Wondering why no-one died in Captain America: Civil War?

Warning: contains spoilers for Captain America: Civil War

Leading up to the release of one of Marvel’s biggest films, based on one of their best selling graphic novels, Captain America: Civil War, all of us were uttering the sentence, “Who’s going to die?” Will it be Captain America? Will it be Iron Man?

Some of us were disappointed to find that in fact, no one dies in the film. And while that seemed like a fault, the writers (Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely) and directors (Joe and Anthony Russo) of the film logically explained why killing a character off would take away from the ‘tension’.

Kevin Feige Executive Producer and mastermind of the Marvel cinematic universe said,  “Um, we never talked about killing Cap in this, right? No.” Anthony Russo replied, “We did for a beat, but we talk about everything… we do talk about every possible scenario, over and over and over again for months and months. So yeah, we had talked about it. It would never have made its way into a realistic version.”

He continued, “We actually talked about lots of potential characters dying, but that it would undercut what was really the rich tension of the movie. It’s about a divorce. And if somebody dies, it would create empathy [from the other characters], which would change [things], and allow potential repair. We didn’t want to do that.”

Anthony added, “The tragedy is that the family falls apart. Not that the family falls apart and then somebody dies.” The crew describe that the film was supposed to ‘fracture’ the team before the events of Avengers: Infinity War.

Captain America: Civil War is available on Blu-ray and DVD, as well as digital download. The next Marvel film will be Doctor Strange, set for release 26 October 2016.