Filmmakers Press Conference
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*Transcript Below
Hayley Atwell Roundtable
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Chris Evans Roundtable
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Sebastian Stan Roundtable
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[BEGIN AUDIO]
MODERATOR: -- Executive Producer and Co-President of Marvel Studios, we have Kevin Fragee, Producer and President of Marvel Studios.
MALE SPEAKER: Morning.
MODERATOR: Director Joe Johnston.
MALE SPEAKER; Joe Johnson, everybody! [APPLAUSE]
MODERATOR: Co-writer Stephen McFeely. And Co-writer Christopher Markus.
MALE SPEAKER: Look, they put all those by you, Joe, so you know.
[LAUGHTER]
MALE SPEAKER: It's who they care about.
MODERATOR: Okay, and let's have the first question.
PRESS: So I'll start by saying I absolutely loved this movie. Congratulations. Marvel seems to be really good at- basically, everything you guys have done as a studio I've pretty much enjoyed. What is the secret for how you guys have been – you know, it's almost a borderline Pixar, where you guys are pumping out some pretty good stuff. And also, how does it feel to know that the critics seem to be liking it?
MALE SPEAKER: Well, the movie hasn't come out yet, so we won't count our chickens yet. But the secret's right here: you hire great writers, you hire a great director. And you work with them to try to make a great movie. It's that simple.
MALE SPEAKER: Thank you all for coming and thank you for making the first best Captain America movie ever.
[LAUGHTER]
MALE SPEAKER: Have you seen the other two?
MALE SPEAKER: Unfortunately.
MALE SPEAKER: I like your hat, sir. That's a great hat. I hadn't seen that –
MALE SPEAKER: Do you think this letter on my forehead stands for France?
[LAUGHTER]
MALE SPEAKER: Yes, it does.
PRESS: Who directed the epilogue scene, because I heard Joe Johnston was not involved with that scene?
MALE SPEAKER: What are you calling the epilogue scene?
PRESS: The scene right before the credits.
MALE SPEAKER: Joe?
JOE JOHNSTON: Right before the credits?
MALE SPEAKER: In Time Square?
PRESS: Yes.
MALE SPEAKER: Yeah, Joe did that.
PRESS: Okay.
MALE SPEAKER: Yes.
PRESS: And was there concern about depicting Nazis and the Third Reich in the movie and having Hydra sort of replace them?
MALE SPEAKER: A concern? Nazis are the universal villain. I mean, you can kill Nazis with impunity, and so we wanted to branch –
MALE SPEAKER: Right, right.
[LAUGHTER]
MALE SPEAKER: So these are uber-Nazis that you can kill even with more impunity.
MALE SPEAKER: And the Hydra, of course, is right out of the Marvel comics and we always said this is a Marvel movie, this is the history of the Marvel version of World War II and Hydra and Skull really were the primary ones. So it wasn't anything we hid from, and as you see in the movie, there are Nazis in the film. But we wanted Hydra and the origin of Red Skull to be the primary antagonist for this story.
PRESS: Hi. Can you talk a little bit about casting Chris as Captain America, because I know it was a little tricky finding your Captain America? And secondly, are you heartened by the fact that most of the world is going to be using the Captain America title as opposed to just going with First Avenger? How do you feel about that?
MALE SPEAKER: Well, it's common for films to change the title. You want to talk about controversy, Cloudy with a [PH] Chance of Meatballs was changed to Cloudy with a Chance of Falafel, in Israel.
MALE SPEAKER: Is that true?
MALE SPEAKER: Yes. [PH] A Dark Knight changed the title. We depend on our international marketing department and we take their advice. So no controversy there.
MALE SPEAKER: About Chris, well, we screen tested about 12 or 15 potential Captain Americas, and we kept saying, Gee, I wish we could combine these two guys, because we liked one guy's face, we liked the other guy's acting. But Chris was always sort of at the top of our list. He had said no, because he was concerned about doing another superhero movie, but we just kept after him. And one day, we said, just get him in to look at the artwork that was on the walls in the Art Department. And I think it was that, and the fact that he liked us, that he eventually said yes, and he was convince we were going to make the right movie with the right Captain America.
PRESS: Can you talk a bit about actually bringing Captain America on the screen? Because I mean, Captain America is a well known Marvel character although not the most liked of all of them, and at the same time, was there any sort of hesitation over whether or not there was going to be just Captain America movie or if you were just going to bunch them into The Avengers when that finally happened? Was there anytime where it was just going to be like that?
MALE SPEAKER: Not really. I mean, we had talked early on about wanting to bring The Avengers to the screen the way they were brought to the comics, which was those characters had exited in their own comic books before being put together into a single comic. And Captain America is clearly one of the most famous characters we have and most important characters we have and he's got one of the best stories. He's got one of the best origin stories, the best rogues gallery, so we knew that he could hold his own movie easily. And always sort of planned on introducing him in his own movie first.
PRESS: This question's for Joe. This one has the energy of like the classic serials, I think. There's a real throwback quality to it, and a real innocence that I think will appeal especially to younger kids. There's also a musical number and I'd like to that you for that.
[LAUGHTER]
PRESS: It's great. So but I'd like to know, how did you approach this film in terms of tone and were there certain film serials that you were looking to?
JOE JOHNSTON: Well, we had always talked about films of this period that we liked, contemporary films, and Raiders was the model that we used. We use it as a template for a lot of reasons, but it feels contemporary today. I mean, it was made, what, 30 years ago now, it still feels absolutely fresh, and I wanted Captain America to feel like that, to feel like it wasn't a film made in the 40's, it was a film about the 40's made today. And I think the character, as far as the tone, the character of Steve Rogers just has an innocence about him and this determination that is probably the most American thing about him. It's not a propaganda tool, we're not waving the flag or anything – it's about this guy who just wants to do the right thing, and I think that that sort of runs throughout the tone of the picture.
PRESS: First question: Tommy Lee Jones, your approach to directing him, I could see it would have been easy for him to sort of like chew scenery, but he was so great in it. So sort of his approach to the character. And also, I don't know if it's too soon to ask how you feel about Captain America opening surrounded by all these lesser, not-as-great films, like Green Lantern. I don't know how you feel about where it's opening and how it's coming together and where it sits in the summertime.
JOE JOHNSTON: Well, I'm going to give Kevin the second question, but as far as Tommy Lee Jones goes, Tommy Lee Jones has played this part before and he was very well aware of that. He did play it differently. He played a Colonel Phillips that I've never seen before. But I found the most effective way to direct Tommy Lee Jones was just to laugh at him –
[LAUGHTER]
JOE JOHNSTON: because he's actually very funny, has a great sense of humor but nobody ever laughs at him. I think people are sort of afraid of him, but he's the sweetest guy in the world.
MALE SPEAKER: I was afraid of him.
[LAUGHTER]
KEVIN FRAGEE: The second question – you know, summer, there's always going to be a big movie every weekend – at least one big movie every weekend of every summer, certainly that I can remember and I'm sure for years to come, so that's just the reality of it. I do like that we've sort of bookended the summer, that Thor, our first film of this year, was the first film, essentially, of the summer, and Captain's sort of rounding out the back end, and there's all sorts of things, good and bad, in between that. But I do feel comfortable in the way that we've sort of separated the Marvel movies and we're not in charge of or in control of what happens in between those bookends, but we just try to make the bookends as good as we can.
PRESS: Joe, one of my favorite of your movies is The Rocketeer and this really reminded me of that, because of the innocent guy who turns hero, the romance and then fighting the Nazis. So was that in the back of your head at any time, or maybe also if the screenwriters can jump in on that, because it really reminded me of that movie and I love that movie.
JOE JOHNSTON: Well, I'll let the screenwriters answer that part of that question themselves, but I will say that it was not in my mind at all in making this film but I went to see the 20th anniversary screening of The Rocketeer and I was really surprised at how many very specific similarities there were in the picture that I had totally forgotten about, so must have been in the genes or something. I don't know.
[LAUGHTER]
MALE SPEAKER: Well, obviously we were aware of it. I think it more made us comfortable, not that we actually had any say in the matter, but that Joe was the right guy for it, in that, you know, that's Joe's wheelhouse, you drive a 1942 tank up in front of him and he grins like a ten year old boy.
JOE JOHNSTON: That's right. I have a tank now.
[LAUGHTER]
MALE SPEAKER: So nothing was patterned after it but it certainly has that definitely sort of innocence, yet fun.
MALE SPEAKER: Raiders of the Lost Ark was more off in the [SOUNDS LIKE] touch [SOUNDS LIKE] zone, and which of course Joe's fingerprints are all over.
PRESS: At first you wanted to use a different actor for the scrawny Steve Rogers but Chris insisted. Are you glad he insisted? It looked really good, and how did you accomplish that?
JOE JOHNSTON: Well, when we started the process of creating skinny Steve, we didn't really know how we were going to do it. We knew we had to take him from the way he looks now – 6 feet and 180 pounds – to 5'7" and 98 pounds. We shot a lot of different tests and we experimented with a lot of different things, but we found that the most effective way was basically to photograph Chris himself and to shrink him down using digital effects, just because that way we got the performance of Chris. We didn't have to worry about trying to have another body double actor recreate Chris' performance. There are a couple shots where it is a head replacement, where he is lying on a table or sitting in a chair or something where it doesn't require any physical acting but it's mostly Chris.
PRESS: Somebody asked me yesterday about the movie and the one thing he wanted to know is, "Does he punch Hitler?" I said, "Yes, in a USO show." And he went, "Aw!" He was disappointed. I guess it's a big deal for the comic book fans that Hitler is part of it. What was the thinking behind deciding not to do that, and do you think about what the fans might want?
MALE SPEAKER: Well, Kevin, I think that's up to you.
KEVIN FRAGEE: Well, in the cover of Captain America number one is him punching out Hitler, and we wanted to sort of tip our hat to that. But frankly, to put him in a scenario where that could actually occur was more difficult, particularly, as I've already said, we wanted to set up Johann Schmidt and Red Skull as the primary foe in the comics over the years of Steve Rogers. But we did early on sort of have this idea to incorporate that punching into the movie and being able to tip our hat to that cover, and in the movie, it's that part of the USO show that inspires the comic and it is sort of a great Marvel tradition that the Marvel comics exist within the Marvel universe, and are inspired by the heroes. They're not quite accurate but they're sort of inspired by the heroes. But he can always punch Hitler in another movie, I guess.
[LAUGHTER]
MALE SPEAKER: But he does punch him out over 200 times.
MALE SPEAKER: That's true.
JOE JOHNSTON: And that was actually Chris' stand-in who played Hitler in that.
MALE SPEAKER: Looked remarkably like him.
MALE SPEAKER: He did.
PRESS: What do you think that in some countries like South Korea and Russia they have eliminated the name Captain America from the name of the title of the movie?
MALE SPEAKER: Yeah, you know, it's sort of been written about before, but frankly, we were expecting much more of that. I mean, it's one of the reasons we have the subtitle "The First Avenger" on the movie, thinking that maybe everywhere internationally would use just the subtitle. And we were pleased that that was only the case in a few markets, and our distribution and marketing partner in Paramount is very smart and knows what they're doing and listens to the local markets and we've adjusted it accordingly.
PRESS: I guess this is mostly for the writers. I like the way you worked in parts of Iron Man and apparently parts of Thor into this, [SOUNDS LIKE] made the cosmic cube kind of an Asgardian thing. Can you talk about the thinking behind that and how you worked those elements out? And for all of y'all, what other epilogue are you talking about, because there wasn't one at the end of the Thursday night screening.
MALE SPEAKER: In terms of the other things from the Marvel universe, that was just mainly, for us, a source of fun in that it adds this extra layer that you don't have in other movies because, frankly, we don't have to do anything to have that happen. You know, we have Howard Stark – he's just a character, but the whole Tony Starkness of it is floating out there in the public's consciousness, so it's this neat sort of extra layer that you get that you don't get in a different context.
JOE JOHNSTON: Just structurally, you know, we're going to need a McGuffin, we're going to need something for the bad guy to go after, a Maltese Falcon, if you will, and if that McGuffin, the cosmic cube, has residence in other Marvel movies, so be it, it was a great starting point, actually. It's very helpful.
MALE SPEAKER: I don't think [SOUNDS LIKE] they was talking about another epilogue, I think they're referring, on this, movie that sort of epilogue is before the credits, when you go to black, you come back up, you're not sure where you are.
MALE SPEAKER: So there isn't anything after the credits?
MALE SPEAKER: Not in the screening you saw.
[LAUGHTER]
PRESS: Joe, you said before you wanted to make a film about the 40's but made today, and also the reference to Rocketeer is relevant to what I wanted to ask, and that is playing fast and loose with the technology. I don't know if that was ever explained. I thought maybe Red Skull was such a brilliant scientist that he invented transistors 20 years before anybody else did and that's why they could have a little radio-operated cigarette lighter to set off the explosives, or have those little cameras that were decades away from being available in the 40's. So talk a bit about that. Is that just a matter that people today assume that they always had the kind of communications that we have today?
JOE JOHNSTON: Yeah, why did you guys write that into the story?
MALE SPEAKER: Hmm, hmm.
MALE SPEAKER: Well, it is – well, it's partly the cube has moved Red Skull's technology 20, 30 years or infinitely, into the future. It's just partly the fun of science fiction is that people can have things they didn't have. You know, H.G. Wells didn't have a time machine. But in that first issue where Cap is punching Hitler, I know they had TV back then, but there is actually a monitor screen with something blowing up on it and it literally says "television" beneath it, just so you know what it is
[LAUGHTER]
MALE SPEAKER: Well, Goebbels thought it was the greatest propaganda tool ever invented.
MALE SPEAKER: And he was right.
MALE SPEAKER: [SOUNDS LIKE] It didn't exist in that kind of [SOUNDS LIKE] context.
MALE SPEAKER: Yeah.
PRESS: This is for Joe. I was really impressed with the effects in this movie, especially young, scrawny Steve. Is your approach to visual effects informed by your time at ILM? And then also, for everyone, what was the genesis of the musical number and were you a little worried about it, especially after Spiderman 3?
[LAUGHTER]
JOE JOHNSTON: Well, my time at ILM was a long time ago, and the technology was completely different. I mean, we had to build models and photograph them in front of a blue screen and there was no digital technology at all. Since then, CG has gotten so advanced and so great that anything you can think of you, as long as you can communicate that to the guy who's sitting at the keyboard, which is sort of the hard part, you can put it on the screen. So I think that, for someone like me, that's really all you need to know is that if you can translate your thoughts to the artists and the technicians, you can achieve it. And as far as the dance number goes, I'll let you guys talk about that, but it's my favorite scene in the movie.
MALE SPEAKER: Well, you know, we knew we wanted to introduce the idea of the costume in the USO type setting, and Joe embraced that idea and liked the idea of a musical number. Spiderman 3 hadn't occurred to me, but we always knew from the start that Cap wasn't going to sing and dance. He was sort of overwhelmed and felt out of place in the stage show, and had very little choreography and had to read off of cue cards, so that was part of the fun for us. And Chris, even, when he first found out we were doing something like this, was like, "Am I singing and dancing? What is this?" [LAUGHTER] We said, "No, no, no. That's not what it is." So, had we gone that way, I think we would have been more concerned but we were pretty confident in the way that we were talking about it.
JOE JOHNSTON: As you may have noticed, Alan Menken wrote that USO song, and Alan Menken probably has more Academy Awards that anybody else in history.
MALE SPEAKER: He does, yeah. Any living person in history. That song has been in all of our heads for the better part of a year.
MALE SPEAKER: Yeah, hard to get rid of.
PRESS: Hello. This question is primarily, I guess, for Steven and Christopher, but also for everybody. Obviously, with Captain America as with Thor the specter of the Avengers film coming out next year is sort of hanging above it and is something that you have to take into account. And I was wondering how the eventuality of The Avengers and Captain America's presence in there influences your ability to write the story and come up with a script; does it make it harder or easier? What are some things that you wouldn't have to consider that you now do, and some things that you can sort of let slide because of that eventual Avengers movie?
MALE SPEAKER: That's a good question. We always knew that we weren't just telling a [SOUNDS LIKE] one off story or the first of a trilogy or something, or in the past. We had to do his origin story and in essence his death story, all in the same two hours, and leave it baggy enough to go back if anybody ever wanted to go back to a 1940's story. So that was particularly challenging.
MALE SPEAKER: In The Avengers Cap has to be essentially the world's greatest soldier, the most seasoned leader, and if you only show him have one adventure in the preceding movie, you're not going to buy that guys like Iron Man are like, yeah, he's the man who should lead us, this 22 year old who fought one battle. So you have to load into our movie the sense that he's an incredibly seasoned veteran by the end of the movie. So in a way, it required a longer span of time than you might otherwise have done if you were just doing an origin story.
PRESS: This question is for Joe. Yeah, I would like you to talk a little bit about the use of 3D in the movie because I know that you showed it in 2D –
JOE JOHNSTON: Yes.
PRESS: – but you tried, it seems that you tried to use the 3D equipment, and then you said no, I'm going to do it in the traditional way. And it's like kind of subtle, the use of the [SOUNDS LIKE] 3D in this movie. So how was the process? Were you convinced since the beginning, okay, I'm going to make it in 2D? Or did you say, I'm not so sure. How did that work?
JOE JOHNSTON: Well, we always intended for it to be a 3D release. 2D and 3D. But we didn't shoot in 3D. We shot it in 2D but we shot a separate pass, we call it the left eye pass, which made it a lot easier to convert to 3D. But I shot it to look like 3D and 2D, basically. With Shelly Johnson's photography and Rick Heinrichs' production design, the 2D looked 3D to me. I mean, it was this amazing look, before we ever started converting any of the film to 3D, and now it looks even better. But I think that the story is so strong that it works in 2D or 3D and it'll work on DVD and Super 8 slides if ever gets there.
[LAUGHTER]
MALE SPEAKER: Super 8 release?
JOE JOHNSTON: Yeah.
MALE SPEAKER: To get to that decision, we actually, in preparation, tested the 3D rigs, and took one of the eyes, as Joe said, and sent it to a conversion company and compared the two. And for us that was the best choice, conversion.
PRESS: We've been talking a lot about how much the 40's era added to the spirit and the charm of this film, so was there much debate? Like should we set a movie in the 40's for a contemporary audience, beyond just trying to maybe tell a nugget-sized version of his origin story? And then how much do you think the 40's may factor into future Captain America films outside The Avengers?
MALE SPEAKER: In the early days of developing it, we assume, and in fact developed a script that took place half in the 40's, half in the present day, but it just felt like both sides were getting the short shrift. And when we were initially, in our conversations with Joe, two or three or even longer years ago, we brought him into that conversation. Do we go full 40's, do we do half and half, what do you think? And he was very much in support of the full period. And because it is an origin story and it is his initial adventure, it just made sense. And frankly, because there are so many other comic book movies out there, we knew that this could help it stand apart, if we just, again, stayed true to his origin and to that source material, it would be the best story, the best version of the movie and give us a way of separating ourselves from the [SOUNDS LIKE] pack of all the other films out there. So there was a little bit of a, I think, just a little discussion in terms of period. For some reason, there's logic that says, Oh, modern audiences aren't interested in period films, but if you look at the top 20 movies of all time, if you have a slightly looser – Harry Potter's almost period, right, I mean, at least in its vibe – they're almost all period. So we were pretty confident in it.
PRESS: And what are you thinking as far as future possible Captain America movies?
MALE SPEAKER: Well, as Chris said, the span of the movie is about two or three years, and there's a few times in the film where you jump four months ahead, you jump six months ahead, so we did that with the intention of saying, okay, there's certainly unseen adventures that Captain America went on in that period, that if we want to, we could go back and explore later.
PRESS: Hi. This question is for Christopher and Steven. I love the movie and my question is that Steve Rogers is a victim of bullies. So fortunately he was lucky enough to become a superhero, but not everybody has, you know, it's a movie. So did you have that in mind when you were writing the screenplay?
MALE SPEAKER: The fact that not everyone would get super soldiers [SOUNDS LIKE] here? Well, yeah, I mean, speaking as a died in the wool geek from birth till now –
MALE SPEAKER: You hate bullies, too, don't you?
MALE SPEAKER: I hate bullies.
MALE SPEAKER: I mean, the thing that makes Steve Rogers Captain America isn't the super soldiers [SOUNDS LIKE] hero. I mean, it's the fact that he will try five times to enlist and then he'll never back down, when a guy bigger than him is beating the crap out of him. It's his spirit, it's his will and that's why Dr. Erskine picks him. So in terms of standing up to bullies, ideally that would be the message I'd hope you take from it. Don't wait around for a German scientist to give you a procedure, you know. Stand your ground.
[LAUGHTER]
MALE SPEAKER: Right.
PRESS: Hi, Kevin. What is the purpose of Marvel having a home in Manhattan Beach, first of all? And just in general, can you talk about the work done at Marvel Studios?
KEVIN FRAGEE: Did you say what's the importance?
PRESS: Importance of having the home there.
KEVIN FRAGEE: Well, we made Iron Man 2, and [PH] Thorne Luce should answer this as well there, Cap was done mostly in the UK because that's where much of the movie took place, and wherever the story calls for is where we'll go film the movies. So we may not do all of the movies down there at Manhattan Beach or not film them there. But there's a great advantage to being under one roof and we do our prep there, and the art departments are there, a few of the films we shot there, and we posted the editorial all there. So I mean if you want to –
MALE SPEAKER: I chose Manhattan Beach and I live in Sherman Oaks so it wasn't the wisest decision but we needed enough space to be able to film, to post, to prep, and they offered us the biggest amount of space and let us grow as a company there.
PRESS: Hi, this question is for Christopher and Stephen. Given the upcoming Avengers and the necessity of placing the Cap within this bigger group, once Joss Whedon was brought on board, did he work with you guys on the script at all to make any adjustments?
MALE SPEAKER: Mainly just in terms of continuity in that we, we couldn't have next year a totally different Cap coming out, with a different attitude and different tendencies. So he came in and did a couple of things that he knew he wanted to deploy later, which was really cool. I mean you get a guy like Joss Whedon and you're not going to kick him out the door. Yeah, it was mainly just a sort of tuning up, and I can't wait to see modern day Cap, because in a way, that's the Cap we all know, that's the guy in 50 of the 70 years of comics is the man out of time. So I can't wait to see what Joss turns him into.
PRESS: the look of a superhero in the movies is one of the most important thing for fans, so how long did it take for you guys to come up with the look that you wanted for Captain America that would be functional for the movie and also please the fans?
MALE SPEAKER: Well, as Kevin said, we wanted to reference the original suit and the only way we could figure out how to do that was the USO show, because it is basically like wearing flag pajamas. But his combat suit, we spent months and months developing that, and we built several versions of it that we then took apart and basically threw away and started over. It was a long process and we knew what we wanted, basically working from the Brubaker series of comics, we wanted it to have that flavor, but it also needed to be something that he could run in and move in. We built a great suit that he could barely turn his head in, and it didn't work. So Anna Sheppard came in and designed and built by hand this amazing suit that we then continued to modify until it was something that Chris was happy with, but I think it looks great.
PRESS: In terms of that 70 year period, what was the explanation, because I was trying to figure out, when he got into the original crash at the beginning, I guess that wreck had to be 70 years old, right? So how did they preserve him until the hospital scene at the end? And then I was kind of disappointed he never made the date.
[LAUGHTER]
MALE SPEAKER: Yeah, so was he. Well, it was Dr. Erskine's serum that allowed him to be frozen for 70 years and not die, basically. It was better than Walt Disney, I mean.
[LAUGHTER]
MALE SPEAKER: [INDISCERNABLE]
MALE SPEAKER: [INDISCERNABLE] headline.
MALE SPEAKER: Ooh, hey, that's right.
MALE SPEAKER: Literally.
MALE SPEAKER: Oh, that's right. Disney bought you guys.
[LAUGHTER]
MALE SPEAKER: But no, it was the extreme cold and Dr. Erskine's serum that allowed him to survive.
MALE SPEAKER: [INDISCERNABLE]
MALE SPEAKER: Well, when he's brought back to life, the lady is 88 years old.
[LAUGHTER]
MALE SPEAKER: Stay tuned.
MALE SPEAKER: You know? I mean, I would love to see them have that date.
[LAUGHTER]
MALE SPEAKER: It's a May-December romance.
MALE SPEAKER: That's right.
MALE SPEAKER: It happens all the time.
PRESS: Is she still alive?
MALE SPEAKER: Yes. Oh, yeah, absolutely. She's still alive.
PRESS: Hi. It says here on the production notes that Marvel superheroes are from a time when wars were fought with weapons but were [SOUNDS LIKE] worn by men? I was just wondering how you think your superhero fits with the other superheroes that have been around this summer? Regardless of how good or bad the movies are, how will they compare in terms of the type of superhero that you portray? And how do you think audiences would relate to that as opposed to the others?
MALE SPEAKER: That's you, Kevin.
KEVIN FRAGEE: Well, the truth is, Joe's always said that what attracted him to this project is that Steve essentially is a man, is a normal person, even after the procedure he's got a great body and he's certainly at the peak of human endurance, but it's still human endurance. So if he gets shot, as he does briefly in the movie, he gets grazed, he could get killed. He's faster, he can run faster, he's slightly stronger than your average Joe, but he's not a Norse god, he doesn't have a green ring, he doesn't have an iron suit, so I think that's what attracted Joe to this project and that's why the action scenes in the movie are as exciting as they are, because at any moment he could get run over, shot or who knows what horrible thing could happen to him. And in terms of relateability, I mean, we hope that that's part of it. We hope that we can make all of our heroes, whether they're from Asgard or a billionaire industrialist, relatable to an audience. But with Steve Rogers, it's pretty easy. I mean, with Steve Rogers, he is like Peter Parker in the 1940's. I mean, he is relatable to most of us, I think. And that wish fulfillment of seeing him struggle and endure and emerge victorious is, I think, what going to the movies is all about.
PRESS: My question is kind of a follow-up to this gentleman's, about the damsel in distress. You always expect in a period piece to have a weak woman who needs rescuing in a movie, and the first time we see the girl in this movie, she's punching a soldier in the face, essentially. She's pretty tough, she doesn't need any help or rescuing. I don't think she ever does get rescued. And the first time they kiss is actually, I think, the last time he sees her and then never again, so did you make a specific decision to downplay the romance in this movie, to save it for later, or is there just a thing, maybe that rock and roll thing, where we want the guy to remain kind of available for somebody else and not tied down to a Lois Lane or whatever it might be?
MALE SPEAKER: Well, it's –
MALE SPEAKER: [INDISCERNABLE]
MALE SPEAKER: Technically.
[LAUGHTER]
MALE SPEAKER: He just learned how to talk to a woman.
MALE SPEAKER: Why don't you ask Chris that.
[LAUGHTER]
MALE SPEAKER: It's not so much that we wanted to downplay the romance but we wanted to always hold it off so that you wanted them to get together, so that it made the ending more bittersweet when they get one kiss, and that is the extent of their romance. But as far as the Peggy Carter of it all, I mean, what's hotter than a beautiful girl who knows how to use a machine gun?
[LAUGHTER]
MODERATOR: Can we have a last question over here?
PRESS: I wanted to ask Christopher and Stephen if there were any particular comic books, aside from obviously Captain America, number one, that you looked to and influenced the writing of the film, and to everybody else, if there are any comics or particular comics artists that you looked to in finding a look for the film.
MALE SPEAKER: Well, the Brubaker run is important to us, for a lot of reasons. There's a grit to that run that really sort of grounds him. It's an impressive run; I've encouraged people to find it. It starts in [SOUNDS LIKE] run 2005. There's also one, just in terms of plot, there's one called "Sentinel of Liberty" from several years ago that stretches out the recruitment process in the beginnings, because often Steve, I think even in the first issue, he becomes a super soldier in about four panels, you know, and so we knew that we wanted to stretch that out and have a good long time with Steve Rogers, 98 pound guy, so that you could track him throughout the whole movie. I mean, that's our goal is that he would be the same guy emotionally in a lot of ways, throughout the movie.
MALE SPEAKER: Well, and I mean, anything that Jack Kirby was involved with has a kind of kinetic joy that you want and are desperately hoping will get across in the movie. But actually, literally, the entire 70 year run, there's something in everybody's take on it that, I don't know if it made it all the way to the movie, but we kind of went, ooh, I like that, and I like that, and I like that, and you get out the 3x5 cards and go like, yeah, he's got to do that, and he's got to do that, and he's got to do that.
MALE SPEAKER: It's a biopic in a way, right? I mean, in some ways, you're telling a Steve Rogers story, so we had to learn his entire life story, which encompasses 70 years of comics, so it may not all get in there but it's sort of part of the iceberg underneath it.
MODERATOR: Okay, that wraps our press conference. Thank you, everybody, for coming. Thank you, [SOUNDS LIKE] Joe.
MALE SPEAKER: Thank you.
MALE SPEAKER: Thanks.
MODERATOR: And can everybody head to the second floor, to the [SOUNDS LIKE] roof...
[END AUDIO]
Captain America: The First Avenger focuses on the early days of the Marvel Universe when Steve Rogers volunteers to participate in an experimental program that turns him into the Super Soldier known as Captain America. As Captain America, Rogers joins forces with Bucky Barnes and Peggy Carter to wage war on the evil HYDRA organization, led by the villainous Red Skull. Starring Chris Evans, Sebastian Stan, Tommy Lee Jones, Hayley Atwell, Samuel L. Jackson, Stanley Tucci and Hugo Weaving, the film releases July 22, 2011.