Hollywood is making another comic book movie. This time they move into the life of my favorite superhero, Captain America. I’m scared. Oh yes I’m excited, I’m anxious to see how the story line will follow – or differ – from the origin of Cap in the comic books, and I’m thrilled to see the best superhero of all time get his own film.
On the other hand, maybe things are better left untouched. Whether good or bad, the influence Hollywood can have on our perceptions over a variety of different issues is flat out amazing. Take Oliver Stone’s 1991 epic JFK. Although there had always been a good number of conspiracy theorists out there, Stone’s movie catapulted the believe in a near world-wide cover up and sent the diminished reputation (rightfully so) of Jim Garrison skyrocketing to the place where he still holds a kind of heroic stature in the minds of most Americans who have seen the film. Most of our younger generation today see Tobey Maguire when they hear the word Spiderman. And so on. Some of these things are just the reality of making movies, no real harm done. But that doesn’t mean I am necessarily thrilled to see my hero have the potential to get typecast by some lame Hollywood face who has a good jaw line but no idea who the character and man of Steve Rogers really is. Case in point – the portrayal of Reed Richards in The Fantastic Four by Ioan Gruffudd still has me making regular trips to the bathroom for a nice daily dose of vomiting.
Thus far there are 6 or 7 seven men in the running to play Cap. One of them is John Krasinski, an actor from the widely successful t.v. series “The Office.” I am assuming that the makers of this film will try to sign whoever plays Cap for a least a two movie deal so there can be continuity with the release of The Avengers due out in 2012. If you take a look at the Avengers movie page on IMDB, you will notice there is not actor listed to play Cap (Cap is not even listed yet at all).
So, I will keep on eye on this with cautious excitement. Let’s hope they get it right.
One of the problems I have with the actors being considered for Cap is that he is not supposed to be as young as the actors being considered to play him. If you follow the original storyline, he was already middle-aged when frozen in ice (after defeating the Nazis) and was older than nearly all Avengers when he was found/thawed (although he didn’t look that much older due to the Super-Serum). That being said, my favorite of the front runners based solely on their pictures I have seen is Mike Vogel. (By the way, what does “The First Avenger” in the pre-production title mean, since he didn’t come along until Issue #4? Even if it was to mean he was around before anyone else (since he was around in WWII, etc.), that wouldn’t be true due to Thor?). Isn’t is fun to actually expect these things to follow the storylines!
The attempt to age-ify Ioan Gruffudd was laughable. Painting grey streaks on your sideburns to match the comic character made him look like someone who had trouble in painting class.
I actually didn’t mind his performance so much as I didn’t like the material he was given or his plotlines. He didn’t see brilliant, but merely bemused by it all. Certainly nobody who deserved the lovely and talented (ahem) Jessica Alba 🙂
Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm, and actually Sue Storm I thought were not too bad in their parts.
Sorry, I have no particular affection for Cap America, though I feel as similar way you do about him as I do about the upcoming Green Lantern and Flash movies (in the works). These are two of my three favorite superheros (along with Superman) and while Flash had a mildly successful TV series run several years ago, GL has never really made it to the big/little screen. The further you go into both the DC and Marvel superhero pantheons, the potential for campiness increases. I think we saw that with the FF and I’m afraid we’ll see it with GL and Flash.
Barry, its interesting how people from “our” generation generally fall into the DC or the Marvel camp. Not that there aren’t crossovers (I always liked Flash, GL, heck even Green Arrow!), but it seems most people went one way or the other for their favorites. I, of course, am a Marvel fan first (the Avengers, FF, X-Men, CA, Iron Man, Spider-Man, etc.), and I remember from college that you were more of a DC fan (as noted above).
By the way, I also didn’t think FF the movies were that bad (with Reed being the weakest link for sure)…but then I even sort of liked Daredevil.