A bunch of Captain America updates

This week was home to quite a large amount of news on The First Avenger: Captain America. I guess there are some “spoilers” about the plot, and what characters will appear in the film, but you only need to avoid them if you want to stay absolutely clean. Given the state of most trailers today though, you’ll probably have seen the end of the film a good number of times before it’s actually released, so hearing about the beginning won’t be so bad…

I’ll give you the main info.

Firstly, Latino Review posted some updates director Joe Johnston gave on the film, from The Wolfman‘s press conference. During the conference, Johnston stated that casting has to be completed by March 1st. He aims for the character of Captain America to be played by an American unknown, while the majority of the film will be shot in Europe.

One tidbit in particular struck me as very interesting:

With Captain America do you see opportunities to have a different style to it, like Sam Raimi did with Spider-Man?

Johnston: We’re definitely gonna shoot it in a different way than any of the other Marvel pictures that have been shot. And what I’m trying to do is look at the comics. Most of the new ones. Most of the Brubaker series and to interpret that sort of visual style into a film in a way that I think has been tried before but it’s never, it always looks like it’s a little too on the nose, it looks like, “Oh, they’re shooting a comic book movie.” and I wanna try something a little bit different.

Considering the film is set during WWII, I’m wondering if Johnston might emulate the style of something like Saving Private Ryan, more than he will say, Spider-Man. That’d certainly be different in the realm of superhero films, and could be interesting.

The second update was provided by Ain’t It Cool News, who received a note from somebody at the same press conference – stating that Red Skull will be a/the villain in Captain America. I’m not familiar with the comics, but reading about Red Skull shows that he’ll definitely be separate from any of the other Marvel villains we’ve seen before, being a soldier trained as Hitler’s right-hand man, and “appointed head of Nazi terrorist activities.” It’ll be cool if the film keeps these historical aspects strongly intact, instead of chucking them out to make room for even more superhero and supervillainness.

Thirdly, in an interview with the LA Times, Johnston revealed some previously under-wraps plot points about Captain America and his origins, as they’ll be conveyed in the film:

“The costume is a flag, but the way we’re getting around that is we have Steve Rogers forced into the USO circuit. After he’s made into this super-soldier, they decide they can’t send him into combat and risk him getting killed. He’s the only one and they can’t make more. So they say, ‘You’re going to be in this USO show’ and they give him a flag suit. He can’t wait to get out of it.”

“So he’s up on stage doing songs and dances with chorus girls and he can’t wait to get out and really fight. When he does go AWOL, he covers up the suit but then, after a few things happen, he realizes that this uniform allows him to lead. By then, he’s become a star in the public mind and a symbol. The guys get behind him because he embodies something special.”

The full article also contains some extra information regarding the costume, and is a good read if you want some more little here-and-there details.

Last but not least, CHUD received word from Johnston that the Invaders will make an appearance in Captain America. They won’t just be making a small appearance, but will be featured in the movie’s whole second half.

In the film, the Invaders will be a team of European heroes who aid Captain America in…whatever he’s doing. Again, I don’t really know the comics, but the Invaders look cool, and some good superhero team action (ahem) would be great to see, especially if it’s better than Fantastic Four. A lot better. It could show us a little bit of how the eventual team-up of the Avengers will be in 2012.

CHUD’s original article contains some information on each of the characters found in the Invaders team, although I guess Wikipedia could also help you out.

The First Avenger: Captain America is shaping up to sound very promising at the moment – and hopefully it’ll live up to that. I love the whole Avengers universe thing going on at the moment; creating separate movies for each character, and then putting them all together. This and Thor are making the summer of 2011 look very exciting in my book.