Kevin Feige Talks Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Are you past the arm-twisting phase of having to get things done? Are people more understanding your vision or at least letting your success get you past some things you might have had to push more?
I mean Marvel has always been unified. It’s sort of the reason we were gonna start doing movies ourselves was to tell the stories the way we wanted to. And I don’t know why it’s the case that the actual, you know, property owners are the ones that were willing to go take further risks with their material than the licensees studios were back in the day. But I’m glad that was the case. And it’s definitely the case. And I think frankly that’s because we just understood the characters more or believed in the characters more.

CAPTAIN AMERICA THE WINTER SOLDIER | Chris Evans as Steve Rogers
CAPTAIN AMERICA THE WINTER SOLDIER | Chris Evans as Steve Rogers

Captain America’s a very old-fashioned hero. And I was wondering how, when you saw DC sort of make Superman relevant by taking that good guy and turning him grittier and darker, but we haven’t done that with Cap, who at his core is a hero. I’m curious about how you go about making that relevant to the audience and ensuring that it doesn’t seem old fashioned or out of place in today’s world.
I don’t mind if it feels old fashioned. I don’t mind if he feels out of place. He is out of place and he is kind of old fashioned in the modern era. I care if he feels two dimensional. I care if he feels boring or if he feels in any way not like a fully formed character.

But in this movie we’re embracing that side. That’s part of his conflict with Fury and with some of the other members of S.H.I.E.L.D. is the fact that he’s from a different place. He has a different set of values, I think. Or at least he thinks he does initially. And we want to play into that and run towards that which creates conflict, which creates drama, which creates character. You know, we’re careful not to make him a goofball fish out of water, you know. We don’t spend a lot of time with him trying to understand what an iPhone is. He’s, you know, if you took a 23-year-old – what do we calling Cap, I don’t know, 27? If you took a 27 year old and introduced him to something they’ve never seen before they’d probably figure it out. They wouldn’t be completely flummoxed. So we’re avoiding sort of the ‘what is a cell phone. What is this magic glass that you type onto.’ We have some fun with it. And frankly Cap because he’s been around in the modern day for a little while post-Avengers, he sort of has fun with peoples’ expectations. He sometimes pretends not to understand something when he does. To, you know, again make him more than just a perfect two dimensional Boy Scout.

This article has been edited for girlsspeakgeek.com. The complete story appeared in /Film Mar.2014.

September 24, 2016 | Interview | this post contains affiliate links