So now we know. Captain America’s heroes are his mum and dad, Black Widow’s most lethal weapon is her wit, and Nick Fury’s putting on the golf course gets better when he takes off his eye patch.
Those were the highlights from the fun press conference featuring the cast of The Winter Soldier, which featured starts Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L Jackson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie and directors Anthony and Joe Russo. When asked the rather generic question “who is your hero Evans, bearded and dark of hair unlike his character, said “I know it’s predictable but my mum and dad, they make you who you are, they teach you how to love and how to feel pain, they form you. Johansson, looking slightly frail in her pregnant state, asked about Black Widow’s array of armoury, said “she has her widow’s bite and her speed, but also her wit that’s a good weapon to have. And Jackson, asked about the problems of wearing his eye patch as Fury, joked “When I put it on I could only read half the page of the script, so I had to actually learn the lines properly in bed when I had two eyes. Playing golf with one eye is no good either.
The stars seemed proud of their superhero film which, although clearly part of a huge Marvel franchise, has to work as a story in its own right, as Joe Russo says: “It’s part of a huge jigsaw but you have to make sure the film you are working on now is as good as it possibly can be, and not worry about how it will fit in to future episodes. It does, thanks to a committed performance from Evans as Captain America, a good man from a simpler time, the 1940s, forced to confront the complications of the modern age. He said: “I think he is a good man, put him in any era and any situation and he is still a good man. In this film he has to confront things which he may not like and which he may not have encountered before, but that does not change who he essentially is.
Johansson similarly has a whole back story to her apparently simple character and also revealed we will get to hear all about that in the next instalment of the franchise. “She has a past, a dark past, and has had to desensitise herself to do the things she does and sees in this film. She is basically a mercenary. But she is grappling with trauma, she has feelings, maybe she doesn’t sleep so well at night and as a gun for hire maybe she realises she hasn’t made any real choices about her life. Her progression is all part of that story.
Similarly the laid-back, likeable Jackson also takes his role just as seriously as if it were a Tarantino movie. “You have to be totally serious on the outside, while having fun with the character on the inside he explained. “We see more of Nick, but in this film realise he’s always trying to be three steps ahead of everyone, and now he realises he is a victim of subterfuge.
Interestingly for completists, of which there many for these films, the DVD will feature seven minutes of extra footage, most of which is Jackson’s Nick Fury having dialogue with Robert Redford’s characters, the head of Spectre. Jackson said “you just click on my head and you get a scene that was cut from the film, apparently because it slowed the film down.
One thing the whole cast seemed to agree on was the physical demands of a film which has lots of action sequences and the one problem they all had was Frank Grillo as Crossbones, the agent who is sent after them all. Evans laughed “Even if you block a punch, that punch has to land somewhere, and we’re all getting a bit older so you bruise more easily and take longer to recover. Frank Grillo was a real boxer, and he would not pull his punches don’t you agree, guys?
“Frank Grillo beat the shit out of me Johansson said, “he was rough. I’m forever wounded, but it’s part of the joy, part of the process. I like to try and do my own stunts, I’d rather do it than someone else do it, then I can compare bruises with the rest of the cast.
The theme of the film is a fairly critical look at the role of America in the world today, is it still the torchbearer of freedom like it was in the Second World War, or has it muddies the waters and even got it wrong at times? Jackson’s answer to the hero question received a rare thing, a round of spontaneous round of applause: “my heroes are the men and women who put their lives on the line to defend what we enjoy making films like this freedom. Without them we couldn’t express ourselves freely, and they do it on a daily basis, They are my heroes.
