Movie · Phase 3

Captain America: Civil War

2016 · 147 min

A Lagos operation goes wrong and kills Wakandan aid workers, and 117 nations respond with the Sokovia Accords, putting the Avengers under UN control. Tony signs out of guilt; Steve refuses on the…

The Infinity SagaDisney+90%Released
Captain America: Civil War poster art

The story

A Lagos operation goes wrong and kills Wakandan aid workers, and 117 nations respond with the Sokovia Accords, putting the Avengers under UN control. Tony signs out of guilt; Steve refuses on the grounds that agendas change and he has already watched one institution rot from inside.

Zemo, whose family died in Sokovia, does not want to beat the Avengers — he wants them to do it to each other, and he wins. The airport battle is the crowd-pleaser; the Siberian bunker is the film, where Tony watches security footage of Bucky killing his parents and the trilogy ends with three men on the floor.

Key facts

Release date
6 May 2016
Status
Released
Phase
Phase 3
Saga
The Infinity Saga
Runtime
147 min
Certificate
PG-13
Director
Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Writers
Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely
Streaming
Disney+
Timeline placement
2016 — one year after Sokovia

Cast

ActorRole
Chris EvansSteve Rogers / Captain America
Robert Downey Jr.Tony Stark / Iron Man
Sebastian StanBucky Barnes / Winter Soldier
Chadwick BosemanT'Challa / Black Panther
Tom HollandPeter Parker / Spider-Man
Daniel BrühlHelmut Zemo
Paul RuddScott Lang / Ant-Man

Characters

Easter eggs

  • Spider-Man's MCU debut, with mechanical shutter eyes on the mask designed to give the mask expressions, a first for live action.
  • Black Panther's debut and the first on-screen use of Wakandan vibranium in combat.
  • Stan Lee cameos as a FedEx driver delivering a package to 'Tony Stank'.
  • Peter tells Tony he saw 'a really old movie' and describes the AT-AT tow-cable trick from The Empire Strikes Back, then uses it on Giant-Man.
  • Bucky's HYDRA trigger words are in Russian and include 'longing, rusted, seventeen, daybreak', from the comics' Winter Soldier conditioning.
  • Martin Freeman debuts as Everett Ross, and the mid-credits scene puts Bucky into Wakandan cryostasis, setting up Black Panther.
  • The 1991 flashback retroactively rewrites Howard and Maria Stark's deaths, first mentioned in Iron Man 2, as a HYDRA hit.
  • Zemo's prison cell mask and the film's title both come from Mark Millar and Steve McNiven's 2006 Civil War event, though the plot is largely original.

Trivia

  • Marvel and Sony finalised the Spider-Man co-production deal during development, and Tom Holland's scenes were written and shot late.
  • The airport battle was filmed at Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany, with plate photography stitched into an Atlanta set for the close work.
  • Chadwick Boseman chose T'Challa's accent himself and resisted studio suggestions of a European inflection, arguing an uncolonised Wakanda would sound African.
  • Robert Downey Jr. requested rewrites to Tony's arc; the Russos have said his input shaped the bunker confrontation's final beats.
  • Daniel Brühl's Zemo was deliberately stripped of the comics' powers and purple mask so the villain could be a man with a plan and a notebook.
  • The film carried the largest MCU cast to date and was internally treated as an Avengers film in scale and budget.
  • Giant-Man required a bespoke rig and was one of the most expensive single shots in the film.

Box office

Budget
$250 million
Worldwide
$1.153 billion
Domestic
$408.1 million

Reviews

Critics

90%

Captain America: Civil War begins the next wave of Marvel movies with an exciting, action-packed superhero blockbuster boasting a decidedly non-cartoonish plot and characters.

The MarvelGossips verdict

The best ensemble film Marvel has made, because the fight is about something and nobody is wrong. Zemo is the franchise's most effective villain precisely because he never throws a punch. Only the Accords themselves fail to hold up — the film argues both sides so evenly that the MCU spent five more years unsure what it had actually decided.

Related titles

Frequently asked

Who wins in Captain America: Civil War?
Zemo. Neither side achieves its aim: the Accords fracture the team, Bucky is exonerated but exiled to Wakanda, and Steve gives up the shield. Zemo's stated goal was to break the Avengers from within, and he does.
Is this Spider-Man's first MCU appearance?
Yes. Civil War is Tom Holland's debut as Peter Parker, arranged after Sony and Marvel struck their character-sharing deal in 2015. It precedes Spider-Man: Homecoming by fourteen months.
Why does Tony turn on Bucky at the end?
Zemo shows him 1991 security footage of the Winter Soldier killing Howard and Maria Stark. Tony's rage is not about the Accords at that point, and Steve's admission that he already knew is what actually ends the friendship.
How faithful is it to the Civil War comic?
Loosely. It takes the registration premise and the hero-versus-hero framing but discards the comics' secret-identity plot, Spider-Man's unmasking and Captain America's death, and replaces the mass cast with a personal three-hander.
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