It’s All Geek To Me — Oh Captain, My Captain! » 30ninjas

It’s All Geek To Me — Oh Captain, My Captain!

Share on Facebook posted 03-25-10 by Dan Kaufman

After a long and incredibly drawn-out process, after much debate and posturing behind closed doors, after all the public vitriol, name-calling, nail-biting, hair-pulling, and tooth-gnashing, this week finally saw a landmark decision passed down that will indelibly affect the history of America.

Captain America, that is. What did you think I was talking about?

After a comparatively protracted mulling process once offered the role, Chris Evans will officially be playing the star-spangled hero in Joe Johnston’s The First Avenger: Captain America (FYI – This piece was written with zero contact or comment from the Joes either Johnston or Quesada. I should be so lucky. While Johnston does blog here for us fortunate Ninjas, he has made no comments yet regarding the casting process in any way).
This was no small decision for Evans, as he reportedly had to agree to a nine-picture deal playing Cap as part of his contract, due to the long-term plans Marvel Studios has with the rest of the Avengers movies. That’s a lot of screen time playing such an iconic character, and with it comes the actor’s ever-present fear of being type-cast and never working again. But I think us geeks can be a forgiving lot, and if someone is right for a role, we’re game, regardless of whether or not it’s initially strange seeing Captain Picard leading the X-Men.

The fact that Evans also played Johnny Storm in the Fantastic Four movies is a non-issue in terms of Marvel movie universe continuity, since the rights to the FF film characters are actually held by Fox, whereas The Avengers are all under the auspice of Marvel’s own studio. This means that the characters would never meet on film, barring some kind of otherworldly magnanimous gesture on Fox’s part (Rupert Murdoch doesn’t like money, does he?). And pity poor Spidey who’s all alone in New York over at Columbia Pictures. He can’t meet anybody. Except Ghost Rider. Eesh.

I think Evans is actually a great choice. He certainly looks the part, and he was one of the better aspects of the FF films. Some detractors are actually pointing to those same films however, as evidence that he’s too much of a goofy frat boy type to handle the gravitas of Steve Rogers. But was that frat boy Evans himself, or just him playing Johnny Storm appropriately well? While this defense is becoming sort of the mantra for his supporters, it does ring true; take a look at him in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (something you should do anyway because Sunshine is fantastic). As Mace, the engineer of the Icarus II, Evans is grounded and serious in great contrast to the Baxter building’s resident skirt chaser. He’s clearly got some acting chops. And after the exhaustive laundry list of young Hollywood names that were tossed around for the part, you’d think this was a decision Marvel weighed very carefully. I’ve read that Evans never actually screen tested, which would be strange, but not uncommon, especially given his relationship with Marvel.

Legendary comic book artist Alex Ross put his two cents in late in the whole casting process, opining publicly that Jon Hamm should play the part. While I think Hamm is a little old for it, I can see where Ross was coming from. The one quality Hamm has that I can easily see for Cap is a sense of absolute control. When Don Draper enters a room full of co-workers on Mad Men he immediately and effortlessly draws attention and respect. Captain America is the ultimate soldier, leader, and tactician. He, like Don Draper, is unflappable. He exudes a calm yet firm aura of “Don’t fuck with me”. If Chris Evans can organically incorporate this aspect into his performance, I think he’ll be aces. If not, well, at least he’ll have eight other chances to nail it.

But even before any of this, we’ll get to see how Evans fares playing computer hacker Jake Jensen in the upcoming film adaptation of Andy Diggle’s The Losers, as well as Lucas Lee, one of the evil ex-boyfriends in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.

There was a time when Ewan McGregor was being considered to play James Bond, and I remember thinking to myself, if this one guy gets to play Obi Wan Kenobi and 007 in the same lifetime, I would probably suffer some sort of geeky aneurysm that would be a combination of jealousy and awe that someone could have that cool of an existence. Chris Evans is now getting dangerously close to that level.

But hey, Chris, break a leg, excelsior, and all that.

Bastard.