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At this point, we should all come to accept that we’re not going to get any direct adaptations of our favorite Marvel Comics story lines from the Marvel Cinematic Universe for the most part. Events from the books definitely inspire the films, but very rarely if ever do we get beat for beat live-action retellings of these stories. And that has really been working out in Marvel Studios’ favor up to this point. It’s hard to ignore the amount of success they’ve had at the box office over the course of their last thirteen movies. However, there are some moments that are just too big not to at least consider. Now, the writers of ‘Captain America: Civil War‘ discuss a huge moment from the seminal comic series that inspired the film and their decision to leave it out.

**Obviously, the following is a huge SPOILER if you haven’t seen ‘Captain America: Civil War’ yet. If that’s the case, then stop reading and go to your local cinema immediately.**

During the climax of the 2007 Marvel Comics crossover ‘Civil War’ in ‘Captain America’ #25 by  Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting, Captain America is assassinated by Crossbones and a brainwashed Sharon Carter. When word got out that the third installment of the Sentinel of Liberty’s film series would be based on that story on top of rumors that Chris Evans’ contract may be up soon, True Believers assumed that the events of the movie would lead to a similar conclusion that may or may not have resulted in Sebastian Stan’s Winter Soldier or Anthony Mackie’s Falcon stepping into Steve Rogers’ star-spangled mantle. Although, when the movie finally premiered last week, many were surprised to see that it didn’t exactly play out that way. But did writers Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus ever even include that in their game plan for their version of ‘Civil War’? Markus revealed to Yahoo that it just wasn’t in the cards:

“We never really went into this with the intention of killing Cap. One, because he doesn’t really die, so we weren’t going to do the time bullet [like in the comics]. And there are other movies coming, and it’s like, ‘Are you gonna kill him?’ And you get crap for fake-killing people. We fake-killed [Nick] Fury [in Winter Soldier] and it worked pretty well, but… At a certain point you’re lessening the gravity of the movie when you kill somebody, because people are like, ‘Oh now we’re in comic-book world because he’s gonna come back.’ So you get more gravity out really hurting somebody.”

And really hurt somebody is exactly what they did! War Machine can attest to that, but also Tony Stark’s relationship with Cap is in shambles. It almost hurts as much or maybe even more that they’re all still alive at the end of the movie because they all have to live with everything that they did to each other. And honestly, I don’t hate that since we’re likely to get some really interesting stories spinning out of this.

Are you disappointed that Steve Rogers didn’t die at the end of ‘Captain America: Civil War’? Or do you agree with the writers’ train of thought on the matter? Sound off in the comments.

‘Captain America: Civil War’ starring Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Chadwick Boseman, Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Elizabeth Olsen, Frank Grillo, Daniel Bruhl, Martin Freeman, Paul Bettany, Don Cheadle, Emily VanCamp, Paul Rudd, and William Hurt is in theaters now.

horizontal lineDespite being a “professional writer”, Ben likes run-on sentences and puns far too much. For more of his attempts at being funny and the occasional insightful thought, follow him on Twitter and Instagram.