Captain America 2 Screenwriters Discuss Setting and Tease New Characters
Posted 08.26.11 by BrentJS
Though Marvel Studios has yet to officially put a sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger (CATFA) on the calendar (or have they?), the continuing box office success of the movie in foreign markets, added to its substantial domestic numbers, makes it pretty much a given. Marvel even began making preprations for a sequel to CATFA months before its release by hiring the writers of the movie, Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus, to write Captain America 2. Whenever the pair have spoken about the movie in the past few months, they've made it clear that, due to Cap's (Chris Evans) presence in the present in The Avengers, the sequel "will likely be in the present day." However, both the screenwriters and CATFA director Joe Johnston have talked about the sequel "possibly staying in the 1940s," if only in "flashback." In a recent interview with NBC, McFeeley and Marcus reiterated their interest in setting "at least a portion" of Captain America 2 in the '40s and also teased some of the characters from Cap's comic book supporting cast that they would like to see, including one high-flying costumed superhero.
McFeeley said that, even though Cap's WWII story wrapped up in CATFA, there are still plenty of untold Cap tales from that period to tell.
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 are certainly unseen adventures that Captain America went on in that period that if we want to, we can go back and explore later."
Markus said that part of the challenge — and the fun — of writing the sequel will be showing how a man who grew up in the 20s and 30s adjusts to modern society.
It might be doing a disservice not to address the present day Cap, particularly because so much of the comic book run right now is present day Cap — that "man out of time" is the icon. The Captain America that most people know is really from kind of the reboot, when Stan Lee brought him back in '63 and '64, frozen from a block of ice. So his biggest personality trait is that he's this man out of time, and for us, we didn't have the opportunity [to explore that]. This was a guy in the RIGHT time.
As far as what characters from Cap's extensive supporting cast might be showing up in the sequel, Markus said that he would like to see both S.H.I.E.L.D Agent 13, Sharon Carter — who is Cap's on-again-off-again girlfriend in the comic books and the niece of Cap's war-time girlfriend, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) — and Cap's one-time crime-fighting partner Sam Wilson, aka the Falcon.
I want both of them! Sharon is meaty, almost to a point where you get a little uncomfortable because her relation to Peggy has shifted over the years, as time has passed. She's the sister, she's the cousin, she's the niece. You have to walk a fine line there because it does seem like you're dating your girlfriend's daughter. Falcon is awesome. We can't play with time so much to have Cap go back to Harlem in the '70s and clean up the streets, but it would be awesome to go straight up, like, Shaft with Cap and the Falcon.