Movie Chronicles » The First Avenger: Captain America
An unofficial blog following Joe Johnston's Captain America movie adaptation with a July 22nd 2011 release.

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Captain America on set video August 18th, 2010

HeyUGuys were on loca­tion in Sur­rey to grab some video and pic­tures of the Cap­tain Amer­ica set, the crew were done film­ing and items were being packed up, but this is still a very cool first look at the Cap­tain Amer­ica production.

First Captain America set pictures surface August 18th, 2010

The Cap­tain Amer­ica set was dis­cov­ered by The Media Club in Bourne woods, Sur­rey, UK, and they’ve been kind enough to post up some snaps of the loca­tion and pro­vide a lit­tle com­men­tary (although no scene details are mentioned).

On set report

via Media Club

Yes­ter­day I headed over to the film set for the upcom­ing big-budget 2011 Mar­vel release, Cap­tain Amer­ica: The First Avenger, after receiv­ing a sneaky tip from a friend that the film­ing was tak­ing place near my house. After trekking through the Bourne Woods in Farn­ham, Sur­rey, for about 10 min­utes we reached a perime­ter which, due to health and safety rea­son (AKA mas­sive explo­sions etc), we were not allowed to cross… so we didn’t. There were some tanks and some fel­las chill­ing out in army uni­forms, just then I noticed a man with a dirty blonde grown-out mil­i­tary hair­cut and I pointed for my friend to see. At this point a north­ern secu­rity woman tot­tered over to ask us if we were okay, to which we replied “yes”. We then began hav­ing a friendly chat to the woman about the loca­tion that has been pre­vi­ously used in Glad­i­a­tor, Chil­dren of Men, Harry Pot­ter, Wolf­man and the more recent Robin Hood. We then asked her what was going on cur­rently– with all the mil­i­tary vehi­cles and alike. At this point a rather seri­ous look­ing gen­tle­man came over and began to explain that the pro­duc­tion was that of a upcom­ing World War 2 film with the ridicu­lous name ‘Frost­bite’. We pre­tended to eat up his bar­rel of lies until he went on his busy way (which took all of 2 sec­onds). The secu­rity lady then seemed rather proud of their decep­tion before she noticed us whis­per­ing and gig­gling– like girls. She once again asked us if we were ok; this was the point at which our visit turned. We responded by inform­ing her that we knew it wasn’t ‘Frost­bite’, she played dumb and asked us what we ‘thought’ we knew. “Well,” I began “that guy over there is watch­ing a Cap­tain Amer­ica Tshirt, that mas­sive sticker on that trailer has Cap­tain Amer­ica on it, that’s Hay­ley Atwell (the female lead in the film) and we just saw Chris Evans (the actor play­ing Steve Rogers AKA Cpatain Amer­ica) walk­ing past in the cos­tume barely cov­ered by a trench coat.” This did have a shock­ing effect on the secu­rity woman, and she rudely claimed that we knew more than she did. She took a few steps back and we con­tin­ued to talk qui­etly amongst our­selves behind the bar­rier. About a minute later a tall man walked towards and told us we were being ‘a nui­sance’ we apol­o­gised and told him we were unaware; he then con­tin­ued and told us that he was call­ing the police and that we would be arrested. At this point I won­dered on what charges this could take place, he con­tin­ued to glare at us. “Man­ners cost noth­ing, my friend” I replied. He didn’t take too kindly to this rec­om­men­da­tion and we walked off.

Basi­cally, it was very excit­ing to see Chris Evans in cos­tume, the film set is look­ing good and the pro­duc­tion is obvi­ously being taken very seri­ously (as it should because Cap­tain Amer­ica is awe­some) and the shoot is being kept on the super-secret down-low but regret­tably some of the crew are so far up their own ass that they really ruined my excite­ment about a film I have been hugely look­ing for­ward to. Truth be told that guy is a tosser, and I went home to make posters to inform the pub­lic that ‘Frost­bite’ is a lie and that there was free entry to the set of Cap­tain America.

Captain America filming in Manchester and Liverpool, UK August 5th, 2010

The BBC are report­ing that Cap­tain Amer­ica film­ing will take place on the streets of Man­ches­ter and Liv­er­pool to recre­ate a 1940’s pre-war New York. Pre­cisely, Manchester’s North­ern Quar­ter and Liverpool’s Stan­ley Dock.

America’s First Avenger will bat­tle his foes on the streets of Man­ches­ter and Liv­er­pool dur­ing film­ing on the big-budget super­hero film.

Manchester’s North­ern Quar­ter is to be trans­formed into 1940s New York for a dra­matic car chase in Cap­tain Amer­ica: The First Avenger.

Pro­duc­ers chose the North­ern Quar­ter to recre­ate New York because of its tow­er­ing build­ings and pre-war architecture.

The loca­tion was organ­ised through the Vision+Media film office, based at Mediac­ity in Sal­ford Quays, which brought the big bud­get pro­duc­tion of Sher­lock Holmes to Man­ches­ter and Liverpool.

Susan Williams, drama liai­son man­ager, said the com­pany was approached by the stu­dio, which is also behind the suc­cess­ful Spi­der Man and Hulk films, in February.

“We sug­gested the area to Mar­vel as its wide streets, tow­er­ing build­ings and pre-war archi­tec­ture will make the per­fect 1940s New York.”

Res­i­dents, local busi­nesses and Man­ches­ter City Coun­cil have all been con­sulted about the pro­duc­tion, which will last about two weeks from mid September.

Details of scenes due to be filmed at Liverpool’s Stan­ley Dock are yet to be finalised.

Captain America’s shield and costume to evolve through film July 27th, 2010

In an inter­view with MTV, Chris Evans spoke a bit about his suit and shield, we don’t see his final Cap­tain Amer­ica suit until the end of the movie, and sim­i­larly, the shield keeps get­ting updated:

“But [the suit]‘s not bad. It’s a World War II movie, so I think a lit­tle bit of a cum­ber­some feel to it and some­thing that’s a bit chunkier … not only serves the time period, I think it looks bet­ter. […] It’s not this sleek span­dex suit. It looks like some­thing you might wear in the ‘40s in the mid­dle of a war.”

“There’s a cou­ple stages and ini­tially in the script, Steve isn’t Cap­tain Amer­ica right away. […] He gets the injec­tion and isn’t asked to go to war right off the bat. He’s used in dif­fer­ent areas, so he has dif­fer­ent stages of the suit. I don’t think he actu­ally jumps into the final suit until the third act of the film.”

[talk­ing about the shield]

“Well, dur­ing the USO tour, there’s obvi­ously a dif­fer­ent shield. […] And he goes on a cou­ple mis­sions, he goes AWOL and kind of takes the USO shield. And he’s kind of allowed to be this sol­dier and they out­fit him with the new uni­form. They decide to out­fit him with an updated shield.“

Captain America’s shield and Thor’s Infinity Gauntlet July 26th, 2010

Mar­vel have two more sur­prises for their fans, post-Avengers panel, on the shop floor are two new props — Cap­tain America’s shield and the Infin­ity Gaunt­let from Thor, which can be used in com­bi­na­tion with the Inifin­ity gems to gain com­plete con­trol of the universe.

The appear­ance of the gaunt­let throws up some ques­tions and pre­dic­tions for the Thor and Avengers movie plots. The gaunt­let was cre­ated by Thanos,

From Wiki:

Thanos mounts the six Infin­ity Gems, (col­lected in the The Thanos Quest lim­ited series), on his left glove to form the Infin­ity Gaunt­let, the focus of the title of the series. Each Gem grants its bearer com­plete mas­tery over one aspect of the uni­verse: Time, Space, Mind, Soul, Real­ity, and Power.

/Film more impor­tantly point out that, in the comics, Loki tries to attain the power of the gaunt­let, by steal­ing the infin­ity gems. He also seeks the Cos­mic Cube, which has been ref­er­enced in the Cap­tain Amer­ica footage; which would be a nice movie crossover prior to The Avengers. This ulti­mate power and cross-film vil­lain makes a very strong case for Loki being The Avengers main vil­lain. Thanos remains a strong pos­si­bil­ity, as he too sought the cos­mic cube.

First Captain America footage shown at SDCC July 25th, 2010

Open­ing teaser

Descrip­tion of footage from Quint at AICN:

Kevin Feige started the panel which began with a teaser for Cap­tain Amer­ica, a film that has only been shoot­ing for 5 days.
The teaser was WW2 footage… typ­i­cal stuff: planes bomb­ing, anti-aircraft guns fir­ing, sol­diers march­ing, super­im­posed over what is obvi­ously a very slow reveal of the red, white and blue shield. Roosevelt’s Day of Infamy speech plays over this footage as text appeared on the screen:
Our courage and strength led us into bat­tle, sto­ries emerged of heroes … but one story has never been told.
Bam, the full cir­cu­lar shield. Is shown, then fades to black as text appears: Every army starts with one man.
Cap­tain America’s sil­hou­ette, shield on the arm, stand­ing in near pro­file. To black.
“Next sum­mer meet the world’s first avenger.”
Chris Evans turn­ing around in cos­tume, very much like the designs we’ve seen over the last month or so. No wings on head, but very much a prac­ti­cal army suit.
The title hit and then the zinger (you know the zinger… every trailer has one… you think it’s over and then BAM some­thing else) was of Evans launch­ing the shield right at camera.

Descrip­tion of footage from /Film:

The teaser begins show­ing clips from World War II super­im­posed over close-ups of the Captain’s shield, while audio plays of FDR’s “Day That Will Live in Infamy” speech. On screen text reads: “Sto­ries emerged…. But one story has never been told…. Every army starts with one man.” Cut to a shot of a sil­hou­ette of Cap­tain Amer­ica. On screen text reads: “Next Sum­mer you will meet the First Avenger” We then see a short shot of Chris Evans in cos­tume as Cap­tain Amer­ica shown from behind/side. Cap­tain Amer­ica logo. Cut to another shot of Evans in cos­tume, this time from the front view. We don’t get to see much as he tosses his shield at the camera.

Hugo Weav­ing footage

Quint again:

Nor­way, May 1942. Two men stand in a stone cas­tle as one of the walls is busted inward, crush­ing one of the men. The room fills with Nazis as they restrain the older gen­tle­man (who looked just like Finch from Pot­ter, but I’m not 100% pos­i­tive it was actu­ally David Bradley).They go to an elab­o­rate cof­fin, with an intri­cate stone design on top. “Open it! Quickly! Before he gets here.”

Of course “he” is The Red Skull. Hugo, look­ing sharp in an SS uni­form, is sil­hou­et­ted in the hole the Nazis busted into the keep. After a beat, he comes down, obvi­ously feared by his crew. His face is just nor­mal Hugo Weav­ing as he approaches the ter­ri­fied older guy that may or may not be Finch from Potter.

“It took me a long time to find this place,” Weav­ing said with an elo­quent menace.

“What you seek is just a leg­end!” says the Old Man.

:Then why make such an effort to con­ceal it?”

Weav­ing eas­ily pushes the heavy stone slab off the cof­fin, reveal­ing a skele­ton clutch­ing a cube, which Weav­ing called the Jewel of Odin’s trea­sure room. The Cos­mic Cube? I don’t remem­ber if it’s tied to Thor in the books, but I like them already tying these fran­chises together.

Weav­ing holds the cube, look­ing at it and sud­denly smashes it. It’s a fake, a decoy and Skull saw through it. “It is not some­thing one buries, but I think it is close, yes?”

He walks to an elab­o­rate door with a carv­ing on it of a large tree. Tree of the world, gar­den of wis­dom… and fate… Weav­ing says as he admires it. He reaches out and touches a snake eye in han­dle, which opens a con­tainer filled­with a glow­ing blue light. Weav­ing looks long­ingly inside and then back up at the old man. “You have never seen this, have you?” The old, defi­ant man answers: “It is not for the eyes of ordi­nary men… “ With a wicked smile Weav­ing says: “Exactly!”

End of scene.

/Film’s ver­sion of events:

They then pre­miered footage they claim was filmed just last week. The footage was very rough, com­plete with time­code. The footage begins with the title card “Nor­way, May 1942″ we see told older men in a stone castle-like inte­rior. The walls are shak­ing, dust and dirt falling. The wall implodes inward as a Nazi sol­diers come rush­ing in, and exam­ine a crypt in the cen­ter of the room. And then Johann Shmidt (Hugo Weav­ing pre Red Skull) makes his entrance from the huge hole in the wall. He orders the sur­viv­ing old man to hand over “The Tesser­act.” The man tells Shmidt that what he is look­ing for is just a leg­end. Shmidt responds, “then why go through so much work to con­ceal it?” The crypt is opened, and inside is the bones of a cru­sader hold­ing a misty crys­tal white cube. Shmidt picks it up, and says “The Tesser­act was the prize of Odin’s col­lec­tion.” But he isn’t fooled. He throws it down on the ground, smash­ing it to bits. This is not what he was look­ing for.

He then turns his atten­tion to the wall, which con­tains a large wood cav­ing of Yggdrasil, the Norse Tree of Life. In the wall he finds a hid­den com­part­ment. Hell pulls it out and opens it. Blue glow fills his face. Shmidt says to the man “You haven’t seen this yet, have you?” The man responds, “It’s not for the eyes of ordi­nary men.”

Official Thor and Captain America movie sites launch July 25th, 2010

http://​thor​.mar​vel​.com/ and http://​cap​tainamer​ica​.mar​vel​.com/ are now live, no con­tent yet though.

SDCC Captain America and Thor posters July 25th, 2010

New posters have been released as part of SDCC, click for larger versions.

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