Captain America: Civil War Ending Explained By The Writers

Spoilers for Captain America: Civil War follow…

Adapting a precious and beloved comic book into a movie is a dangerous decision for any writer. It’s nearly impossible to satisfy everybody. Some aspects of books don’t translate to the big screen for the same effect, sometimes time constraints are an issue, and sometimes you want to keep the audience from predicting the outcome of your film.

Civil War is one of those beloved stories in Marvel Comics history which had and still has fans excited to see it come to live action in the big screen. That said, it does stray away from the comics in some major ways. This time around, the story is much more driven by Rogers and Bucky’s relationship for example.

One of the biggest departures from the comics came from the movie’s ending. As comic book fans, we all know that Captain America bites the bullet to conclude the epic story printed on those pages. Having seen the movie, we now know that Captain America isn’t killed but is instead hurled into hiding.

The choice not to kill Captain America or any other heroes was one made in the writer’s room and from the higher ups at Disney and Marvel Studios, according to Captain America: Civil War’s writers Christoper Markus and Stephen McFeely.

ComicBook.com had the chance to ask the writing duo about their decisions to end Civil War the way they did. “I guess we can say, part of the reason why Civil War ends like it does, which isn’t happy, friendly, family, is because we wanted the Avengers shattered before this challenge came their way,” McFeely says.

“We put them on the worst footing possible,” Markus adds.

However, when it comes to the movie’s lack of super hero deaths, the writers had plenty to say.

SM: Hey, we never told anyone someone was going to die!

CM: There is a corporate decision of, “We want that guy fighting in that movie, so you can’t kill him.” But, also, it would wrap up this conflict that we wanted to stay messy and keep it going so that everyone is still a little sick to their stomach about this conflict that they have not concluded.

SM: I see this all the time, like, “In order to shake it up they’ve gotta kill somebody!” Well, the challenge is, I think we shook it up plenty and there are ways to take big swings and move the ball down the field without just murdering half the cast. That’s not the only way you can change the universe.

CM: Plus, comic book movies in general – but Marvel in particular – is accused of none of the deaths last. So, even if you put a death in, people are gonna go, “[Grumbling sounds].” So, it’s like, why bother to do it? You can have more impact not killing somebody than you can killing people at this point. We’ll kill them if they need to die.

SM: We’re not afraid!

McFeely’s closing “We’re not afraid!” is quite scary considering the pair is returning to Marvel Cinematic Universe to write the third and fourth Avengers movies which are set for release in 2018 and 2019.

Captain America: Civil War is now playing in theaters.