Both while making Captain America: The Winter Soldier and then after it opened, that film's directors, brothers Anthony and Joe Russo, revealed many of the influences and inspirations they had in mind while making the movie, including Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View and Marathon Man.

So during a press visit to their follow-up, Captain America: Civil War, it was only natural that the duo were asked what was influencing them this time - in a movie with a much larger cast and scale, as Captain America (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) find themselves in conflict, with their fellow superheroes taking sides.

Replied Anthony, “In general, just as a framing, we always thought about Winter Soldier very specifically as a political thriller. [Civil War] we think of more as a psychological thriller. It's connected to what we're doing in Winter Soldier, but it evolves into a more sensitive, complicated character thriller. Again, I think based upon the fact we're dealing with our protagonists clashing with one another.”

Amusingly though, when it got to specific movies they had in mind, Joe brought up one many might not think of in connection with a Marvel movie.

“The movie we've been referencing a lot on this one are Se7en, weirdly,” explained Joe. “We like smashing genres into each other, so if you can find something that's really idiosyncratic in respect to superhero genre and you can smoosh it into it you usually wind up with something fresh and different. Se7en, Fargo… Just as far as we're not making comparisons in terms of quality, we're just talking influences. The Godfather, because that's a sprawling film with a lot of characters that tells very intricate stories. Each character has an arc.”

Anthony noted Brian De Palma movies were also a big influence on Civil War, with Joe adding, “De Palma is the one carry over between both movies, because he's so good at tension and empty space.”

Said Anthony, “It's hard to talk about it because then you give stuff away. We could probably talk about 100 of them." Joe also explained that the huge battle between both teams that they were in the midst of filming during our visit been referred to as “our Rumble Fish sequence,” in reference to that Francis Ford Coppola film's gang fights.

Remarked Anthony, “We've been also referencing westerns a lot as we start to think about these character showdowns.”

As a huge fan of those movies, that's incredible to hear... but I guess we'll see how it turns out.