Follow me on Twitter The LA Times recently talked to The First Avenger: Captain America director Joe Johnston about the plot for the upcoming movie set for a summer 2011 release. The news is not at all what I’d hope for.
They’ve added a new wrinkle to the classic mythology to explain why a scientifically enhanced super-soldier would venture out in the WWII battlefields in a costume that leans a bit heavy on the old Betsy Ross imagery.
“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.”
This seems like an entirely unnecessary way to justify the suit. Why can’t he just be a super patriotic dude who wants to represent his country by wearing the flag as a suit. People aren’t going to skip the movie because the dude has a weird suit. As for who will play Captain America, that’s still not set.
“Well, we’re testing five or six guys,” Johnston said. “The youngest is 23, the oldest is 32. Most of the guys in the war are just kids, 18 or 19, but we want to go a little bit older. We have to have somebody locked in before I leave March 1 for London.”
So there you have it, Captain America, whoever it turns out to be, will probably have a spiffy musical number, throwing the movie into Spider-Man 3 territory. Hopefully they can find a way to make this a quality movie and not make a joke out of another otherwise good character. Fingers Crossed.
