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Captain America: The First Avenger wraps up 10 years of its release this month (July 22). While this was the fifth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was also the official introduction of one of the founding members of the Avengers: Steve Rogers, better known as Captain America. The film was essential for the MCU then in development because, like the other previous films in the franchise, it simply had to work.
A Captain America movie had been in development since the late 1990s, but the project remained in development hell. Larry Wilson and Leslie Bohem were initially hired for the film’s script, but it failed to take off.
After several delays, the film received the green light. Paramount was created as a distributor of the film. It was originally meant to be a standalone story, but was later added to the budding MCU.
Joe Johnston, known for hits like Jumanji and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, was recruited by Marvel Studios. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who went on to write the scripts for the two remaining Captain America films as well as the final two Avengers films, came on board.
But trouble was only just beginning for Marvel Studios. The role had to be chosen, and performed perfectly. They needed an actor who could look good and embody, at least in appearance, the righteousness, moral quality, and patriotism of the iconic superhero. Many actors were considered and John Krasinski almost signed up. He remembers, perhaps jokingly, being discouraged from taking on the role after witnessing Chris Hemsworth’s massive body in a screen test.
Chris Evans, who eventually became Captain America, wasn’t too enamored with the idea. He had a horrific experience playing another Marvel superhero, Human Torch, in the Fantastic Four movies. It was also about signing a six-movie deal, which essentially meant over a decade with just one studio.
During an interview with We Got This Covered conducted around the release of Captain America: The First Avenger, Evans revealed that he even went to therapy “because I was so scared to take the movie, I was nervous about the lifestyle change, about the engagement. You know, that’s six movies, it can last 10 years. I love making movies but I’m not determined to be a gigantic movie star. cinema I like having the possibility of leaving if I want, with a contract of six photos, you cannot leave.
Evans eventually accepted the role, and the rest, as they say, is history.
When production started, the biggest challenge for the tech team was to create a believable, short, lean Steve Rogers, before he was injected with the Super Soldier Serum.
The complicated process involved a double body and turned out to be too heavy.
Johnston explained the process this way: “Most of the shots were taken by a Los Angeles company called LOLA, which specializes in digital ‘plastic surgery’. The technique was to shrink Chris in all dimensions. We shot every skinny scene of Steve at least four times; once like a normal scene with Chris and his fellow actors in the scene, once with Chris alone in front of a green screen so his element can be digitally reduced, again with everyone in the scene but with Chris away so that the shrunken Steve can be reinserted into the scene, and finally with a double body mimicking Chris’s actions in case the second technique is needed. When Chris had to interact with other characters in the scene, we had to either lower Chris or raise the other actors on apple boxes or elevated catwalks to make the skinny Steve shorter in comparison. For close-ups, Chris’s other actors had to look at the marks on his chin that represented where his eyes would be after the narrowing process, and Chris had to look at the marks on the top of the actor’s head to represent their eyes.
Even after all of this hard work, the result was far from ideal and the look was distracting.
But the film has always been well received by critics and audiences alike and paved the way for sequels. More than that, he avoided making his hero boring self-righteousness. Thanks to Evans’ writing and nuanced performance, Steve Rogers received a sympathetic treatment he rarely received in the comics. He redefines masculinity by making it more warm and compassionate, not a show of pumped up biceps.
When the MCU movies are ranked these days, Captain America The First Avenger probably wouldn’t make the top 10 for most people, and admittedly it’s not a perfect movie, but it was and remains very watchable and one of the most important films in the franchise.
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