Rush actor Daniel Brühl will play new supervillain Baron Zemo in Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War, and in a recent interview with Business Insider, the Hispano-German star discussed his take on the character. Purists probably won’t be happy about it, but Brühl revealed that this big-screen incarnation of Zemo won’t be sporting his distinctive purple mask/hood – and, indeed, would only be “loosely connected” to his comic book counterpart.
“He does not wear the mask. That’s what I like about the Marvel guys, some of the characters and things they’re dealing with always reference to current events so my character is from a different area than you would think.”
Marvel shied away from making the Red Skull and HYDRA actual Nazis, and there’s a very good chance they’ll do the same with Zemo – so that’s probably what Brühl means when he insinuates that the character has been updated.
The no mask thing? Well, Marvel don’t like to hide their stars’ faces too much, so unless it’s for a very specific reason (a secret identity etc), this isn’t really that surprising. In the comics, however, Zemo suffers some facial injuries due to an accident with a powerful glue gun (seriously), so perhaps something similar will happen in this movie and he’ll have hooded-up when we see him again. Time will tell, I suppose.
Captain America: Civil War hits theaters on May 6, 2016.