Russo Brothers Talk Spider-Man in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR and the Marvel Cinematic Universe



Anthony and Joe Russo are busy talking about CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. Last weekend they spoke at Wizard World New Orleans (via ComicBook) and the brothers covered several topics.

But one topic is hotter than any other right now in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Spider-Man.

“We took a very personal approach to the character,” Joe said. “He was my favorite character growing up, so the opportunity to bring Spider-Man to the screen is a dream come true. It's something that I spent a lot of time thinking about as a kid. We had thought back to the things that excited us about him as a character when we were younger, and one of the most important components of that was that he's a high schooler burdened with incredible powers and responsibility. That really differentiates him from every other character in the Marvel universe as opposed to other superheroes. For us, it was extremely important that we cast somebody very close to the age of a high school student. The previous films had adults playing a high schooler. We wanted more of an authenticity to the casting. We were very specific about that. We wanted an energy and charisma from the character, an energy, but also an insecurity that would make him fun to watch in contrast to the confident superheroes. 
“The everyman appeal of the character, which is something we've always loved,” Anthony added. 
“A character growing up with his aunt in New York, a single income family… Where would they live? What would that look like? Where could they afford to live? We asked ourselves all those questions,” Joe continued. “We try to take a very logical and realistic and naturalistic approach to the character. Again, in combination those are all of the things that we try to do, and of course, to bring our own touches, too. 
“I would also add, again, we're introducing this character in a Captain America movie,” Anthony said. “If you look at what we did with Winter Soldier with the Cap character in terms of bringing him into the modern world, trying to ground the movie tonally into something that was a step toward real-world, at least to the degree you can do that in a superhero movie, that's still the tonal universe that we're playing in in Civil War. We're bringing a character… we're bringing Spider-Man into the movie in that universe, now, in that specific tonal stylistic world. I think underscoring everything Joe was saying about your question in terms of how were we thinking about the character in relation to past interpretations of the character, part of our choices were all so colored by the specifics of the world what we were playing in with these two Captain America movies, meaning Winter Soldier and Civil War. It's a very specific tonal world. It's a little more grounded and a little more hard-core contemporary. That was also coloring our choices a lot about the character on Spider-Man.” 
“We're fans, also. I still go to midnight screenings of movies when they come out,” Joe said. “I'm still first in line to buy the new issue of the book. I still have my entire collection in my closet. It takes up entirely too much space in my closet but I'll never give it up. 
"I want to be clear. We're not trying to denigrate other interpretations of Spider-Man. Raimi's movies are fantastic. Spider-Man one and two are amazing. Two, is one of if not my favorite comic book movie of all time. But he made a very strong choice with those movies from a color palate standpoint to a costume standpoint, execution standpoint, camerawork standpoint to honor the feeling of the comic book. We're trying to honor the feeling of naturalism and to honor the feeling of reality. The harder we can pull these characters into reality, the better for us, especially because we're all so connected now through social media, the Internet. We're all so dialed in to what's happening in current events. That it's important for us that these characters live in the world that we live in because it makes them more real and it makes our experience of watching them more passionate and more well-rounded.”

Spider-Man will first appear and be introduced into the MCU in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR on May 6, 2016 and then he will have his own solo movie, on July 28, 2017, which will star actor Tom Holland in the lead role, written by writers John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein and directed by Jon Watts.