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Updates on Captain America - Red Skull Confirmed as Villain

by Alex Billington
February 6, 2010
Source: Collider, ComingSoon

Director Joe Johnston has been out talking to press this weekend for his new movie The Wolfman and most of the discussion has ended up focusing on The First Avenger: Captain America. Johnston spoke with Collider and gave them a lot of details about the direction they're heading with the film. Additionally, ComingSoon confirmed (as did AICN) that the villain in Captain America will be Cap's arch-nemesis Red Skull, the Nazi badass whose head is just a red skull. Now this is the kind of awesome stuff that I like to hear because it's getting me very excited about seeing Johnston's Captain America movie come together.

The talk of the town recently has been that they're finalizing casting for Captain America. Johnston tells Hero Complex about the kind of actors they're looking at. "Well, we're testing five or six guys," Johnston said. "The youngest is 23 the oldest is 32. Most of the guys in the war [are] just kids, 18 or 19, but we want to go a little bit older. We have to have somebody locked in before I leave March 1 for London." So he's got to have locked in soon. Johnston also tells Collider that he's definitely casting an American in the role as well. "I don’t think we could make without an American playing the part." So it sounds like this won't be Sam Worthington playing Cap at least. But who will it be? We've got a month to go and we'll know then?

Johnston also goes on to talk about how they're shooting this and a little bit about the style in the film.

"We're definitely going to shoot it in a different way than any of the other Marvel pictures have been shot. What I'm trying to do is look at the comics - most of the new ones like the Brubaker series - and to interpret that sort of visual style into a film in a way that I think has been tried before... It always looks a little too on the nose it looks like oh they're shooting a comic book movie. I want to try something a little bit different."

And, of course, there's some talk about the villain and that we can expect Red Skull in it. Ryan Rotten of ComingSoon talked with him bit about why they're setting it in WWII and going for the origin story on this.

"Virtually the entire story except the bookends are in World War II because we all recognize we have one chance to tell the origin story of how he became Captain America, you can't tell a modern story and then go back and tell the origin story. If you're going to do it, let's do it. Let's do it first. Everyone wanted to tell an origin story. There was a version where it was a modern story and it didn't work."

That's about all the good stuff we've got for now on Captain America. But you can head over to Collider, Hero Complex, and ComingSoon for more quotes from Johnston and updates on the movie. Although I'm not 100% confident that Johnston will bring us a movie as good as Batman Begins, it does sound like they're headed in the right direction, and I can't wait to hear more about the movie including who the hell gets cast to play Cap. Right now there's no other question I want answered more! And then, who could play Red Skull? Would it be too easy to suggest Christoph Waltz or should they find someone different?

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