My pals and I were sitting around discussing comic-book-inspired movies, when someone brought up Captain America. Some thought it would be a slam dunk at the B.O… but others (myself included) felt that it would be a time bomb for ANY director, given the current state of the Union. So how would you smart folks write it to appeal to people without being too political and turning one wing off (which IMHO it would be almost guaranteed do to to someone). I mean, an America Super-Soldier? Who wears the flag’s colors? Tough sell.
Here’s how my breakdown of a Captain America series of films would go:
CA1 - Set in WWII, the Super-Soldier formula is created, Cap fights the Nazis and the Red Skull, film ends with Cap being frozen
CA2 - Cap is found, thawed, learns to adjust to the present-day while fighting the recently discovered Protocide, who wants to return America to a more imperialist way of thinking.
CA3 - Baron Zemo clones the Red Skull and the two work together to secure world domination and the death of Steve Rogers.
Doing a Cap movie in WWII sounds like a tough sell for the mass market, IMO. In fact, any mention of Cap-fights-Nazis-then-gets-frozen-until-modern-day is already too convoluted for a first movie.
Despite the sterotypical nature of the beast, I think the only hope for a Cap movie would be to couch it in the modern day. Steve Rogers is a scrawny soldier performing supports operation in Iraq when he gets “volunteered” to test a new nerve gas vaccine. The formula gives him superhuman fighting skills (not to mention a sudden infusion of muscle mass), but during the experiment the lab – and all of its research data – is destroyed in an insurgent mortar attack. That’s Act I.
Act II is your standard action-hero fare, with Steve fighting insurgents in disguise as Captain America. He starts off taking a simplistic “all terrorists are evil” outlook, but as he battles the enemy and actually meets them, the more he realizes that many of them are simply defending their country from a foreign invader, and the matter isn’t as simplistic as it first looks. His development is aided by an Australian journalist who serves as an interpreter while simultaneously questioning the pretense for the war.
In Act III, he discovers classified documents that confirm the whole premise for the invasion was a bunch of nonsense, that the government leaders used the pretense of WMDs as an excuse to secure the nation’s oil supplies and hand out juicy overpriced government contracts to cronies. Cap ends up passing the documents to his journalist friend, igniting a political sh*tstorm at home, but stays in Iraq to fight on, out of a sense of duty to help his brothers in arms survive the quagmire they’re now in and return home.
Yeah, Act III would be a tough sell, but given the populace’s growing discontent for the war and distrust for the Bush Administration, it might not be as tough as it first looks. Especially if the movie ends on a support-the-troops note, which is a very Cap attitude.
Oh yeah, I am sure THAT movie would sell… :rolleyes:
Let’s turn Captain America into an anti-American, pro-terrorist propoganda flick. You must WORK in Hollywood, right?
Step 1: Pre-emptively murder Paul Verhoeven to make sure he never has a damn thing to do with it. Also keep Mike Myers prisoner as well.
Step 2: Tell the story as straight as possible, modifying the costume as necessary for realism. Begin with Cap’s being found in the Arctic; tell his origin story in flashback.
Step 3: Treat it as a fish-out-of-water story. Play up his disillusionment, his angst, his resentment at the government’s attempt to use him as a media puppet.
Step 4: The villain, obviously, is the Red Skull.
Step 5: Actually I should have thought more about this before posting, so if I get any good ideas I’ll add to this later.
Given your track record at predicting trends, it sounds like a guaranteed blockbuster! 
Calling a WW2 Cap movie a hard sell and then positing Cap as liberal guilt hand-wringer schlock doesn’t make your position very sturdy.
A WW2 Cap movie done like the Ultimates version seems like a no brainer. End the movie with cap being found in the modern day.
Forget Cap’s modern-day resurrection. That strains credulity even by comic-book standards. Stick to WWII. You could get a whole series of films just out of that.
I would take about a million monkeys, with a million typewriters, and sequester them with water and bannas for a week.
Worked for Shakespeare, didn’t it?
:dubious: The storyline rjung lays out is neither anti-American nor pro-terrorist.
Yeah. And make it ultra-stylized period stuff, like Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy. Everything a primary or secondary color or black. Exteriors all greenscreened. Nutty rubber prostheses and make-up to make villians look like Jack Kirby drawings.
I would start by writing a great Captain America movie, and calling it Captain America. Then I would remove any reference to the boring, stale main character that no one wants to see a movie about and fill in the holes with an interesting character. Then I would change the title.
It would be the best Captain America movie ever!
Not really, no. The only concern these days might be the overseas markets. Remember, it isn’t just about a guy dressed in the American flag; it’s about a guy dressed in the American flag, fighting the Nazis.
The movie would be set entirely during the early years of WWII; the plot would include the Super-soldier process that gives Steve Rogers his powers, his arrival in the ETO, and his first battles with the Red Skull. The character of Bucky would be introduced, and while he would prove his usefulness in assisting Cap out of scrapes, he would not yet be established as a formally costumed sidekick. The Howling Commandos might also appear in a supporting role. At some point Steve is lured into a trap by the Red Skull, who wishes to advance the Nazi Super-soldier program by studying Captain America. The film would end with Steve and Bucky managing to destroy the Nazi program and defeat the Red Skull.
Baron Zemo would make an excellent villain for a sequel, which could concievably end with the missile fired at America’s shores, Bucky’s noble sacrifice, etc. Quite frankly, though, I’m intensely dubious about the “frozen-in-ice” bit, or the notion of transplanting Cap from WWII into the modern world. Such a device smacks a bit too much of Beastmaster II: Through the Portal of Time for my tastes, and anyway the Austin Powers movies got there first.
Granted, an intelligent script could make for a compelling examination of how America’s ideals and identity have changed over time; however, I think it’s infinitely more likely that such a film would lean heavily on fish-out-of-water jokes and superficial moralistic platitudes.
I think everyone but Joel Schumacher can probably agree that having Cap’s frozen body being worshipped by Eskimos is right out.
Um, Cap was frozen in the 40s and thawed in the 60s. Austin Powers was frozen in the 60s and brought back in the 90s. In what sense did Austin Powers do it first, pray tell?
In the sense that he has had a hugely popular movie in which this plot device was featured, whereas Cap has not. Obviously Cap “did it first” in both the literal and fictive chronological senses; but Austin beat him to the punch getting it onscreen.
Wha–what now? Please tell me you made that up!
Nope. As the story goes from Avengers #4 (I think), Cap fell into the Arctic towards the end of WWII and was frozen in a block of ice. Said block was eventually found by Eskimos who made an idol of it, unaware of its contents (it’s not clear to me that they even realized there was a body inside). Namor chanced upon them during one of his pissed-at-all-Homo-sapiens mood and flung the block of ice a few miles off shore–apparently just to be a jerk. This was followed by the Avengers finding the block while out at sea for no good reason.
My track record at predicting trends? 
What in the living fuck are you talking about?
Of course it is. And I don’t know why you bother…you’re not going to convince anyone of anything other than that you should stop trying to start political arguments in Cafe Society.
They knew there was a body inside. Pg. 2, bottom-right panel, the (presumed) leader of the Eskimos is saying "Oh, Mighty Lord of the frozen ice, hear our prayers . . . " While the rest of them were bowing down in the background.
It’s also implied on the next page the Namor kills all of the Eskimos by getting pissed off at himself for being so rude to them and smashing the ground, trapping them in an ice floe. Of course, he takes off without further concerning himself with the situation, the lovable scamp that he is :).