Kevin Feige brought Anthony Mackie and Chris Evans to the Marvel D23 Expo presentation and they came bearing gifts! The audience in attendance got an exclusive sneak peak of Marvel’s upcoming Mega Event movie Captain America : Civil War. The footage they presented has not been released online yet but Entertainment Weekly has the full description here to get you excited. Ready to get your nerdgasm? Here we go!
The new Avengers are in buildings overlooking a crowded market in what appears to be a third-world country. “Eyes on target, folks,” Captain America says. Falcon says, “Red Wing, launch,” and a small drone hovers free and dives down to the street, swooping beneath a truck, which is loaded with explosives. Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson is in a café.) “It’s a battering ram,” she says. The team closes in, and the truck opens up—revealing Crossbones, a.k.a. Brock Rumlow (played by Frank Grillo, from The Winter Soldier). He spots Cap moving in and throws a magnetic bomb onto Cap’s vibranium shield. Cap thinks fast, throwing the shield into the sky just as it detonates.
He is now unarmed, and Crossbones pummels him. The rest of Crossbones’ crew springs to action. Falcon blocks machine gun fire with his wings. Black Widow flips through the air, sending bad guys flying. Crossbones grips Cap and slams him into a concrete wall. He leers at the hero from behind a metallic, skull-shaped masked. “You dropped a building on my face,” he snarls, a reference to the conclusion of The Winter Soldier. Cap rips his gauntlet off and pushes free, then tears off the metal mask. Crossbones kneels, defeated, and mutters: “You know … he remembered you. Your pal … your buddy … Your Bucky.” Turns out, Captain America does have a weak spot.
From there we get the Marvel Studios logo and cut to William Hurt as Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross—the former general, known as the nemesis of The Incredible Hulk. “The world owes you an unpayable debt,” Ross says as images of past heroism play onscreen. “While a great many people see you as a hero, there are some who prefer the word vigilante. People are afraid.” Cap is indignant. “This job, we try to save as many as we can. Sometimes that doesn’t mean everybody,” he says. Then we see a shot familiar to anyone who waited for the end credits scene after Ant-Man. The Winter Soldier himself, Cap’s old friend Bucky Barnes (played by Sebastian Stan), is trapped in a warehouse with his metallic arm locked in a vice. “Buck … You know me?” The assassin whose mind was wiped in the previousCaptain America movie looks up. “My mom’s name was Sarah,” he says. “You used to wear newspapers in your shoes.” Then we get a reunion between Cap and another powerful being: Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man. “Sometimes I want to punch you in your perfect teeth,” he says.
Something has happened. Something that can’t be undone. The world wants heroes to stay heroes, but they need to be regulated. Controlled. We see a flash of heroes. Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Paul Bettany as The Vision (wearing street clothes! A dapper suit), Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye striking a pose with his bow and arrow, Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa– in regular clothes, and also in his Black Panther armor, complete with gloves that extend razor-sharp blades from the fingernails.
As we see various teams of powerful beings running at each other, the footage cuts to another van—this one with Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man inside. He meets Cap and totally geeks out. “Captain America…” he says, awestruck, shaking his idol’s hand. And shaking it some more. And then some more. “I’m shaking your hand too long,” he says. Pinwheeling around, he looks at Scarlet Witch. “I know you, too!” Ant-Man says. “You’re great!” He tries to play it cool. “I want to say I know you know a lot of super people, so thinks for thanking of me,” he says. Then pauses. Blinks. “Thanks for thinking of me,” he corrects himself.
Whew! Have you recovered yet? Hopefully Marvel follows Warner Bros. example and release the teaser online or everyone. Until then, be sure to come back to Monkeys Fighting Robots for more from D23 2015.
