July 21, 2010
What a shocker.
Captain America: The First Avenger will be Captain America in name only. According to
this morning’s L.A. Times, director Joe Johnston is currently running around Comic-Con to reassure those wringing their hands with worry over the horrible idea that his $200 million tent-pole scheduled for a summer 2011 release might be too American-y, that it won’t be.
Read it and weep you suckers who thought Hollywood might give us this one. But at the same time, don’t forget to thank Johnston for disappointing us before we spent the ten bucks:
“We’re sort of putting a slightly different spin on Steve Rogers,” said Joe Johnston, whose past directing credits include “Jurassic Park III” and “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. “He’s a guy that wants to serve his country but he’s not a flag-waver. We’re reinterpretating sort of what the comic book version of Steve Rogers was.” …
“He wants to serve his country, but he’s not this sort of jingoistic American flag-waver,” Johnston said. “He’s just a good person. We make a point of that in the script: Don’t change who you are once you go from Steve Rogers to this super-soldier, you have to stay who you are inside, that’s really what’s important more than your strength and everything. It’ll be interesting and fun to put a different spin on the character and one that the fans are really going to appreciate.” …
Much, much more predictable heartbreak below the fold:
For Johnston, the imperative is artistic one, not a commercial one. He wants a character that’s more complicated than a flag and a movie that entertains without borders.
“Yeah and it’s also the idea that this is not about America so much as it is about the spirit of doing the right thing,” the director said. “It’s an international cast and an international story. It’s about what makes America great and what make the rest of the world great too.”
America’s great … the world’s great … and therefore there’s no American exceptionalism. See how they do that? But why not remain true to this morally illiterate vision and rename Captain America something like Captain Earth? After all, why would someone who sees nothing special about America name himself Captain America and wrap himself in the red, white and blue?
Johnston can spout all the talking points off he wants about artistic imperatives, but from an artistically imperative point of view the main motivation of his protagonist now make absolutely no sense.
We should also give Johnston credit for not attempting to spin this decision into the Big Lie Hollywoodists spread in order to hide their own loathing at the very thought of portraying their own country in a positive way. You know the lie I’m talking about — the lie that says pro-American films don’t sell well overseas.
Bull and Shit.
Not to pile on to your wound-licking, but those of you surprised and disappointed by this news are part of the problem. Those of you who haven’t already figured that — with rare exceptions like Jerry Bruckheimer — Hollywood is so opposed and sickened by the idea of portraying America as a uniquely special and exceptional nation that they would assure the world in advance that Captain America really isn’t, need to wake up.
Like the mainstream media, once you figure out Hollywood’s nothing more than a left-wing propaganda machine, all your confusion will lift and every seemingly counter-intuitive move they make when it comes to profits, artistic integrity,and the very basics of right and wrong, will suddenly make perfect sense. Trust me on this. Just try looking at the industry through that prism for one week and see if the clouds of confusion don’t suddenly lift.
The same industry that spent hundreds of million of dollars on a dozen-plus embarrassingly awful anti-American flops that were specifically designed to undermine morale at home so we would lose the war in Iraq is now putting the brakes on the Americanism of a character named Captain America?
Makes perfect sense to me.
