By now, most of you have a pretty clear understanding as to who sided with Cap and who sided with Iron Man in Captain America: Civil War. That's what made it so weird when concept art recently hit the web showcasing a fairly awesome battle between Paul Rudd's Scott Lang, a.k.a Ant-Man, and Chris Evans' Captain America. Did the diminutive Avenger originally side with Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) in the titular Civil War? According to the Russo brothers: not exactly. Anthony Russo elaborated further:
Very early on in the process, before there's even much of a narrative thought out at all, we do begin a process of visual exploration and just in terms of what kind of imagery excites us from the comics, and what kind of possibilities exist in the movie when we sort of translate the comic into the movie.... What you were seeing there, I think once we started getting into the narrative, pretty early on, Ant Man was allied with Cap. I think the story mechanics went that way pretty quickly. It wasn't like he was bouncing back and forth between sides. That artwork must have predated that.
Speaking with Comicbook.com, Anthony Russo revealed that we all definitely read too much into that piece of concept art that recently leaked onto the Internet. Before they had even really come up with an overarching narrative for Captain America: Civil War, The Russos had a ton of concept art created to give them an idea of what they could visually do with the action in this movie. They knew that they would have Avengers facing off with one another, but they didn't have a story to back that up. The piece of Cap fighting Ant-Man (or Giant Man in this case) was one of many permutations that they commissioned, but it doesn't mean that a script was ever written where Scott Lang joined Team Iron Man.
So it looks like we can stop speculating as to how or why Ant-Man would have ever sided with Tony Stark in this conflict; he was pretty much always going to be a member of Team Cap. It's not exactly surprising that the Russos felt the urge to keep him on Steve Rogers' side; Ant-Man's a career criminal with a deep-seated distrust of the establishment, and a strong connection to Michael Douglas' Hank Pym -- a man who does not hold the Stark family in very high regard. Having him side with Iron Man would have never felt natural for the film.
We have to hand it to the Russos, they know what they're doing when it comes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They started off strong with Captain America: The Winter Soldier, they proved their overwhelming excellence with Civil War and we have a feeling that they will become legends when Avengers: Infinity War hits theaters in 2018. We will just have to wait and see.
CinemaBlend will bring you all of the latest and greatest Marvel news as it becomes available. Make sure to pick up Captain America: Civil War on Digital HD on September 2, and on Blu-Ray/DVD when it hits shelves on September 13.
