Today we get our first look at the new Captain America: The First Avenger.
The leader of the Avengers is getting his origin story reboot movie this summer to go along with the Iron Man, Thor, and Spider-Man origin movies being produced in the same Avengers arc.
The trailer showcases an overview of the core origin: Rogers’s volunteering for a secret super-soldier project in WWII, and being selected as the recipient of a serum which transforms him into an ultra powerful fighter for the Allies. None of this should be spoiler for anyone whose bothering to read this, but it’s exciting to see another new take on the character, who has been all but ruined by previous attempts at film depiction.
I think what I most appreciate about this new adaptation is the muted costume.
Captain America has always seemed too colorful to me. It works fine in the sequential art version of his story, but in a modern film, colors like the bright blues and reds of his comicbook costume are just too much.
The only bright color on the character here seems to be the shield, which we already saw briefly in Iron Man 2, and which adds a stylistic flair.
In fact, the entire movie seems to have been filmed in cool, muted yellows, greens, and browns, something which wasn’t completely clear from the stills we’ve already seen. This attention to earth-tones is appropriate, I think.
It’s not quite sepia-tone, which is a good thing, but it gives that same feel of age and history which works for the origin story of, not just Captain America, one of the few super hero origin stories which needs to be left in the time period it was written to function (unlike, say, Spider-Man or Iron Man, which could take place at any time and still work), but is also the origin story of The Avengers as a team.
Also, I was worried that using CGI to put Chris Evans’ face on a scrawny body would look dumb or awkward, but it seems that they know what they are doing. The future of movie making is scary-rad, when you think of the implications of that technology.
