20 facts you might not know about 'Captain America: The First Avenger'

Well before Marvel built a film empire, the concept of a Captain America film was bandied about. In 1997, talks began for a Captain America movie, and financing was found in 2000. Then, a lawsuit about the rights to the character held the film up until the lawsuit was settled in 2003.

In 2005, once Marvel got a major financial investment to start producing movies, they returned to the idea of tackling Captain America. At the time, they planned to make the movie half a period piece, half set in modern times. Producer Avi Arad mentioned the Back to the Future films as a reference point.

Jon Favreau pitched the idea of making a Captain America comedy but eventually decided to direct Iron Man for Marvel instead. Meanwhile, Louis Leterrier, director of The Incredible Hulk, saw the concept art and offered to direct it. However, Marvel declined.

Eventually, Joe Johnston was offered to direct Captain America, and he accepted. Ultimately, he was the perfect guy for the film. In addition to having done visual effects work and art direction on the original Star Wars trilogy and Raiders of the Lost Ark, Johnston directed The Rocketeer, a throwback period piece about an old-school superhero.

Johnston decided to bring on the screenwriting duo of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely to rewrite the Captain America script, and they ended up with sole credit. Markus and McFeely had previously written on the Chronicles of Narnia trilogy, but Johnston’s choice changed the MCU. Markus and McFeely have screenwriting credit on six Marvel movies and also created Agent Carter for TV.

After the end of the WGA strike and the success of Iron Man, Marvel announced their Captain America movie with a title. However, the title was different than the final choice. It was pretty much all the way there, though, as the movie was tentatively called “The First Avenger: Captain America."

When casting Captain America, John Krasinski and Ryan Phillippe were both considered. So was Sebastian Stan, who ended up playing Bucky Barnes. In the end, Chris Evans got the part of Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America.

Evans had Marvel experience, as he played the Human Torch in two largely reviled Fantastic Four movies. He apparently turned down the role of Captain America three times before accepting. Evans admitted he was making his decision out of fear, thinking he’d be screwed if the movie was a success or a failure.

After he got the part of Bucky Barnes, Stan didn’t start reading Captain America comics. Instead, he got into the war of it all. The actor watched World War II documentaries and the fictionalized series Band of Brothers to prepare for his part.

Tucci has a small but vital role as Abraham Erskine, who comes up with the Super Soldier serum. Why did the Oscar-nominated actor take the role? Well, he always wanted to do a German accent in a movie, and he got to do just that.

Laura Haddock has a brief role as a woman seeking an autograph from Captain America. Later, she would pop up again as Meredith Quill, the mother of Peter Quill, a.k.a. Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy. Both are small roles, but something like that doesn’t go unnoticed by MCU fans. James Gunn, the director of the Guardians movies, has joked that Haddock is playing Quill’s grandmother in this movie.

Chris Evans did not, in the course of the same film, have the body of both pre-serum Steve Rogers and Captain America. No, he was just the ripped dude. To do the other scenes, the production turned to an LA company called LOLA that specialized in “digital plastic surgery.” They had to shoot the scenes of Rogers before he gets the Super Soldier serum four separate times in four different ways in order to piece it all together.

Wolverine and Magneto, two Marvel characters, were around during World War II, and there were talks of including them in The First Avenger. The problem, at the time, was that Fox held the rights to the X-Men characters, and no negotiations bore fruit. Of course, Marvel and Fox are owned by Disney, so that is no longer a concern.

As we noted, Evans played the Human Torch in two films. However, in this movie, you may notice an android in a red jumpsuit at the technology expo. That is the original Human Torch, the first Timely Comics superhero. Timely would become Marvel, and Marvel would recycle that name for Johnny Storm years later.

Captain America made it to the screen a couple of times before Evans stepped into the role. In 1979, there were two made-for-TV Captain America films, both of which starred Reb Brown. Then, in 1990, there was a low-budget movie that totally flopped and starred Matt Salinger as the superhero. However, Brown and Salinger got a chance to cameo in The First Avenger as a nod to their history.

When distributing the movie overseas, Paramount gave foreign markets a choice. They could either release the movie as Captain America: The First Avenger or The First Avenger. In the end, only three countries went with the alternate title: Russia, Ukraine, and South Korea.

These days, Marvel is synonymous with Disney because Disney bought the company. As you may know, Disney was not there at the dawn of the MCU. Prior to Disney’s involvement, Paramount was distributing the MCU movies. Captain America: The First Avenger was the last Marvel movie distributed by Paramount.

Weaving plays the villainous Red Skull, and he’s not exactly afraid of genre fare. He’s in the Lord of the Rings and Matrix movies, after all. However, the actor spoke ambivalently about making Captain America. He said he wasn’t necessarily interested in reprising his role, mainly due to the experience of getting his makeup put on to play Red Skull. Sure enough, when Red Skull did reappear in the MCU, he was not played by Weaving.

Maybe owing to its retro setting, Captain America: The First Avenger is one of the least successful films in the MCU from a box-office perspective. Mostly, that was due to the film being lukewarmly received in foreign markets. The movie made $176.7 million domestically and $193.9 million in the rest of the world, for a total of $370.6 million. It did make this film the third-highest-grossing World War II movie ever, though.

You can check out our facts about the Captain America sequels elsewhere, but there was another project that stemmed from this movie. Marvel made a short in their “One Shot” series starring Hayley Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter. This film, in turn, led to a two-season TV show on ABC that we briefly mentioned earlier.