{"id":6918,"date":"2010-02-07T16:56:17","date_gmt":"2010-02-07T21:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=6918"},"modified":"2010-02-07T17:06:05","modified_gmt":"2010-02-07T22:06:05","slug":"captain-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=6918","title":{"rendered":"Captain America"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the director of the upcoming Captain America movie<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The costume is a flag, but the way we’re getting around that<\/strong> is we have Steve Rogers forced into the USO circuit. After he’s made into this super-soldier, they decide they can’t send him into combat and risk him getting killed. He’s the only one and they can’t make more. So they say, ‘You’re going to be in this USO show’ and they give him a flag suit. He can’t wait to get out of it… So he’s up on stage doing songs and dances with chorus girls and he can’t wait to get out and really fight.<\/div>\n

(Emphasis mine.)<\/p>\n

They make a super-soldier and then refuse to let him fight, and the captain himself hates his costume. This is incredibly telling, and shows us exactly how the writer feels about the idea of Captain America.<\/p>\n

Look, I’m not a huge fan of Cap. Nothing against him, I just don’t connect with the character. Which is why, if someone asked me to helm a cap movie, I’d refuse. If you’re embarrassed or confused by the core of the character, then you shouldn’t be in charge of bringing the character to the big screen. If you don’t “get” why a super-powered guy needs to wear an outrageous costume instead of taking on the bad guys in blue jeans and a t-shirt, then you simply do not “get” the superhero mythos. Nothing wrong with that. (MovieBob talked about this<\/a> back in October.) But if you don’t get it, why are you trying to share it? <\/p>\n

As a Spider-Man fan, I’m grateful we got a couple of good movies out of the meatgrinder before the whole thing imploded. I feel bad for Cap fans. He’s not even being given a chance. Yes, wearing a flag strikes modern audiences as a little… quaint. (And that’s just in the U.S. Elsewhere, I expect he’ll be an even harder sell.) But that’s who he is. It’s your job to bring the audience into that world where it makes sense. All you need is some basic-level understanding and respect of the source material.<\/p>\n

It was great to see Iron Man, X-men, and Spider-Man deliver. It was painful to see Daredevil, Catwoman, and Transformers turned into thin pop-culture gruel. The difference between these two groups of movies is all about respect for the source material. The good director says, “Let me show you how awesome this material is.” The hack says, “How can we change this material to make it good?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the director of the upcoming Captain America movie: The costume is a flag, but the way we’re getting around that is we have Steve Rogers forced into the USO circuit. After he’s made into this super-soldier, they decide they can’t send him into combat and risk him getting killed. He’s the only one and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nerd-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}