Steve Rogers has been in the news quite a bit lately. Not only his next big screen adventure ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier‘ approaching very quickly, but there’s already talk about ‘Captain America 3‘. After the news leaked that the Russos were being lined up to return for another chapter of Cap’s story, we learned that this third installment would be going head to head with ‘Batman Vs. Superman’ in 2016. Now, the team of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who have penned both solo films for the Star-Spangled Avenger, are weighing in on the potential plot points for the tale that faces off against DC’s heaviest hitters.
In a recent interview with Den of Geek, Markus and McFeely discussed a number of Cap related topics like not revisiting the Cosmic Cube or the Red Skull in the sequel to ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ and the various approaches they had to the project prior to receiving input from the other corners of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But the most interesting bit came when they started to touch on the third movie and what storylines they may explore with the Sentinel of Liberty next. McFeely started the conversation with this:
“Oh yeah, you can probably predict some of the threads we would like to pick up again that we’ve laid out there. And we always go back to the comics and dive back in and look at anything we’ve missed in the last few years that might be relevant.”
Markus then chimed in with this:
Captain America meets The Grand Director“We’ve definitely set out on a more realistic road in the Cap movies, you know. Even more grounded than in the other MCU movies. And so it kind of rules out Cap fighting the Dinosaur Man or something like that. There are some that aren’t gonna start and other ones that — I mean there’s a couple we’re playing with right now that we really want to take elements from. Which we’ll not reveal…. All I’m saying is psychotic 1950s Cap.”
When fans hear of an imposter Cap, many characters come to mind. After all, many organizations wanted their own Super Solider, but none stacked up to the original. As a result, we have a ton of people injected with the Super Soldier serum running around like Nuke, The Sentry, Jack Monroe, Isaiah Bradley, Captain Midlands, Patriot of the Young Avengers, and many more. But the wording of Markus’ hint could indicate the Captain America that was created in 1953 by Stan Lee, Mort Lawrence, and John Romita. This version of the character came after the first time Cap was revived prior to being found by the Avengers in the ice in 1964.
For a while, this Steve Rogers was ignored by canon, but Steve Englehart brought him back in 1972 by explaining that “an unnamed man and his teenaged student had assumed both the public and private identities of the original Captain America and Bucky as part of a government-sponsored program which planned to replace the lost heroes to combat [communism]”. The twist was that the serum used on this pair had psychotic side effects, so the government put them in suspended animation. When they were eventually brought back into the Marvel Universe, 1950s Cap turned into The Grand Director, a Neo-Nazi leader that has gone after both Steve and Bucky while they carried the mantle of Captain America. If this is the direction that the writers end up going in, then we’re definitely in for a pretty insane ride in 2016.
What do you think about the hints that Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely dropped about ‘Captain America 3’? Do you think that the film will be successful enough to beat ‘Batman Vs. Superman’ at the box office? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
‘Captain America 3’ hits theaters on May 6, 2016.