What we know of the plot of Marvel’s upcoming Captain America: Civil War involves lots of superheroes throwing down with lots of other superheroes. Captain America and Iron Man lead the two opposing sides in this conflict, and from the look of this new photo, Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark is not having an easy go of it.
Granted, taken out of context as it is, in a photo taken at a food and truck posted on Twitter, we can’t say definitively that RDJ is getting the worse of this clash. You’re bound to get some of the sheen scuffed off when you’re involved in a clash between two clicks of super powered folks, so some bumps and bruises are to be expected and anticipated. From these pictures, most of Tony Stark’s wounds appear to be surface level and superficial—he’s got a shiner and some scrapes, but other than that, we’re mostly talking about cosmetic damage. But again, we can only see from the neck up and most of him will likely be covered by the latest Iron Man tech, so who knows.
In Mark Millar and Steve McNiven’s comics of the same name that serve as inspiration for Civil War, the story sees a huge rift develop in the superhero community. There’s a horrific incident involving where many innocent lives are lost, which leads to the passage of the Superhero Registration Act, forcing superheroes to submit to government control and regulation, and reveal their secret identities. The vigilantes split into two camps, a pro-registration faction led by Tony Stark, and a anti-registration crew, fronted by Captain America.
There are obviously going to be some tweaks and changes to the story—for instance, the Fantastic Four figures prominently in the plot, but Marvel doesn’t own the movie rights to them anymore—but the basic building blocks still appear to be in place. The comic arc includes some notable deaths, as is going to happen when superheroes thrown down, and it’s going to be interesting to see how much of that transfers from the page to the screen. There’s a lot of peril in the MCU, but for the most part, the big names don’t really die. Sure, Quicksilver kicked the bucket in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but he had just been introduced, and most of us weren’t super invested in him by that point.
There’s going to be a ton of potential casualties in Civil War as in addition to Cap and Iron Man we’re going to see Falcon, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Ant-Man, Black Panther, Scarlet Witch, Crossbones, and many more familiar faces. Oh yeah, the new Spider-Man is also going to make his first MCU appearance, which people are rather excited to see.
Captain America: Civil War is currently filming and hits theaters on May 6, 2016.
