We know that Marvel Studios has been working on a second Captain America film months before the first one came out, bringing back scriptwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely to plot out the hero’s next solo screen adventure after he appears in next summer’s super hero team-up The Avengers.
One of the film’s strengths was that even though it depicted Cap’s origins and adventures in World War Two before moving him to the present, it still left plenty of wiggle room for future films to go back to the World War Two setting if they desire thanks to a montage sequence that suggests months of battlefield action.
And now in a new interview at The HD Room, Markus and McFeely hint that while there may be some flashbacks to the war, Captain America 2 will be primarily set in modern times and deal with Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) adjusting to the strange new world that he has found himself in.
Stephen McFeely – I think it’s safe for us to say that it’s primarily set in the modern day. That seems to have been the biggest question people have been wondering about regarding the sequel. Most people know the story of Captain America as the story of this man out of time, and because The Avengers is such a big movie, and because [Avengers director] Joss Whedon has so many moving pieces, we’ve been left with room to explore Cap entering the modern day wondering, “What is all this? What’s happened to the world” and so on.
Christopher Markus – We made a movie where the world was in context for Steve Rogers. It was a movie where it was a more pure time, where there were clearly black-and-white, right-and-wrong, good-and-evil scenarios. And Cap is a guy who symbolizes that. Now he’s in the now, and there is nothing black-and-white. So what do you do with that guy? How does he react to a much more uncertain time? So you’re given this huge new palate to work with, but you can keep him the same.
I think we all kind of figured that this would be the thematic take on the next film, but it’s nice to have it confirmed. Sure, it would be fun to find out who the next villain will be, but we’ve got plenty of time to guess at that. Personally, I’m wracking my brains to come up with a good bad guy for the second film if they decide to not bring back the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving). Perhaps the organization Hydra has continued to exist and is again posing a threat to the world? Maybe the Red Skull’s scientist henchman Armin Zola (Toby Jones) is still alive or perhaps has downloaded his mind into a computer (which would let the filmmakers put his face on a monitor as an approximation of his comics appearance). We’ll see sometime in 2014.
Baron Zemo. I’d argue that he has become the de riguer #2 arch-enemy of Cap and be perfect for the second film. He is the son of someone Cap would have fought in WWII (therefore allowing for flashbacks to that period), has a blood vendetta against Cap, and is smart to boot.