Written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, whose most high-profile projects so far have been the Chronicles of Narnia films, there’s been talk of the movie being set during World War 2, and being an origin story, and… that’s about it.
Box Office recently spoke with the film’s director, Joe Johnston, and he shed some light on the project:
“It’s not going to be a Captain America that you expect. It’s something different. It is influenced by the comic book, but it goes off in a completely different direction. It’s the origin story of Captain America. It’s mostly period—there are modern, present-day bookends on it—but it’s basically the story of how Steve Rogers becomes Captain America. The great thing about Captain America is he’s a super hero without any super powers. Which is why this story, among the hundreds of super hero stories, appealed to me the most. He can’t fly, he can’t see through walls, he can’t do any of that stuff. He’s an every man who’s been given this amazing gift of transformation into the perfect specimen—the pinnacle of human perfection. How does that affect him? What does that mean for him emotionally and psychologically? He was this 98-pound weakling, he was this wimp, and he’s transformed instantly into this Adonis. You’d think he got everything he wanted. Well, he didn’t get everything he wanted. The rules change at that point and his life gets even more complicated and dire. For me, that’s the interesting part of the story. It’s got some great action sequences in it and some incredible stuff that we’ve never seen before. But at the heart of it, it’s a story about this kid who all he wants to do is fit in. This thing happens and he still doesn’t fit in. And he has to prove himself a hero—essentially go AWOL to save a friend. Eventually at the very end, I don’t want to give away too much, but he does fit in. But it’s the journey of getting him there that’s interesting. And it’s a lot of fun.”
Despite not giving any real specifics about the film, it’s still pretty intriguing.
The fact that it’s focusing on Steve Rogers’ insecurities is reassuring, although not surprising. The success of Iron Man had far more to do with Tony Stark, Pepper Potts and Obadiah Staine than with super-suits and explosions, and Marvel Studios seem to be well aware of this. It’s curious that he’s being set up as something of an outsider during this film, although it’s an interesting precursor to the inevitable man-out-of-time version of Rogers we will see in The Avengers.
It also looks like we’ll be seeing Cap’s sidekick, Bucky, as the friend for whom Steve Rigers goes AWOL. The big question is whether it’ll be the teenage Bucky from the mainstream Marvel Universe, or the Ultimate Marvel Universe’s* Army press photographer. Thus far the Ultimate comics have had been a key influence on Marvel Studios’ film slate, so it’s probably safe to assume Bucky’s more likely to be wearing combat fatigues than a domino mask, but you never know.
Story via Coming Soon.
*Ultimate Marvel was a full scale reboot of the entire Marvel universe that began in 2000 with Ultimate Spider-Man.
