Everything You Need To Know Before Captain America: Civil War Movie

Captain America: Civil War, the third film in the Captain America series and the thirteenth film overall in the shared Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), is set to release this week. 

What you will witness at the theatre is set a year after the events you saw happen in Sokovia at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron last year. And as you might have already grasped from the couple of trailers that dropped in the past few months, those events will play a part in dividing our favourite superheroes and causing them to fight one another, akin to a civil war.

As is usually the case, the influence for the storyline comes from the comic books. In this case, that is a seven-issue comic series called Civil War, which crossed into a hundred odd other issues during 2006-07. The Civil War arc was an important event in the comics, not just because what led to it and its eventual repercussions but because it forced every superhero to pick one side and pitted them against their own friends. Hence, to give it the attention it deserves, director duo and brothers Anthony and Joe Russo along with screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely have tapped almost every character that has appeared onscreen in the eight-year-old MCU and more, with new additions in Spider-Man and Black Panther.

The only omissions are Thor and the Hulk, one of whom has returned to his home in a different realm, while the other's absence might be addressed in the film itself. With this level of involvement, Captain America: Civil War is more like Avengers: Civil War. And if you're wondering what to expect at the end of this week, we have got you covered.

Okay hold on, this is getting confusing. Who's fighting whom?
As with any conflict, there are two opposing factions. Here, one of them is pro-registration and the other anti-registration. Technically there is a third - the ones who are sitting out the entire thing - but the limited scope of the MCU prevents a realistic depiction of neutral ground. While the expanded Civil War comic run allowed for the inclusion of the X-Men, Fantastic Four, Inhumans, Atlantis and Doctor Strange into the fold, a combination of licensing issues - the first two are with Fox - and film development - Doctor Strange arrives in November, and Inhumans is in limbo - has limited the size of the squad at war.

In the comics, all of Daredevil, The Punisher, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage were also involved in one way or another. Two of the four have already appeared in Marvel-produced television series for online streaming service Netflix. Marvel's Daredevil debuted back in April 2015 with Marvel's Jessica Jones following in November the same year, and seasons for the other two are on the way. And even though Marvel has used the ABC show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to set up events in the film world, it seems reluctant to transfer its Netflix heroes onto the big screen, despite all of them sharing one common universe. It could be the case that the Russo brothers and Marvel president Kevin Feige weren't happy in translating half-baked storylines, and are instead waiting it out to bring everyone on board for the two-part Avengers: Infinity War movie in 2018-19.

It's easy to digress when talking about the comics or the MCU in general, so let's come back to the film in focus - Captain America: Civil War. Here is the complete (known) list of superheroes you can look forward to:

Pro-registration

• Tony Stark / Iron Man - Robert Downey Jr.
• Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow - Scarlett Johansson
• James Rhodes / War Machine - Don Cheadle
• T'Challa / Black Panther - Chadwick Boseman
• Vision - Paul Bettany
• Peter Parker / Spider-Man - Tom Holland

Anti-registration

• Steve Rogers / Captain America - Chris Evans
• Bucky Barnes / Winter Soldier - Sebastian Stan
• Sam Wilson / Falcon - Anthony Mackie
• Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch - Elizabeth Olsen
• Clint Barton / Hawkeye - Jeremy Renner
• Scott Lang / Ant-Man - Paul Rudd