Which side would Nick Fury have taken in Captain America: Civil War? Sadly, we’ll never find out, and Samuel L. Jackson is still upset about it.
During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the 73-year-old actor explained why he felt left out when it came to Marvel’s superhero rumble in Civil War.
“I fussed at them, I still fuss at them, about Civil War because I’m like, ‘How could the kids fight and Nick Fury not show up?’” he said. “Like, ‘What’s going on here? Everybody go to your room.’ But they didn’t need me for that. They did, but they didn’t.”
Captain America: Civil War essentially pitted Earth’s Mightiest Heroes against each other. The film loosely followed Marvel’s Civil War comic books, with Captain America and Iron Man butting heads over the Sokovia Accords – a new international treaty requiring superheroes to register with oversight from the United Nations. Fracturing the superhero community, it was time for each hero to pick a side…
“That was the thing about the Avengers movies, they all had different personalities and they were able to blossom once we got through the initial film,” said Jackson. “The initial film was to introduce these people to who they are, and these are the things they can do. Now, this is how they interact and they’re not all nice.”
But it turns out the writers had a reason for leaving him out. "We didn’t want him to take one side or the other," writer Christopher Markus told The LA Times in 2016. "Because that’s not his place in the universe."
The last we saw of Nick Fury was in Spider-Man: Far From Home in 2019. But he will be back. Secret Invasion picks up where Nick Fury left off, with the former head of S.H.I.E.L.D. embroiled in a political thriller involving the shapeshifting Skrulls who have infiltrated Earth. It sounds as though Jackson is having a lot of fun with it.
“Well, I can have a whole life as Nick Fury that’s not Nick Fury at work,” he said. “You know, we get to go home with me and see what happens with me at home or when I’m alone or when I’m not so strong and Nick Fury, or when I take off a back brace because Nick Fury is old.”
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“Some things that you can do that you can’t normally do [in the films] because the character has to present this [trumpeting heroically] duh-dunna-duh kind of front, and that’s what the movies are for. And when you get to do it in longform, you get to show even superheroes have their down moments.”
Secret Invasion stars Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury alongside Cobie Smulders, Ben Mendelsohn, Martin Freeman, and Don Cheadle. Kingsley Ben-Adir has joined as the show’s mysterious villain, with Olivia Colman, Emilia Clarke, Killian Scott, Christopher McDonald, and Carmen Ejogo in currently unknown roles. Created by Kyle Bradstreet, Secret Invasion will be directed by Thomas Bezucha and Ali Selim.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.