CAPTAIN AMERICA 2 Writers Dish On [SPOILERS] And AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON
Sharing thoughts on having Robert Redford say (SPOILER), writing duo behind Captain America: The Winter Soldier discuss where the film leaves Nick Fury, and Cap going onto Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Speaking with Vulture, Captain America: The Winter Soldier screenwriters Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely were asked about several spoiler elements of the Marvel sequel, which opened to $37 Million Friday. Asked if they feel proud to have Robert Redford and Garry Shandling say "Hail Hydra," McFeely responded with laughs: "We weren't sure if those were gonna stick, but yes — deeply, deeply, deeply proud. It's just nuts. It's not the sole reason I write, to get famous people to say silly things, but it's sure satisfying! There are certain lines that, when you hear them come out of people's mouths, you get kind of giddy: 'We're really doing a comic book and making it real!' Especially with Redford, because Redford does not say any lines he doesn't want to say, and wisely so. He's been doing this for so long that he would come to the directors or come to us and say, 'You don't need these three lines, because once I've said these other lines, you'll see the rest of them in my face.' And it's absolutely true. Sometimes you write for a much worse actor than you get. If a guy like Redford wants to say 'Hail Hydra,' then it's just like, hell yes." The screenwriters also reassured that it was Kevin Feige's decision to take down S.H.I.E.L.D. in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. "That gave us a lot of ways to go and opened up the storytelling, that Steve could have such an effect on the world," said McFeely. "He doesn't change as much as characters do — he's sort of our Gary Cooper. The world does not change him too much — maybe we'll try that in other movies — but in this case, it's a success because he changes the way the other characters look at the world. And S.H.I.E.L.D. going down is part of that." Christopher Markus chimes in that while S.H.I.E.L.D.'s downfall was Kevin Feige's decision, "The S.S.R. (Strategic Scientific Reserve) being under Camp Lehigh, Zola being in a computer down there, that's all stuff that we pitched hard and eventually they said, 'Let's run with that.'" McFeely adds, "[Marvel] is very open to ideas, and sometimes the weirder or more challenging they are, the more excited they get. They don't want to stand still and they don't want to be slavish to the comics. They want to create something that's indebted to the comics, but not a one-to-one, panel-for-panel remake."
On the reveal that Agent Sitwell and Senator Stern are HYDRA-affiliated, Stephen McFeely says, "That was our pitch, and that was a lot of fun. With Sitwell, we needed to reveal someone who was boots-on-the-ground, who you'd seen before, to shake you up. Short of bringing Agent Coulson back to life and turning him bad — and we didn't know he could be brought back to life — we had to use some returning characters to make this conspiracy story ring true. It can't be all new people where you're suddenly saying, 'And Bob from Accounting who you've never met, he's HYDRA too!' You needed one or two recognizable faces to make the reveal resonate." Asked how involved was The Avengers writer/director Joss Whedon and whether they have convos with him like 'This is where we want to leave Steve Rogers and Natasha at the end of the movie, will that work for you?, Markus says there wasn't much of that because there was no time to cross-reference that much. "But there is a Godfather, and that's Kevin Feige. He moves between the boroughs. But we've read Avengers 2, so we know where that's going. You're always aware of seismic shifts in the universe, but there's time enough between the movies that nobody tells anyone else, 'Don't do this.' And that's because they're committed to making the best movie each time. They're never going to keep their powder dry on one to save it for the next." About The Winter Soldier ending with Cap very determined to find Bucky, the screenwriters were then asked if The Avengers: Age of Ultron will hinder that momentum. "Well, the comics do that, right?" asks Markus. "I mean, the Avengers exist because all these people would have their own books and then come together for their joint adventures. The idea is that the Avengers stories require all hands on deck." McFeely says, "They go solve the global crisis, and then they solve their own personal crises a little later."
"But who's to say it's not on his mind while he's dealing with the Age of Ultron?" added Markus. On Captain America: The Winter Soldier ending with Nick Fury heading to Europe for a mission and the mid-credits scene also taking place in Europe, Markus says, "He's going after HYDRA, they're HYDRA … I mean, he wasn't going to Iowa, you know? [Laughs.]" "Yeah, that's Joss. All the movie is us, except for the scene where Baron Strucker introduces the twins," assured McFeely. Finally, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely were asked whether there were any characters--namely Hawkeye--that they thought would feature in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but didn't make the final cut. "It came up and we played with it, but we didn't pick Black Widow out of nothing," said McFeely. "She's sort of the embodiment of the morally murky world we live in now, and we wanted to put her in stark relief with Cap's point of view. If she's serving that function, and she's got the same job as Hawkeye, then we've got to find a reason for Hawkeye to be in it, and we don't want to disservice anybody. You can take smaller villains and give them small roles — like Batroc has a 15-minute sequence in this movie, and that's okay — but you can't really do that with Hawkeye. So we couldn't make that work." Markus added that "There were various things we pitched that didn't make it in, like before the missiles go off, Zola's computer just stands up and walks away. We always wanted to get him in his robot body, but everyone was like, 'He's a talking computer. Can't we leave it at that?'" What do you think?
