We’ve known for some time that ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ was going to be different than any other Marvel movie that we’ve seen so far. For starters, they brought on Joe and Anthony Russo, two directors that are primarily known for their work on comedies like ‘Community’, ‘Arrested Development’, and ‘You, Me, And Dupree’. Then, just before production started on the film, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige came out and said that the Sentinel of Liberty’s next film would be more of a political thriller. Now, the movie’s writer, directors, and producer all weigh in on their approach to the upcoming Phase Two production.

In an interview in the latest edition of Empire Magazine, a number of people involved in the creative process of Cap’s newest big screen adventure chimed in with their approaches and takes on the story based on Ed Brubaker’s acclaimed comic book storyline that saw the return of someone from Steve Rogers’ past in a way that he never expected. First, co-writer Stephen McFeely shared that he and his partner Christopher Markus were encountered with a dilemma after penning the period piece ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’:

“How do we make sense of him in the modern world? I mean, he’s really Gary Cooper. The solution is kind of that the world changes in response to him. He is usually correct. In this one, we’re dealing with the Cap after Marvel thawed him out in the ’60s, the one whose values don’t necessarily match ours. We went down a bunch of roads and kept coming back to this idea of a conspiracy movie. It’s what’s going to get the most out of the moral dilemma for the character. How does he fit in? How does he see where we’ve ended up? He hasn’t experienced everything we’ve gone through to get to this point, where agendas are now really murky.”

He continued by saying that the Winter Soldier being “a product of dubious, corrupt practices that don’t make you feel good when you drag them into the light” really contributed to the ‘Three Days of the Condor’ vibe that they ended up with. Feige followed up by agreeing with the comparison to the seminal Robert Redford film:

The Winter Soldier

“In our attempt to make all of our films feel unique and feel different we found ourselves going back to things like ‘Condor’. Also the other political thrillers of the ’70s: ‘The Parallax View’, ‘All The President’s Men’. This was a time that Cap existed in in the comics. He found himself in the swinging ’60s followed by the Watergate era followed by the Reagan era followed by where we are today. In the comics it was a hell of a journey for Steve, and we couldn’t take him through those years because in our cinematic universe he was asleep. But we wanted to force him to confront that kind of moral conundrum, something with that ’70s flavour. And in our film that takes the form of S.H.I.E.L.D..”

Finally, before talking about intensely studying films like ‘The French Connection’, ‘Blow Out’, and ‘Heat’ prior to taking the job, Joe Russo talked about how all these creative elements came together to create something very different from what fans have come to expect from them and from the Star-Spangled Avenger:

“We’ve had the least amount of interference and the most amount of support that we’ve ever had on a movie. There are layers to this film. It makes the characters more interesting. I think when people see this film they’ll realize how unique this Captain America franchise is. This is a radically different movie than the first.”

What do you think about these descriptions of what to expect from ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’? Are you excited to see Steve Rogers on the big screen again? Let us know in the comments below.

‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ starring Chris Evans, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Frank Grillo, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Cobie Smulders, and Emily VanCamp hits theaters on April 4, 2014.

Source: Comic Book Movie