Captain America could have been a very different flick, had the initial pitch for the film gone through.
Captain America: The First Avenger was a period piece above everything else. The action exclusively took place in the 1940s, at the height of the Second World War. The film was a blending of genres, fusing superheroes with a war film aesthetic, a formula that Marvel only perfected with its later films.
However, the initial idea for a Captain America film would have not only complicated the story but would have also created an issue with how the character is perceived in the MCU. In a 2006 interview, Avi Arad revealed in an interview that the initial fan for a Captain America film would have been a scathing look at the realities and perception of history that we have in the modern world.
Captain America: The First Avenger could have been very different
Avi Arad, a producer for Disney, talked about the initial idea of the film to SuperHeroHype, talking about the approach that the creators of the film had in mind. None of it made it to the final film of course, but the echoes of it can be found in the IP at large. He said:
What makes Captain America such a compelling character is that it allows you to judge history so you see where he came from and you see what he stood for … One of the things our movie is going to deal with is what happened in 60 years.
Which world was better? Sixty years ago or now? Within, obviously, a kick-ass plot and all the stuff that you’ve come to expect from a superhero movie.
The film wanted to compare and contrast the modern world with the time when Captain America was initially active, which was not as compelling as the plot that the film finally decided to use in The First Avenger.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier echoed some of these ideas
Captain America came into the modern world with Captain America: The First Avenger, and had a slew of experiences between then and his second solo outing in Captain America; The Winter Soldier. Having led the Avengers against Loki, and now adjusting to the modern world, Captain America begins to deal with the complexity of today’s world’s politics, and why Project Insight was something the good guys were even considering.
Had this been intercut with moments from the first film, the feature would have been unable to build its tension and emotional moments adequately, giving the viewers something more akin to Eternals, rather than two films that stand pretty well on their own, and as part of a connected cinematic universe. The film that we finally received was very different from the initial pitch, having changed the film for the better.
