Over the years, the Russo Brothers’ impact on the MCU has only grown. The directing duo helped Marvel Studios complete the Infinity Saga with Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, but the former get their feet wet in the franchise with Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War.
Civil war was considered by many to be avengers 2.5, as the Russos brought together a plethora of Marvel heroes in an ideological battle among themselves. While the film has been praised for its introduction of Spider-Man, Baron Zemo’s stellar villain, and the moral gray area its heroes walk through, one of the film’s biggest criticisms is its color scheme.
Much of the MCU has leaned into its bright and colorful comic book origins, but Civil war was a little more toned down, with some critical fans saying it sounded desaturated. Well, it turns out that this color grading was done on purpose, or so the Russos say.
Living in the Gray During the Civil War
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Captain America: Civil War Directors Joe and Anthony Russo criticized their second movie Cap for its desaturated color palette.
Joe revealed that it was all intentional, as they saw Civil war as “of your brutalist” which means it must be ” Without color “. This meant that as “these characters were slipping into this morally gray area,” the color of the film also:
“This movie has a brutalist tone. It’s supposed to be devoid of color. The idea behind it was that all of these characters were slipping into this morally gray area. They didn’t understand their identity. They, you know, they were in conflict So we wanted to use a place where, you know, the civilians wouldn’t run away while they were fighting. We thought they couldn’t recover. So we went with an airport tarmac.”
The director also offered a fun tidbit on set of the climactic tarmac battle in the film, noting that they did. “back of the Atlanta sound stages” and that almost “Everything else [in the background] is all CG.” This meant that – with most of the characters also being CG – the day of filming included “Scarlett [Johansson] literally run alone with a stuntman” in what was extreme heat at the time:
“What’s interesting is that we shot this at the back of the Atlanta soundstages. And I remember we took the temperature of the black roof and it was 128 degrees on the black roof. So all the ground you see here is the black top. Everything else here is all CGI, right? None of this exists. When they raced against each other [right] side, there are no CG characters on this [right] side [on Team Cap]. So those are the only two real characters on this side [on Team Stark]. Spider-Man is CG. Ironman is CG, Vision, War Machine. It was Scarlett literally running on her own with one in a hundred stunt people and you know, 28 degree tarmac, over and over again. I remember she looked at us at one point and said we couldn’t do this again. There are some actors who could avoid having to redo a sequence like this over and over again. Sebastian couldn’t, Renner couldn’t, Scarlett couldn’t. Mackie takes flight, Lizzie takes flight, and Rudd is of course completely covered.
Marvel’s ‘washed-out’ magic
It’s funny to hear how something as simple as color grading a mega blockbuster like Captain America: Civil War. Of course, the directors have always thought about this stuff, but hearing it put into words is fascinating.
The Russos really care about how they make their movies, admiring every little detail until it’s exactly the vision they saw on their original pre-production storyboards.
And something like a movie’s color palette, while that may seem trivial to some, can make all the difference. Of course, he doesn’t come out right away and say, “Look, this story is going through a gray area,” but he plants that thought unconsciously in the audience.
Just look at the color of something like the guardians of the galaxy movies about it. Guardians instills that sense of intergalactic wonder in the audience through bright, saturated colors. Whereas Civil war features a story of internal struggle among the Avengers, something that comes through in its coloring.
Captain America: Civil War is available to stream now on Disney+.
