Attention! Attention please!

[trinityvixen]

We have a Captain America.After not deciding immediately to jump on a role that would likely end up banishing him to Typecast Land forever, Chris Evans has decided to be Captain America. And being typecast is really the least of his problems with accepting this. Marvel, unlike DC, is all about gravy training their powerful franchises (the ones they

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Some history, then, is called for. Then porn.

[trinityvixen]

The problem with casting Captain America has kind of fascinated me over the past week. Quite literally, every male actor of a certain age read for it. Up to and including Jim from The Office, I shit thee not. It was clear they had a type in mind, of which Chris Evans is fairly the Platonic ideal: young, but seasoned, preferably blond. But the casting went on for weeks. They're clearly working very hard to cast this exactly right. Whatever subtle qualities not covered by "looks good in tights" they were looking for took them forever to find. I don't think a then-unknown Hugh Jackman had this much trouble getting cast as Wolverine, and that's a role more beloved (if possibly less high profile) than Captain America--at least beloved by the fans.

It points to the ridiculous position Captain America occupies in the comic-reader's psyche. He has the weight of history literally on his side, as well as the moral authority. This was a guy made strong for the purpose of fighting Nazis. I mean, you don't get a higher moral authority than that. But he's also supposed to be relatively young, having been a 100-pound pipsqueak prior to becoming Captain America, and he's frozen in time to remain young. So he has to be the young blond god that would, in the hands of his enemy, been a Third Reich poster boy, but also be the grandfatherly sage of experience to whom even the Puck-ish Tony Stark defers.

I can see why, with Robert Downey Jr. having been cast as Tony Stark, they were having trouble casting someone who could take him on as Captain America. I'm a little mollified by Evans' casting--from what I've seen, he's as fast with his wit as RDJ, but he hasn't gotten enough chance to prove his facility with gravitas. It's hard to say whether he will be able to perform and give the impression of respect and austerity that comes with the character. It's difficult, too, because RDJ has the very physical advantage of age that unbalances the power structure. That could be good! It just won't be like the comics. We'll have to wait and see.

What we should enjoy now is HOT MEN being cast IN MANY PROJECTS that will be coming TO THEATERS NEAR US for the next, oh, two years. Our Thor is not exactly Quasimodo, either. Then they all three will end up in a movie together. Possibly with Ed Norton as the Hulk (although that is looking increasingly unlikely), possible with the Jackman as Wolverine (IT COULD HAPPEN, WHAT.)? I might faint.

Re: Some history, then, is called for. Then porn.

[saturn_shumba]

Jim from The Office? Jim from The Office. Err, no, never, please. I mean, he's cute, but everyone in that show just drives me up the wall. (I feel like one of the 5 people in my age set that doesn't like that show. Never have, never will.)

When you mentioned RDJ and how Chris Evans will stand up next to him, I can't help but wonder if that was a conscious decision to play into Iron Man's favor. I guess I won't know until the film comes out.

And whhhaaaat Norton doesn't want to do The Hulk again? NORTON, NO. God damnit.

Re: Some history, then, is called for. Then porn.

[trinityvixen]

I know, I had the same reaction. "Jim. Jim? Jim. From The-- yes that one. Jim? Jim." A pause. "If you're not joking, kindly reassure me one more time so that I might go bang my head against a wall."

When you mentioned RDJ and how Chris Evans will stand up next to him, I can't help but wonder if that was a conscious decision to play into Iron Man's favor. I guess I won't know until the film comes out.

Possibly? Obviously, Robert Downey Jr. is having, like, the best years of his life right now. (And, given his past, I'm pretty sure that, yes, I can say that with 99% surety.) Iron Man pretty much rocked the socks off of superhero movies in a way that The Dark Knight did not. TDK was made by people who were amazingly smart about what they were doing, worked with iconic characters the likes of which aren't even seen in other DC heroes (Batman and the Joker and Harvey Two-Face), filled the film with a bevy of talented actors, and had, alas, a sorrowful aspect given the death of one of the actors who won an Oscar for his performance. There was no way that film wasn't going to be pretty much mind-blowing, and it was.

Then you had Iron Man, based on a, at best, obscure character, possessed of a male lead of questionable popularity, in the hands of a director few people could name off the top of their heads, staring The Dude as a bald villain. There was almost no way that movie should have been good, much less great. But it was. And since then RDJ hasn't let up, and it doesn't look like Iron Man 2 is going to either.

So the world is kind of turned on its ear, and Captain America, previously more readily known, is in the shadow. He's also, sadly, sort of an irrelevant throwback to a time before terrorism. Just as rah-rah war movies are almost insulting to our mindset now, so, too, could Captain "I wear my patriotism on my sleeve" America be. There's a lot of people who are screaming about "the real America" and the need for flag-waving patriotism. That's fine for politics, but will it make an entertaining movie? Probably not.

So they cast Chris Evans, a proven funny, funny guy, almost too much like the ascendant RDJ. Smart PR move, especially after "Jim. Jim from The Office, Jim?" debacle. And, perhaps, they're going to let him be second to RDJ. Of course, if they wanted him to be, they could have put in a Channing Tatum, seeing as a boring-ass military grunt would have faded in Tony Stark's faaaabulous wake easily. But they didn't. Which makes me wonder if it wouldn't be amazing if it seemed like that was likely but, with Chris Evans' obvious skills at upstaging, that's not what we get. Alas, we have to wait!

As for Hulk, don't look for him. It's a shame. The Hulk is a bonified Avenger but he won't/can't be in the film.I actually liked Norton's Hulk a lot. But neither he nor the studio seems ready to go back to it. Part of it has got to be the issue of CGI. Unless they do so Avatar-level work on that character, it will never be believable. And it will make other things around it, CGI or no, look fake, too. That would be a travesty, considering how polished the effects were in Iron Man.