The latest issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine features our first official look at Chris Evans in his Captain America costume. The images also show Haley Atwell as love interest Peggy Carter, Stanley Tucci as Dr. Abraham Erskine, Hugo Weaving as The Red Skull (in HYDRA uniform), and one of the HYDRA submarines.
Check out the full cover and quotes from Evans and director Joe Johnston below:
At the time, I remember telling a buddy of mine, ‘If the movie bombs, I'm f—-ed. If the movie hits, I'm f—-ed!'”
Evans told Entertainment Weekly.
After declining the part three times, Evans took a meeting with Marvel execs and Johnston and was dazzled by their plans for the movie. He still felt wary about suiting up for Captain America — but then he had an epiphany.
“I was just scared. I realized my whole decision making process was fear based, and you never want to make a decision out of fear.'”
“I can't believe was almost too chicken to play Captain America.”
The movie — which also serves to set up Marvel's 2012 superhero team-up, The Avengers — hews closely to Captain America's WWII-era origins. The year is 1942, and Steve Rogers is a scrawny lad who desperately wants to fight Nazis for his country but can't because he's been deemed physically unfit. His fate — and his physique — is radically transformed when he signs up for Project: Rebirth, a secret military operation that turns wimps into studs using drugs and assorted sci-fi hoo-ha. There's a love interest (Major Peggy Carter, played Haley Atwell), there's a sidekick (Bucky Barnes, played by Sebastian Stans), and there's the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), Hitler's treacherous head of advanced weaponry, whose own plan for world domination involves a magical object known as The Tesseract (comic fans know it better as The Cosmic Cube). “The interesting thing about this character is that he's an everyman who in the course of a few minutes become a perfect human specimen. That has to create some interesting personal issues,” says Johnston. “I saw it as an opportunity to make a superhero movie that felt real, that didn't have to rely on an overabundance of fantasy elements.”
Captain America: The First Avenger comes to theaters July 22nd, 2011.
Chris Evans and Hayley Atwell in Captain America: The First Avenger
Stanley Tucci as Dr. Erskine in Captain America: The First Avenger
Chris Evans and Hayley Atwell
Richard Armitage in a HYDRA submarine
Hugo Weaving as The Red Skull
Captain America: The First Avenger Entertainment Weekly Cover
