Yesterday, at Disney's D23 Expo, Marvel studio head Kevin Feige hit the stage alongside stars Chris Evans and Anthony Mackie to present footage from the highly-anticipated Avengers-esque superhero showdown Captain America: Civil War. The impressive footage from Anthony and Joe Russo's Captain America sequel featured a Cap/Crossbones showdown, a starstruck Ant-Man, a glimpse at Black Panther and lots of inter-superhero snark (You can read Tommy's detailed recap here).

Following the presentation, Evans and Mackie headed back stage to speak with the press, where they chatted about how down and dirty we can expect the inter-Avenger conflict to get, why the film's like on big superhero "sibling rivalry", and the juggling act required to make a successful Marvel movie on this scale. Check out what they had to say below.

d23-chris-evans-anthony-mackie
Image via Jesse Grant/Getty for Disney

Civil War ostensibly centers on a major divide between the team of Earth's Mightiest Heroes over a matter of superhero regulation (the Superhero Registration Act in the comics) sending them into a far-reaching battle that splinters our beloved band of heroes. Since it's a war, can we expect the gloves to come off between the former friends and allies? Not according to Mackie, who says it's more of a "sibling rivalry".


Nah, it’s not MMA. We definitely have gloves on. It’s more a family dispute, and that’s what so great about this movie and the characters and how they work together. It’s more so when you have a sibling rivalry. The reason why people can relate to these characters so much, is because they can relate to what they’re going through. Everybody’s fought with one of their siblings or one of their friends and wanted to make up with them but couldn’t figure out how to do it.

Evans was quick to agree, noting that the struggle arises out of the fact that they can't just cut each other out of their lives, but have to find a way to make it work.

Well said. I feel like families - you have more struggles with the people you love [because] you care about them. You can’t leave them, you have to make this work. If it’s someone you can cut out of your life, no problem.  You may not get along, but you can’t just cut them out of your life.

chris-evans-captain-america-civil-war
Image via Marvel

It's an interesting sentiment, and while I certainly don't want to see the Marvel films get dragged down by an overly-dramatic tone, I do hope there's a sense of import to some of the action. One of the highlight moments in the D23 footage featured a fight between faithful friends and longtime allies Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). "Are we still friends?" asks Widow, to which Hawkeye deadpans "Depends on how hard you hit me." That's a great moment, and I'm sure a lot of the film will have similarly toned banter, there needs to be a higher sense of stakes at some point given that these are the strongest people in the world going to war over a critical matter of ethics.

The fact is, there just may not be time to get too deep into the ramifications of the ethical struggle at the root of disagreement. Despite the massive ensemble, this isn't an Avengers movie, it's a Captain America movie. On top of setting up new franchise headliners Black Panther and Spider-Man, the film inherently has to service Cap's story. Fortunately it sounds like we can look forward to some more exploration of fan-favorite relationships -- the bromance between Cap and Falcon, and the corrupted brotherly bond between Cap and Winter Soldier. Evans explained,

Marvel has a lot of balls in the air, you have a lot of movies that they’re trying to bring together. There’s a lot of things that they’re trying to marry and when you have characters like Falcon and Winter Soldier, these movies are really compressing these storylines. In this movie alone, there's the relationship between Cap and Falcon, the relationship between Cap and Winter Soldier.

You can check out all our D23 coverage here, or catch up with the latest on Captain America: Civil War below.


d23-kevin-feige-captain-america-civil-war
Image via Jesse Grant/Getty for Disney