The next Captain America movie just became a little more uncivil.
The Independent has confirmed that Spanish-German actor Daniel Brühl will indeed be playing supervillain Baron Zemo in Captain America: Civil War. In an article posted last month that people apparently just now noticed, Brühl's role as Baron Helmut Zero is revealed, verifying rumors that have circulated since his casting.
Brühl has just been cast in the new Captain America, as the villain, Baron Helmut Zemo – “I think I can tell you that without being thrown into Marvel prison…” – and starts shooting at the end of April. “For the first few days I’ll walk around like a little boy, just amazed by the megalomania of it. It’s such a huge project. We could do 20 films with the budget.”
Brühl, 36, is best known to American audiences as Fredrick Zoller in the 2009 Quentin Tarantino film Inglorious Basterds and as Niki Lauda in the 2013 film Rush. He's also had roles in the films The Fifth Estate, Woman in Gold and The Bourne Ultimatum.
Created in 1964 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Baron Zemo first appeared in The Avengers (vol.1) #4 as Baron Heinrich Zemo, a top Nazi scientist who developed Adhesive X, a powerful adhesive that was designed to be used against Allied troops. However, Captain America confronted Zemo and threw his shield at a vat containing Adhesive X, which poured over Baron Zemo's hood and made it permanently attached to his face.
Later, just before the Nazis' defeat, the Red Skull sent Zemo to London to steal an experimental airplane, hoping that his rival Zemo would be captured by Captain America and his young partner Bucky. However, Captain America and Bucky were captured by Zemo and tied to the experimental plane, which was rigged to explode. Captain America fell from the plane as it exploded, where he landed in the Atlantic Ocean and was frozen in ice for decades. Bucky, meanwhile, was thought to be killed in the explosion until it was revealed that he was saved by the Russians and brainwashed into becoming the Winter Soldier.
Zemo's legacy was revived by his son Helmut, who became the next Baron Zemo and first appeared in 1973's Captain America #168, created by Tony Isabella and Sal Buscema. Helmut was an engineer who became enraged after learning of Captain America's return in modern times, and followed in his father's footsteps as a supervillain. Initially using the alias The Phoenix, Zemo captured Captain America to get revenge for his deceased father, only to fall into a vat of boiling Adhesive X, which hideously scarred his face and gave it the appearance of molten wax.
Most notably, Helmut formed a new incarnation of The Masters of Evil, a supervillain group originally created by his father as a means of attacking Captain America through the Avengers. This version managed to invade and occupy Avengers Mansion, and severely injured member Hercules and the Avengers' butler, Edwin Jarvis. Some time later, when the Avengers and the Fantastic Four had disappeared during the Onslaught crisis and were presumed dead, Zemo and a new Masters of Evil team took on false identities and posed as a superhero group known as The Thunderbolts. Zemo adopted the alias Citizen V, a nod to his father, who killed the original Citizen V during World War II.
Captain America: Civil War is scheduled to arrive in theaters on May 6, 2016.