Choose a side, Marvel fanatics. You might have just survived the Age of Ultron, but a Civil War is brewing, and two founding members of the Avengers are going to be going toe-to-toe in a 2016 blockbuster that drops basically one year from today.
This, reportedly, is promo artwork for Joe and Anthony Russo’s Captain America: Civil War -- posted to the Instagram page of frequent comic scooper Umberto Gonzalez. And it establishes what a lot of us knew already: Once Ant-Man brings Marvel’s Phase Two to a close, Phase Three is going to kick start with a battle between Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Captain America (Chris Evans) that’s threatening to unravel the MCU as we know it.
Now, some of you may be scratching your heads. Yes, Civil War will be based on a popular comic-book storyline where Tony Stark and Steve Rogers came down on opposite sides of a political battle over the Superhero Registration Act. But you’ll likely recall that, at the end of Joss Whedon’s massively successful The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Stark and Rogers were at peace. Tony was riding off into the sunset. Cap was taking over a new version of the Avengers team. All was OK between the titans. What could happen between now and then that will drive a spike between the heroes? We’ve heard speculation. But with the production just getting underway in Atlanta, it’s all rumor at the moment.
As for the promo image, it’s good… but it doesn’t look like anything groundbreaking. If anything, it seems to mirror the approach of DC’s own Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which will beat Captain America: Civil War to theaters by a few weeks. From what we know, Civil War will come down to more than one Avengers versus another. But this is a tasty tease for next year’s Marvel offerings.
