Comic Strip: ‘Civil War’ and ‘Suicide Squad’ Offer Up Details

ScreenCrush’s Comic Strip is a weekly roundup of the hottest superhero movie/TV news items. From Marvel to DC and points in between, if it pertains to costumed comic book heroes, we’re covering it here, bringing you our expert analysis. This week, check out a key showdown in Captain America: Civil War, get you latest fuzzy look at Jared Leto’s Joker and learn about whatever happened to the Lobo movie.

The Captain America: Civil War Set Gives Up Its Secrets

Captain America: Civil War may be filming in Atlanta, but the scenes that are currently being shot take place in Africa. Yep, the streets of the Deep South have seemingly become Wakanda, which is just an educated assumption on our part because, you know, Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther is set to make his debut in this film. Now, the big question is whether or not our first look at Wakanda’s leader and protector will come via a blurry set photo or an official still. Surely T’Challa won’t take kindly to the Avengers fighting in his streets a second time, especially since the first time involved a Hulk and a Hulkbuster.

And while while Boseman hasn’t been spotted, many members of the cast have been seen. To be more specific, many members of Captain America’s new Avengers (as seen at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron) have been seen. Here’s footage of Anthony Mackie’s Falcon flying over a crowd and kicking butt. His wings will be added in post-production, of course:

And for the especially curious, here is about three proper seconds of the stunt doubles for Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson doing their thing:

Although most of the set videos and blurry and taken from a great distance, a few photos from the set give us a better look at the cast. This scene must begin with members of the Avengers undercover and trying to blend in, because why else would Black Widow be wearing civilian clothing? However, she has found herself astride a motorcycle, which means that she’s going to have a chance to do something cool because who the hell puts a superspy on a motorcycle and doesn’t let her do something cool?

Other photos give us new close-ups of Captain America himself, whose costume looks virtually unchanged from Avengers: Age of Ultron (it still has the Avengers “A” on the shoulder and everything). This same batch of photos give us a new glimpse at Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch, who is also out of uniform for this scene.

If you care to look for them, there are a lot of additional photos of this sequence floating around the internet, including our first look at Frank Grillo as Brock Rumlow, who now has a proper Crossbones costume.

So what, exactly, is going on in this scene? If we had to wager a guess, we’d say that Cap and his Avengers have tracked Crossbones and his men to a Wakandan market. Undercover surveillance from Black Widow and Scarlet Witch has gone belly-up and now everything is punching and kicking and shooting. And surely an unhappy Black Panther will see all of this action as a good reason to join Tony Stark’s side in the brewing conflict between heroes. That makes sense, right?

It especially makes sense when you consider the quick report from scoop-master El Mayimbe, who claims that the film will feature a big fight between Hawkeye and Black Panther. Surely Hawkeye, who has a family he wants to protect from government overwatch, will side with Captain America. In any case, poor Hawkeye is probably in for another big beatdown.

The Suicide Squad Set Gives Up Its Secrets

While Captain America: Civil War has given up enough set footage to allow us to piece together a plot, Suicide Squad has not. Granted, it has given up a lot of set footage, but we can’t for the life of us figure out how it all connects. That’s probably for the best because we are a nosy bunch and in a perfect world, David Ayer and his crew would be able to make their move in relative peace.

But since the footage is out there, we might as well try to approach it with thoughtful analysis. Let’s start with these clips of Will Smith’s Deadshot and Joel Kinnaman’s Rick Flagg leading a team of soldiers as they storm a building. There’s nothing too noteworthy here, but Deadshot’s method of entry seems awfully bizarre. He’s either tearing the glass door down with his bare hands or he’s using some kind of gadget to shatter the glass (involving effects that will surely be added in post). Fans may grumble that he’s not wearing his mask, but there is no way this movie was going to pay Smith’s salary and then hide his face.

Tons of other photos cropped up online as well, including a look at a shirtless Killer Croc (that practical make-up!) and another new look at Harley Quinn, who seems to be blowing bubbles with her gum in the midst of a big action scene. That is just goofy enough. More of that, please.

Of course, the footage that will have everyone talking involves the Joker and Harley Quinn in what appears to be a flashback. We covered this scene in detail right over here, but this is proof that the movie will delve into the backstories of these two, showcasing how a young psychiatrist fell for Gotham City’s most noteworthy psychopath.

The action in the scene is fairly clear, but our biggest takeaway from this is the Joker not having any tattoos. Does he get them in prison? Is Harley responsible for his ink? Maybe the production decided to do a 180 and remove all of that tattoos after fan reaction, including digital erasure of them in previously filmed scenes? Ha. That last one was a joke.

More Precious DC Morsels

Back in the day, when we were so much younger and so much more innocent, Warner Bros. was plotting a Lobo movie starring Dwayne Johnson as the intergalactic anti-hero. And then they were no longer plotting a Lobo movie. Recently, director Brad Peyton revealed what happened to the film: Marvel Studios happened. Well, he doesn’t say that exactly, but he does say that Warner Bros. suddenly became very interested in building a shared universe and that a crazy space biker didn’t seem like the right way to get that started. Here’s the full quote:

It’s one of those things where, creatively, you and I get it, but there’s a lot of people that don’t quite get that. It’s a real uphill battle to talk people into spending a lot of money to do things correctly… I was really happy with the script, [though]. I talked with Dwayne about it. Joel Silver and I had a really amazing meeting about it. I did a rewrite of the script and was really, really excited for it. In their estimation, though, he wasn’t one of those main guys… That’s fair enough ... I think that, to do any kind of comic book universe correctly, you do need to establish, ‘Here’s the tone. Here’s the main people.’ Then we can grow offshoots from there. With Marvel, they’re now doing smaller characters like Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy. They obviously had to start, though, with their big guns and set up The Avengers. I kind of feel like that’s where DC is now. They’re setting that team up.

To be fair, a Lobo movie could still happen. In about a decade. After the rest of the big DC heroes have had their moment. Maybe.

Meanwhile, El Mayimbe (showing up for the second time in this week’s column) stopped by the Shanlian on Batman podcast, where he revealed some spoiler-ish details about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. These aren’t huge details by any means, but feel free to turn away right now if you want to know as little as possible.

First, he confirms the rumors that have been swirling around for some time that Doomsday is the big secret villain of the movie whose arrival forces the heroes to stop fighting and work together.

Secondly (and this is a strange one), he says that the instantly infamous “Tell me, do you bleed?” line from the trailer is part of a dream sequence, not an actual exchange between two flesh and blood superheroes. Whose dream? And why would they dream that line of dialogue? Talk amongst yourselves.