Interview with Anthony and Joe Russo about Captain America Civil

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I hope you have been enjoying our interviews with the talent from the new movie Captain America: Civil War that comes out TOMORROW!!!! (You really should go see the early screenings tonight if you can get tickets!). If you haven’t read them yet, you can catch up on the interviews with Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner & Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Emily VanCamp. We are sharing our interview with the directors Anthony and Joe Russo today! They were so funny and genuine. I loved hearing about the movie from their point of view. When they first came in Anthony asked us “How’s it going?”and Joe asked us “Did everybody get to see the movie?”.

After we told them yes and how much we loved it, they immediately asked us “Team Cap or team Ironman?”. Since we were evenly divided half #TeamCap and half #TeamIronMan, when they asked we were all giving them a jumble of answers. Anthony said “Wait, do it one more time. Ironman” (everyone on #TeamIronMan raised their hands) “Oh, wow, Cap” (everyone on #TeamCap raised their hands). “Oh my gosh”. It was fun showing our love and support for our favorites to these two guys who helped bring them to life yet again in Captain America: Civil War. Joe told us “That’s what we were hoping for.” and then they commented on how cool our shirts were (which they were).

Joe continued with “That was the intent with the film to hopefully when you’re done watching a movie, you leave the theater and you argue with your family and friends about [which team]. We didn’t want to make a declarative statement one way or the other. We just want to represent both as accurately and emotionally as we could. We get out of the theater and it’s more fun that way. It’s not the kind of story that the directors need to be too firm with their point of view and because I think it would close off the opportunity to have a conversation after the movie.” I couldn’t agree more. If anything they made the movie is such a way that I walked away with 100 questions and things to discus about the movie that left you with your mouth hanging open a little.

Interview with Anthony and Joe Russo #CaptainAmericaCivilWar #CaptainAmericaEvent — Captain America: Civil War – L to R: Don Cheadle (James Rhodes/War Machine), Director Anthony Russo, and Anthony Mackie (Sam Wilson/ Falcon) on set. Ph: Zade Rosenthal ©Marvel 2016

Because the movie is very divided as far as the cast we wanted to know if there was any rivalry between them writing the script and thinking out the process of the movie between Captain and Ironman? Anthony told us “No, I don’t think there was rivalry just because we both love both characters. Like our process has always been, we like very layered storytelling so we often times when we’re breaking the story or prepping a movie we’ll sort of step through the story from different characters points of view. We’ll take a pass where it’ll just be all about this character. And then we’ll take a pass where it’ll be all about that character. We work with ensembles a lot in our work. And so it’s become part of our process to really have moments where the whole movie belongs to somebody else, just one particular character for a moment as we’re thinking about the film from beginning to end. So, I think that’s the process we went through on this movie as well with the writers, Markus and McFeely and the producer, Nate Moore from Marvel and Kevin Feige. [Captain America and Iron Man] are both very near and dear to our hearts. We love them both. The other thing I think about Joe and I is that we love characters who are exciting and fun and cool at all that but also are very human and vulnerable. We always look for that side of the character. So for us it was very important to find where’s Steve Rogers vulnerable? Where is Tony Stark vulnerable? And sort of play to those in this movie in a way that would put them in conflict with one another you know.”

Captain America: Civil War introduces Spider-Man. Tom Holland who plays the character in the movie does such a great job as Peter Parker. We wanted to know where they found him and if they are going to hold onto that kid? Joe told us “Doing everything we can to hang onto him.” then Anthony added “Yeah. We’re more in love with him than anybody.” Joe continues “There was a really exhaustive audition process for that role. And you know we saw him for the first time in our office in Atlanta, it was Anthony and I. We were doing work sessions with all the actors. And he came in. You know Spider-Man was a very important character to me as a kid. I was a big comic book collector. I still have my collection in my closet to my wife’s dismay. And you know, that character was my favorite character growing up. So to be able to interpret him on screen was like a dream come true. The things that I loved about him as a character when I was a kid were his vulnerability, his insecurity, his sense of humor. But I loved that his sense of humor in the books was a very self-aware you know. He was a smart ass kid but he was a kid. And we felt that you know, our interpretation of the character, we wanted to have an actor very close in age to Peter Parker. And Tom’s a young actor. And we also wanted to make sure that the actor had both the vulnerability and a confidence at the same time. It made him accessible. But also would allow him to stand in contrast to all these other really experienced superheroes who are running around dealing with a very adult problem. And then you insert into that kid who’s trying to improvise his way through the situation but doesn’t really understand the stakes and couldn’t understand the stakes because he’s a kid. And Tom Holland just embodied all of that. He brought a real authenticity. That was the other thing too is that we really wanted him to feel like he was of New York today, right now and not about comic book New York. He was a kid living in Queens who had a certain energy to him and a certain feeling that you get or that the shift in your personality that happens when you do live in New York City. So that was everything we were looking for and the kid just embodied it so well and did amazing in the film.

Captain America: Civil War is truly one of the best movies I have ever seen. We wanted to know what their vision was going into the movie. Anthony told us “You can’t do a movie called Captain America without thinking about the politics of it. It’s at the center of the character, who the character is from as inception and obviously in his name. So while there is still elements of the political thriller that carries us forward and kind of maybe even launches us into this movie, we always thought about this movie as a psychological thriller. And that shift was very important to us because you know the heart of this movie for us is the relationship and the conflict between Captain America, Bucky Barnes and Tony Stark. It’s what has to play out between those three characters in the climax of the film that we are driving towards as storytellers for the whole movie. We are setting up that sort of awful reveal and that awful tension that plays out between those characters in that moment. So that’s why we always thought of it as a psychological thriller in terms of what happens to these characters on a psychological and emotional level when this horrible revelation comes through at the end of the film. And so you know, we were thinking about movies in that vain.

The Marvel movies are amazing, but they don’t all follow the “comic book” lines. So we wanted to know why the do that and what they decide to keep and not keep. We asked them when they are taking stories from the comic books and there are so many fans that are loyal to these comic books, how are they able to translate part of that story in keeping with the comic books and then deciding what they keep? Joe told us “As comic book fans ourselves and I was you know a huge comic book fan. I’m the first guy to line up to see the midnight showing of a movie I’m excited about. I’ll drag my son out with me and sit there till 2:30 in the morning and watch the film just because I want to have that immediate response to the movie the same way that everybody does want to be part of the cultural conversation about that movie. As a diehard comic book fan I’m not interested in seeing a straight interpretation of a comic book. I already know the story. So why would I go see the movie? You know in the Marvel cinematic universe is also building its characters in a very specific way that is very different than a comic books. Film is a very different medium then comic books. You know, we have two hours, 2 ½ hours to tell a story in. And we can only put out one of those movies you know once a year, every two years to move these characters forward. So we have to make choices that are servicing the storytelling that is built up in the Marvel cinematic universe. So Civil War in the Marvel cinematic universe is very different than Civil War in the comic books. We don’t have the same characters, we don’t have the same storytelling. You know, and so for us, we borrowed the concept and applied it to our characters. But we also needed what we felt was a very emotional reason that would drive the story on both sides, because again we were really committed, and making sure that when he got to the end he had a very difficult time deciding who was right.”

There is so much action in this movie. I am sure that it was hard to shoot all of it, but they are pros and everything turned out amazing! We wanted to know what the hardest scene to shoot was? Anthony told us “It depends on what you’re focusing on at any given moment. These actors are also good, right? They’re easy to direct, their amazing actors. So like getting the emotional stuff like the performance stuff out of them is easy. Yeah, the execution of action though is very, very hard. And we are action fetishists we always say. So we love action. And we use action very specifically to find ways to express character and express narrative through action. So, that airport scene was about the biggest thing we’ve ever attempted to do. It was almost like a mini movie within the movie. It took months and months and months to prepare that sequence. It took us an extremely long time to execute that sequence. And that sequence was built in many different ways. There’s some practical shooting we did at a location in Germany called Leipzig at an actual airport there. We had to build a huge, what they call a back lot, outside our studio in Atlanta where we just put down an enormous slab of concrete, surrounded it with green screen. Some of those characters are really physically there and are highly trained to do very difficult stunts with the stunt team as well. And then some of those characters are entirely CG. So they’re interacting in the fight.”

It blows me away how much goes into these movies, you can tell because of how spectacular they turn out when they are done.

They continued tell us about filming and said that it was 110° in Atlanta when they were filming. Joe said “We would take the temperature of the asphalt we were standing on and it was close to 125. Yeah, guys like Chris Evans and Chadwick Boseman in full costumes standing out there. Poor Paul Bettany, I remember one day where he was hanging on wires out there in full vision outfit. And he moved his arm in a way that like the, his sleeve opened up and sweat just squirted. That’s true.” Anthony adds “They just dissolving in front of your eyes. It’s just like, yeah.” Joe continues “So certainly uncomfortable circumstances but yeah, they’re very difficult sequences to shoot. Most bad ass is probably.”

Anthony tells us about another part of the movie that was challenging and fun to film. “The Romania sequence was really thrilling to be in that tunnel. You know, we love cars, like we love vehicle chases, car chases. The moment where winter soldier grabs the motorcycle…” {this was ah-maz-ing by the way}. Also we love fighting. We like hand-to-hand fighting which is what we really focused on in the winter soldier with Captain America. So to bring him forward and have a fight with him and Bucky Barnes fighting their way out of the apartment through the stairwell, that was you know another thing that’s very bad ass for us you know.” Then Joe adds “Natasha’s fights…” and Anthony continues “Yeah. Natasha’s amazing. Scarlett [Johansson] is an amazing, amazing actor. And there’s a wonderful stunt woman that works with her and that’s called Heidi Moneymaker and she’s just an amazing fighter.” Joe adds “She really embodies that character and allows us to do some of those really bad ass Natasha sequences.”

As we talked about in our Emily interview, there is a love story developing between Captain America and Agent 13 (Sharon Carter). We wanted to know if they were looking forward to furthering that and sharing more of that with us. Joe told us “Yeah. We’re sitting down and breaking into new war stories now and might be the next time that you see a lot of these characters on screen. So everything’s in the conversation. Where do these characters go? Where do we want them to be? You know, the interesting thing about Civil War for us is and the fact that we knew we were going to be doing the infinity war films as we were [these are the next two Avengers movies] and there’s really a connection between the winter soldier, Civil War and the infinity war movies. It’s an arch and that arch is of this family. And this movie is a downbeat in this family’s existence in the avengers. And what we thought what would be most interesting heading into infinity war would be putting these characters in the most complicated position they could possibly be in to face the greatest threat that they’re ever going to face. Can they pull together? Can they forgive each other? Will they forgive each other? Should they forgive each other? Can they ever work together again? And so I think you’ll see some fracturing as we move forward this Civil War is known for. And it’s certainly going to carry forward. In the fracturing you will see characters, camps of characters dealing with each other and moving forward. And certainly Captain and agent 13 will be part of that.”

I loved the insight and thoughts that they shared with us about this movie and the others going forward. I can’t wait to see more of their work!

Here is the preview for the movie {even if you have seen it, it is worth watching again…and again…and again… 😉 }. Captain America: Civil War comes out TOMORROW so be sure to get your tickets now!