MCU: 10 Things You Might Not Know About CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR

Geek Dave picks a side...

1. Often referred to as Avengers 2.5, Captain America: Civil War was certainly packed with some of Marvel's finest superheroes. As the title character, it was important for this to still be a Captain America movie and for it to be led by Chris Evans. As tough as a job as that was I do believe directors Anthony and Joe Russo, along with the screenwriter duo of Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, managed that.

Just.

Breaking down the numbers, Evans does have the most screen-time in the film, coming in at 5 minutes more that Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark/Iron Man. However, if you go behind the scenes it's clear who Marvel Pictures felt the biggest star was. Evans was paid $15 million for the movie, which is certainly nothing to be sniffed about, but the bulk of Captain America: Civil War's actor's salaries was paid to Downey Jr. RDJ negotiated $40 million in salary just for appearing, an additional $18.75 million in a backend cut of the profits, and a bonus $5 million if Civil War beat Winter Soldier in takings. It did, and so Robert Downey Jr pocketed a cool $63.75 million from this one movie alone, making it the largest payday for a supposed 'supporting actor' in any film

2. The third Captain America film was not always going to be based around the 2006–07 "Civil War" comic book storyline written by Mark Millar. The Russos revealed that, had negotiations with Downey to appear in the film failed, they would have used the Madbomb storyline from the Captain America comics, which was eventually used as a plot point in the first season of the Agent Carter TV series.

The premise for the film would have centered on Zemo detonating the Madbomb, which would "turn hordes of people into berserkers" to present a physical threat to Captain America, while still pitting heroes against each other, as some would be zombified due to the Madbomb, to satisfy an "emotional component" for the film.

3. Captain America: Civil War introduces Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 1500 young actors auditioned for the role, with Marvel reducing the field to six potential Peter Parkers by mid-2015.

Those actors were Asa Butterfield, Judah Lewis, Matthew Lintz, Charlie Plummer, Charlie Rowe, and of course, Tom Holland. Each of those six actors screen-tested with Robert Downey Jr. since Peter heavily interacted with Iron Man in Civil War. Tom Holland later commented on how intimidated he was but RDJ took him aside and said,

"Listen, I remember my screen-test for Iron Man. I remember how terrified I was. Just think of it as an audition. It's nothing too scary. If you get it wrong, we'll just start again. No pressure."

Marvel Studios CEO Kevin Feige, as well as the creative teams behind Civil War and what was to be Spider-Man: Homecoming, realized that Butterfield and Holland had emerged as the frontrunners. Holland then screen-tested with Chris Evans and became the favorite before acquiring the gig.

4. Robert Downey Jr was de-aged during a very impressive scene that involved a younger holographic version of himself (pictured above). Produced by Lola VFX, the scene required close to 4,000 frames of pioneering 'deep fake' technology and was made doubly hard by the holographic Downey moving his head from side to side multiple times.

The footage used to capture Robert Downey Jr at the approximate age they wanted to target, which was his early 20s, was from RDJ's 1987 film Less Than Zero (pictured below).

5. During the airport fight scene, a truck has the Bluth family logo, and it is indeed the same "stair car" (portable staircase for an airplane) from Arrested Development. The Russo Brothers had previously directed the pilot and many other episodes of Arrested Development.

6. Kevin Feige revealed that Hope van Dyne/Wasp was in an original draft of the film, and the end-credits scene of Ant-Man where she receives the Wasp costume was specifically put in for this purpose. The official line from Feige was she was cut because,

"...there are so many characters in Civil War that we didn't want to do her a disservice."

However, it's just as likely that Evangeline Lilly's pregnancy during the production of Civil War forced the issue.

7. No CGI was used to enhance Chris Evans biceps for Civil War's famous helicopter shot. Evans instead prepped a heck of a lot...

"That was really my arm, and you know what, I took a page of Anthony Mackie's book. When we were doing Avengers: Age of Ultron, for certain scenes, I worked out just before the take, but there were a bunch of scenes where I was the only one out of the cast doing it, and I'd be embarrassed, and feel shame. So I didn't do it that often, and then we started Civil War, and Mackie has no shame. Before each take, Mackie's just curling weights non-stop and I thought, 'Yeah! What are you doing Chris? Just curl some weights! Who cares? I am not going to worry about twenty people judging me, as opposed to two hundred million people seeing the scene forever.' So before the helicopter scene, I lifted a lot of weights to get pumped. It's not like I woke up and I looked like that, that was me lifting weights for hours on end prior to filming that scene. There certainly was a lot of pressure. I was fully aware of what they wanted that shot to be. I wanted that shot to be great too. It's a little bit of bicep porn. 'Zoom in on the biceps', that's what the script said.

[The filmmakers] didn't airbrush my biceps, that's me. It's not a utilitarian shot, it's a shot where you're trying to look heroic. That position (of holding the helicopter with one hand and the ledge with another) is actually a very unnatural position to use to stop something... and I genuinely messed my arm up doing that shot because of the strain."

8. Chadwick Boseman's appearance as T'Challa was supposed to be a much smaller one initially, and in early drafts he didn't even appear in Black Panther costume as screenwriters Marcus & McFeely felt debuting Spider-Man in costume was enough and wanted to leave Black Panther's origin to his own upcoming movie

But during production the Sony/Marvel deal surrounding Spider-Man looked like it might not happen, and as much as the Russo's didn't want to look for a "Plan B", feeling Spider-Man was essential to the story, Marvel instructed the writers to beef T'Challa's role. Fortunately the director's really loved what Marcus & McFeely proposed and incorporated the additional T'Challa/Black Panther screen-time. Once the time Sony Spider-Man deal was finalised, T'Challa was so important to the plot that he was left as he was and Spider-Man got the smaller role.

9. The director's commentary on the DVD release of Captain America: Civil War reveals that Chadwick Boseman's Black Panther suit was entirely created in post-production using CGI. On-set, Boseman wore a simple black under-suit, but then Industrial Light and Magic painted over every single frame with a complete CG render.