As "The First Avenger: Captain America" gears up for a June production start, director Joe Johnston's first priority is to find an actor to wield the character's shield. But while he works on the casting process, he's already got plans in motion for two of the film's other major elements — the villain and the costume.
Although it was already a virtual certainty, Johnston confirmed in an interview with HitFix that the Red Skull is the villain in "The First Avenger: Captain America," which is slated to be an origin story with "present-day bookends."
Additionally, the director revealed that Steve Rogers would receive his star-spangled uniform due to his status as a USO performer.
"The costume is a flag, but the way we're getting around that is we have Steve Rogers forced into the USO circuit," Johnston told Hero Complex. "After he's made into this super-soldier, they decide they can't send him into combat and risk him getting killed. He's the only one and they can't make more. So they say, 'You're going to be in this USO show' and they give him a flag suit. He can't wait to get out of it."
While he's not initially enthusiastic about the patriotic costume, Rogers ultimately finds the symbolic value in his uniform — but he still has a modification or two to make for the sake of combat efficiency.
"He realizes the value of the uniform symbols but he modifies his suit and adds some armor, it will be closer to the [Cap] costume in some of the comics in more recent years," said Johnston. "[This] approach, it's the only way we could justify ever seeing him on a screen in tights, with the funny boots and everything. The government essentially puts him up there as a living comic-book character and he rips it off and then reclaims some of its imagery after he recognizes the value of it. We think it's the best way to keep the costume and explain it at the same time."
Tell us what you think about the inclusion of the Red Skull and the ideas for Captain America's costume in the comments section and on Twitter!