Kevin Feige Didn't Think the Original Madbomb Idea for CAPTAIN AMERICA 3 Was "Big Enough"

Before the third Captain America movie became Captain America: Civil War, there was a much different direction that the Marvel creative team was taking it. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo were initially inspired by an old 1975 Jack Kirby Captain America story that revolved around the Madbomb.

The Madbomb completely wrecked the minds of everyone in its proximity, turning them into a mindless zombie mass. They weren’t undead, these people were just violently out of their minds. Joe Russo previously explained:

“There was a period where we did discuss a third act that revolved around the Madbomb from Cap mythology. It didn't have anything to do with Civil War, and if we couldn't get Downey -- in the very, very early conversations before we nailed him -- somebody pitched the idea of a third-act that revolved around the Madbomb, which makes people crazy. It almost like zombifies them -- but not literally. ... The charm of the Madbomb is that you turn hordes of people into berserkers. That was the physical challenge that Cap and company would have had to face.

“The notion of the Madbomb would have been Cap having to fight civilians and how he would he handle that. We were always trying to put him into these interesting moral conundrums because of his nature. That would have made a compelling third act because if civilians are the antagonists, how could he stop them without killing them?”

I always loved this idea and think that it would have made an awesome Marvel story! Producer Nate Moore recently brought that up in The Town podcast saying:

So we were developing Captain America 3 and we were [doing] really good. Winter Soldier worked, people were back in, they’re interested, and we were talking about a movie, and we knew we had to resolve, obviously, the Winter Soldier storyline. We wanted Cap and Bucky to ultimately reunite. And the plot that we… And we knew we wanted to use Zemo. What a great character. You know, he’s obviously a classic Cap villain. And we were building the movie around a MacGuffin around the Madbomb, which, the Madbomb goes off and causes normal people to start fighting each other. It’s honestly a little similar to what I think they did in Kingsman.”

But, Kevin Feige didn’t feel the same way. In fact, according to Moore, Feige didn’t like the idea. He didn’t think it was a big enough story, which is just silly to me. Feige is the one that suggested Civil War, but Moore pushed back on it because he that the film would crowd their already full plate and there was no way the film could fit in everything from the comic.

“And it was cool, and it was grounded, and it was political, and whatever, and [Feige] was like, ‘That’s not a big enough idea, guys.’ And we’re like, ‘Let us write a draft, we’ll prove it to you.’ [Feige:] ‘Okay, prove it to me.’ As we’re getting done with it… he pulls me into his office and he said, ‘You know, I think we should try to do Civil War.’ And I was like, ‘Kevin, we don’t have half the stuff that’s in Civil War. We don’t have the New Warriors, we don’t have… Here’s all the reasons why we can’t do it.’ And he’s like, ‘Go home, read it, let’s talk about it.’ So I went home that night, read it… I re-read it, ’cause I had read it before and I was like, ‘Yeah, look we don’t have the Negative Zone prison…’ There were so many things that we didn’t have.”

No matter how hard he tried to talk Feige out of it, Feige won at the end of the day. He just didn’t think audiences would be captivated by the Madbomb storyline, which is again just silly. While I loved Civil War, I honestly think the Madbomb concept is much more interesting. Moore said:

"I went to the writer's room with Markus, McFeely, and Joe, and Anthony, and Kevin peeked his head in and he goes, 'So, stop with the Madbomb, you guys are doing Civil War.' And I was like, 'Ah, fuck.' And Joe was like, 'Yes! Civil War? Awesome!' And then we had to figure out how to do 'Civil War.' But he was like, 'There wasn't a big enough idea that would get audiences excited and we did it.'"

Moore went on to explain that everything worked out in the end:

"Look, it was scary and when you're throwing out a whole thing and starting new, it's always a bit weird — but he was right. He was right. We were still able to pay off the Bucky storyline. We still figured out how to use Zemo. But the central conceit of the movie was something that audiences would gravitate towards and they did."

Yeah, audiences did gravitate toward it, but they would have gravitated toward the Madbomb film as well! Captain America: Civil War was essentially turned into a third Avengers film. I liked what we got, but I think I would’ve much rather seen the Madbomb story before Civil War. What do you all think?

Via: The Direct