Captain America: Civil War directors explain why they didn't kill any superheroes in the Marvel film

'The tragedy is the family falls apart. Not that the family falls apart and then somebody dies'

Captain America: Civil War has been heralded as this year’s best superhero film, showing the world Marvel’s winning formula is still working with the general movie-going audience.

One of the film’s biggest selling points is the sheer number of likeable superheroes, including the titular Cap, Iron Man, Ant-Man, Black Widow, Black Panther, Spider-Man, Hawkeye, Vision, Scarlett Witch, Falcon, War Machine, Winter Soldier… The list goes on.

Despite there being a very near death (War Machine), the directors - the Russo Brothers - decided not to remove anyone from the MCU permanently (unlike Joss Whedon with Quicksilver in Age of Ultron). But why not? Surely, one death would not only add emotional value to the film but also mean fitting fewer characters in the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War?

Speaking to Hitflix with Marvel president Kevin Feige, the duo explained how they wanted to focus on the family tearing itself apart, not with a character dying (except Peggy Carter, of course).

Russo brothers and Kevin Feige on death in Civil War

Anthony Russo: I think the thing to remember is, we do talk about every possible scenario over and over and over again for months and months and months. We talked about it. But it never made its way into a realistic outline.

Kevin Feige: Well, the ending was always more about fracturing the team completely before getting into Infinity War.

Joe Russo: We talked about lots of potential characters dying at the end of the movie. And we thought that it would undercut what is really the rich tension of the movie, which is this is Kramer vs Kramer. It’s about a divorce. If somebody dies, it would create empathy, which would change and allow for repair, and we didn’t want to do that.

Anthony Russo: The tragedy is the family falls apart. Not that the family falls apart and then somebody dies.

Interesting how they see death as a way of repairing; with Civil War ending with the Avengers split, perhaps one of their deaths will bring the band back together during Infinity War.

In other Marvel news, Sam Neil recently revealed he will star in the third Thor film, Thor: Ragnarok, while Benedict Cumberbatch has spoken about the superhero studio moving its filming schedule to fit him in.