It's no secret that The Russo Brothers did a phenomenal job with Captain America: Civil War; we've echoed that sentiment time and time again. The film is a tightly orchestrated thriller with near perfect narrative balance. However, The Russo Brothers almost found time to throw another story arc into the mix, and it would've definitely most certainly pleased longtime fans. In fact, the directors recently opened up about an awesome deleted scene that nearly made it into the movie. Anthony Russo specifically said:
There is a scene that is a cut scene. It's a small piece of the fight at Leipzig where there's a very fun interaction between Cap and Bucky, and it kind of hints at a favorite storyline in the books. I won't go into the detail about it, but there's a little tease in that scene that is pretty fun.
Anthony Russo revealed this downright awesome news to IGN during a recent interview. Apparently the directors filmed an exchange between Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) that would have referenced an iconic storyline from the comics, but the particular scene in question did not make it into the final cut of the movie. The Russos would not explain which storyline they actually took inspiration from, so we as fans will simply be left wondering for the time being. It's almost as if they know we're going to keep speculating until they give us answers.
Although the scene in question is still somewhat difficult to truly figure out given Cap's long and storied publication history, it's definitely easier than other Marvel characters. As hard as it may be to believe, Cap and Bucky share relatively few stories together in recent history. Bucky died in 1968, and his death remained pretty much permanent and unchanged for decades until he came back as The Winter Soldier in 2005; that's an eternity in comic books. He's basically the Jason Todd of Marvel. We don't know the exact exchange that Cap and Bucky shared in the deleted Civil War scene, but I would bet my hard-earned money that it's a take on Bucky's comic book death -- which saw Cap and Buck riding an experimental missile launched by Baron Zemo. That's the sort of Golden Age fan service that modern comic book movies do so well.
At the end of the day it's probably for the best that The Russos left this particular deleted scene out of the final cut. Captain America: Civil War is already a fairly substantial film, and adding anything else to its run time could have seriously thrown off its perfect balance. We will take narrative cohesion over an extra, superfluous scene any day.
We can sit here and speculate for hours on end -- in the words of Cap himself: we can do this all day -- but should probably save the energy and simply wait for the home release of Captain America: Civil War. With a ton of great special features undoubtedly on the way, we have a feeling that a few badass deleted scenes will most certainly be included.
Captain America: Civil War will be available on Digital HD, and it will subsequently hit shelves on Blue-ray/DVD format on September 13. Stay tuned for more details!
