Captain America: Civil War is not only the current highest-grossing superhero movie of 2016, but it’s also – arguably – the year's best superhero movie. However, many weren't very impressed with its main antagonist, Daniel Brühl's Helmut Zemo. That's actually one of the rare things the Marvel Cinematic Universe has had repeatedly struggled in getting right - they just can't seem to produce another supervillain as impressive as Tom Hiddleston's Loki.
But Zemo was going to be a lot more intimidating in Captain America: Civil War, if the Russo Brothers had stuck with their original plan. While speaking on the audio commentary attached to the movie's digital release (via Cinema Blend), the directors reveal that the first scene for Brühl's character was supposed to be quite different and a lot deadlier.
According to the original plan, Zemo wasn't going to break into HYDRA agent Vasily Karpov's house and water torture him to get details on the infamous "Mission Report: December 16, 1991"! He was actually going to kill a large number of people in his very first scene! Joe Russo says:
We had an original scene where Zemo was at an auction, a black market auction. And that’s how he got his hands on the book, was at this auction. He killed everybody in the auction by gassing the auction.
So, why didn't they just do that for Captain America: Civil War? Well, according to Joe, they didn't "get enough story out of him" and they thought it was "too mysterious of an opening scene". Anthony Russo explains:
It did not connect him to the opening of the movie cleanly. This one does – you get the red book, and you literally get Karpov, which is perhaps the most important thing.
Of course, it is a lot easier to criticize from here than to go out there and make such a splendid movie. But I still feel that the original and deadlier introduction for Zemo would have worked just fine for the story and fewer fans would have been disappointed with the supervillain.
But then again, if Captain America: Civil War introduced Zemo as a guy who indiscriminately kills people by gassing, hardly anyone would have felt sorry for him at the end of the movie for being a real victim of the Battle of Sokovia in Avengers: Age of Ultron. But the question remains - did we really want to sympathize with the main antagonist?
