Written Interview: Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus (“Captain America”)
Today’s interview is the screenwriters Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus whose writing credits include The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and the current release Captain America: The First Avenger. Here are some excerpts from an interview at SlashFilm.com with Peter Sciretta:
Question: How did you guys become involved?
Stephen McFeely:We chased it down. It was May of 2008 that we got word that Marvel was likely going to do a period CAPTAIN AMERICA and we just froze. We went “Oh my God!”
Question: So that is what appealed to you? The period?
Stephen McFeely: The period is huge for us. I mean we had sort of in vacuum, not that anybody approached us, said “Wouldn’t it be great to do a superhero movie in period?” It would solve so many villain problems for one you know, you don’t have to go very far in the 1940’s to find a guy who wants to take over the world. You don’t have to make up a whole crazy background about a billionaire.
Christopher Markus: And it also solves hero problems. Because it’s been so good and has been so successful, the darkness of the BATMAN movies… There’s a tendency where you want to make everybody corrupted and if you are going to do the old fashioned superhero, it just comes off corny if it’s now for some reason. It’s just sort of like…
Stephen McFeely:Well he’s a product of WWII, so why would you hide from how he was created? It makes a lot more sense for a guy to step out in a slightly American flag outfit in 1942 than I does in 2011. You are making a different statement if you walk out of your garage in a Captain America outfit for the first time now than you would have during WWII.
I liked Captain America. I thought the script (at least as it was represented in the movie) was smart, well-constructed, nice setups and payoffs, and perhaps most importantly a Protagonist who I actually cared about as opposed to some other recent superhero movies. Bad guys are just bad guys, and explosions are just explosions, but when a moviegoer is emotionally invested in the characters, especially the Protagonist, those narrative elements become meaningful.
For more of the interview, go here.