Joe Johnston Interview, Captain America

Sheila caught up with Joe Johnston and had a chance to talk to him about the upcoming Captain America movie as well as his new film Wolf Man. You can look for the whole interview later in the week but for now here is what he had to say about the Captain America Movie.

The supposed synopsis for the Captain America according to ReelComix goes like this; Born during the Great Depression, Steve Rogers grew up a frail youth in a poor family. Horrified by the newsreel footage of the Nazis in Europe, Rogers was inspired to enlist in the army. However, because of his frailty and sickness, he was rejected. Overhearing the boy’s earnest plea, General Chester Phillips offered Rogers the opportunity to take part in a special experiment… Operation: Rebirth.

After weeks of tests, Rogers was at last administered the ‘Super-Soldier Serum’ and bombarded by ‘vita-rays.’ Steve Rogers emerged from the treatment with a body as perfect as a body can be and still be human. Rogers was then put through an intensive physical and tactical training program. Three months later, he was given his first assignment as Captain America. Armed with his indestructible shield and and battle savvy, Captain America has continued his war against evil both as a sentinel of liberty and leader of the Avengers.

Q: You mentioned how you had very limited pre-production time on this film. I wanted to know if you could talk about how pre-production is going on your next film and are you planning on casting an American?

JJ: Casting an American? Absolutely. Oh yeah. I don’t think we could make the film without an American playing the part. But, we may not be casting in America because we’re going to London and we’ll probably shoot in the U.K. for most of it because it takes place in Europe. But yeah, we’ll definitely be casting [an American].

Q: With Captain America, do you see any opportunities to bring an auteurist style to it like Sam Raimi did in the Spidermans and the different Batman directors did?

JJ: We’re definitely going to shoot it in a different way than any of the other Marvel pictures that were shot. What I’m trying to do is to 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 but it always looks like it’s 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.

Q: Have you nailed down what you think the big set pieces might be yet?

JJ: Yes, we have. Right now we have to pick our battles because it’s a little bit more than we can afford right now but there are some great action sequences – stuff we haven’t seen before.

Q: When you have an iconic character like that, is it more about finding the right person or is Marvel and the people sort of saying but we also need to have a big name star? Can you just talk about the balancing of that?

JJ: No, we’re looking for a complete unknown.

Q: So it’s not going to be a movie star taking this part?

JJ: I hope not. I hope it’ll be somebody that we discover and who’s never been in…he’s probably been in something but you won’t know who he is. You won’t recognize him. And we’ll surround him with more prominent names. I mean, that’s who we’re looking for. Will we find him? I don’t know. It’s tough.

Q: Do you know when you have to have the casting done by?

JJ: March 1^st.