I literally just saw the world premiere of the new Captain America: The First Avenger trailer at the Hero Complex Film Festival in Los Angeles — played right before a screening of the first Iron Man — and here are some quick thoughts.
It’s a much more linear trailer than past Cap footage, starting off with a skinny Steve Rogers in a car with Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), interspersed with footage of him courageously getting beaten up by neighborhood toughs in an alley. The military scenes show him herorically jumping on an (inactive) grenade during a drill, with Colonel Chester Phillips — played by Tommy Lee Jones — remarking “He’s still skinny.”
Things move to Steve undergoing the Super-Soldier treatment, with Stanley Tucci’s Abraham Erskine telling him to not lose sight of being a good man first. Steve: “Is it too late to go to the bathroom?” Quick action shots follow, including Steve getting the Cap costume (voiceover: “You’re going to get so many chicks with that”), Captain America on a motorcycle and a brief shot of Sebastian Stan as Bucky.
The trailer also provides a direct introduction of Red Skull; naming him Johann Schmidt, the head of Hydra, with shots of him both as the Red Skull and in his less ghoulish cover with, y’know, Hugo Weaving’s face. The end of the trailer is the same as the TV spot released last week — Red Skull asking Captain America who he thinks he is, and Cap responding that he’s just a kid from Brooklyn.
Throughout the trailer was music from the song “Forty-Six and 2″ by the band Tool. There’s a tag along the lines of “heroes are made in America” (will be changed for international release, one figures). Marvel Studios and Paramount will surely release the trailer online soon — we’ll share when that happens.
The trailer was preceded by a video introduction from Captain America: The First Avenger title star Chris Evans. Hero Complex’s Geoff Boucher also talked briefly before the footage with First Avenger screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who emphasized the importance of getting to know a pre-Super-Soldier Serum Steve Rogers as a character first, and cited Raiders of the Lost Ark as an inspiration.
The festival also paid tribute to Captain America co-creator Jack Kirby, with Kirby’s son Neal and former assistant Steve Sherman both in attendance. Boucher declared that they wouldn’t get into any of the ongoing legal entanglements involving the Kirby family, but Neal Kirby did express frustration on seeing his father not get proper credit for his work, though said he felt that the comics icon is getting closer to receiving the recognition he deserves.
