Born during the Great Depression, Steve Rogers grew up a frail youth in a poor family. Horrified by the newsreel footage of the Nazis in Europe, Rogers was inspired to enlist in the army. However, because of his frailty and sickness, he was rejected. Overhearing the boy's earnest plea, General Chester Phillips offered Rogers the opportunity to take part in a special experiment... Operation: Rebirth.
After weeks of tests, Rogers was at last administered the Super-Solider Serum and bombarded by 'vita-rays.' Steve Rogers emerged from the treatment with a body as perfect as a body can be and still be human. Rogers was then put through an intensive physical and tactical training program. Three months later, he was given his first assignment as Captain America. Armed with his indestructible shield and battle savvy, Captain America has continued his war against evil both as a sentinel of liberty and as leader of the Avengers.
LA TIMES recently caught up with director Joe Johnston, in which they asked the former visual effects director is his work on
Raiders Of The Lost Ark played any part in making his latest WWII adventure in this summer's
Captain America: The First Avenger. While Comparing the two, Johnston mentions that even though it is set in WWII, CA:TFA has a much more futuristic feel to it:
“We used ‘Raiders’ as a template when we were developing the story, but we sort of moved away from it as time went on,” Johnston said. “This is futurism in the 1940s; if you went to 1942 and thought of what the future would be, that’s what the approach was. The villain has a much more futuristic style and his science and his apparatus — he has a whole design motif that is beyond 1942 but it’s what you might have perceived as futuristic from a 1942 vantage point. So we went away from the ‘Raiders’ template in that sense but where we sort of stuck with it was in the structure and the action and the way the main characters are thrown into these situations and then have to get themselves out of them.”
"When you sit down to watch it, it’s certainly not ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ which is a very different kind of film in the final analysis. But sometimes when we had questions and we were stuck we would say, ‘What would Indiana Jones do? What would be the answer to this in "Raiders of the Lost Ark"?’ I’ve always loved 'Raider' and the great achievement of it was the tone and the fresh feeling of the movie. It was period but didn’t feel like it was made in the period. It felt like a contemporary film about this period in the past, and that is the goal we have with ‘Captain America.’ And I can say this — it definitely has an Indiana Jones pace."
Captain America: The First Avenger Hits Theaters July 22.