“Captain America” Director Talks Film Changes

With “Captain America: Brave New World” now out in cinemas, those involved have begun to talk about how the film impacts the MCU and getting more honest about the film’s long journey to the screen.

Multiple reports indicated the film underwent major retooling during production, reshoots far more extensive than the usual Marvel additional filming requirements. The movie’s director Julius Onah downplayed those reports in press during the film’s promotion.

Now, speaking with The Wrap, Onah has gone into more detail about what exactly was changed over time. He confirms before he started work on the film he revisited all the “Captain America” films, “The Falcon and Winter Soldier” TV series, “Black Widow,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “Ant-Man” and any film featuring Sam Wilson or Thaddeus Ross.

Asked how the film had changed, he says a script is more like a blueprint at the beginning with the film evolving from that thanks to everyone involved. He says:

“The nuts and bolts of the story, which was a dramatic triangle between Ross, and Sam, and Stearns was always there. The idea of an emotional journey with Sam that leaned into his sense of empathy as his superpower was something that was there, but I wanted to elevate further.

And I would say the one thing that probably evolved was moving the movie more from a heightened version of it to one that was more grounded. So it was that evolutionary process that is so important, and I think one of the things that’s always tricky when you’re working with such heightened source material.”

Giancarlo Esposito was famously added in during the reshoots as a new character named Sidewinder, one who wasn’t a part of the initial shoot and who runs the Serpent Society. Onah says Serpent Society was always a part of the story and that didn’t change. Adding in Sidewinder was simply to ground the tone:

“It was clear that we were deviating probably a bit too much from the grounded tone that we wanted the movie to have with how we had created Serpent Society at first… you wanted an actor who could really help us lean, or gesture towards the fantastic, but without losing that sense of grounding.”

Once landing Esposito they looked at real-life private military companies and Congo warlords as inspirations for ways to “ground Serpent Society and Sidewinder in our world”. A similar thing happened with The Leader, tweaking it so leaning into his intellect as the “more tonally appropriate thing”.

He adds: “So what sounds drastic on the outside, which I know people don’t know, is actually very, very specific and considered on the inside. And it’s really just about turning dials.”

He also says there was never any talk about a mid-credit scene, only a post-credit one with the focus being on Sam, and “that was always pretty much the post-credit scene”.

Finally, he indicates the Illuminati may have been considered at one point, and when asked who was going to be in the line-up he responded: “I’m not going to say! I’m not going to say (laughs). Let’s just say things are purposely left vague in that post-credit for a reason.”

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