With Captain America and Iron Man set to duke it out this year in Captain America: Civil War, a couple of new superheroes will make their Marvel Cinematic Universe debuts during that epic tussle - Black Panther and Spider-Man. It's the iconic webslinger who's stirred up the most intrigue, as Tom Holland will be the third actor to don the red and blue lycra but the first who's closer in age to the actual character. And that's not the only change for this latest take on Peter Parker.
Civil War directors Anthony and Joe Russo spoke to ComicBook.com, explaining how their Spider-Man will be different from earlier versions. “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 Russo said, comparing the lush, affluent home of Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man to the reality of the character's situation. “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.”
As for how the popular character will blend into the established MCU world? "I would also add, again, we're introducing this character in a Captain America movie,” said Anthony Russo. “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... 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 little more grounded and a little more hard-core contemporary. That was also coloring our choices a lot about the character on Spider-Man.”
By the sounds of it, we're in store for a young superhero who, like other characters in the MCU, grew up in a world where the Avengers exploits were an everyday reality. It's an approach only briefly touched upon by the small screen spinoffs Daredevil and Jessica Jones, and certainly makes for a unique slant on Spider-Man who previously existed onscreen in his own cinematic world. We might see how the events of the Chitauri invasion affected Parker and his family - and how that sways his alliance in the Civil War.
Captain America: Civil War opens in the UK on April 29, and in the US on May 6.
Images: Marvel
