
4. Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier
5. Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson/Falcon
6. Paul Bettany as The Vision
7. Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye
8. Don Cheadle as Jim Rhodes/War Machine
9. Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch
10.  Paul Rudd as Scott Lang/Ant-Man
11. Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa/Black Panther
12. Emily VanCamp  as Sharon Carter/Agent 13
13. Daniel Brühl
14. Frank Grillo as Brock Rumlow/Crossbones
15. William Hurt as General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross
16. Martin Freeman

That’s sixteen characters of some importance in the film. That’s all the Avengers other than Hulk, Thor and Quicksilver. That’s Paul Rudd making his second appearance as Ant-Man. That’s William Hurt returning from the Marvel film time forgot, Incredible Hulk. And that’s without Spider-Man, who has yet to be cast but is supposed to be in the film. Granted, you are going to need a lot of heroes if the good guys are going to fight each other, but my main rule of comic book movies is the more characters you have, the less likely the film will be good. Avengers: Age of Ultron suffered because the time spent introducing Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Vision took away from making Ultron a more interesting character and his motivations more clear and believable.

We also get a synopsis for the film, the contents of which should come as a shock to no one.

“Captain America: Civil War” picks up where “Avengers: Age of Ultron” left off, as Steve Rogers leads the new team of Avengers in their continued efforts to safeguard humanity. After another international incident involving the Avengers results in collateral damage, political pressure mounts to install a system of accountability and a governing body to determine when to enlist the services of the team. The new status quo fractures the Avengers while they try to protect the world from a new and nefarious villain.

This follows along with the synopsis of the comic book Civil War as much as it can, with the Avengers taking place of the New Warriors from the book. In the comic, the New Warriors mishandling of a nuclear powered villain resulted in the destruction of Stamford, Connecticut and the deaths of a lot of innocent men, women and children. Most of the New Warriors died in the blast, so it is unlikely that the same will happen here. However, it will have to be big, because the team [SPOILER ALERT] just let a major Eastern European city blow up without much repercussions.

Captain America: Civil War is directed by Anthony and Joe Russo from a screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely. It is set to hit theaters on May 6, 2016.

Via Newsarama.