New ‘Captain America’ Details

Director Joe Johnston has revealed quite a few details on the upcoming The First Avenger: Captain America. In an interview with Sci Fi Wire.com, he mentioned that casting will begin fairly soon, possibly in the next couple of weeks. Johnston goes on to say that filming won’t start until the end of June. As far as the story is concerned, Johnson had this to say:

As for the story: “It’s the kind of thing where, while I’m not necessarily a comic-book fan, I think the interesting thing about this guy is that he’s a superhero without any superpowers, basically,” the director told us exclusively while promoting his current film, The Wolfman. “He is the epitome of human perfection. He can’t fly and throw tanks around and see through walls and things like that, but he’s strong and runs fast.”

Johnston added, “And the interesting thing about this guy is that he starts out as a 98-pound weakling and he becomes this Adonis. How does that affect his arc in the story? How does that affect where he goes and what happens to him and everything? I think that’s the part of the story that was fascinating for me. And, of course, being a Marvel movie, there’s fantastic action scenes in it and all kinds of great stuff. But there’s an interesting story there as well.”

Earlier in the week MTV.com reported that Johnson said the film would begin in the 1940s and ignore the influence of the ’60s and ’70s “Captain America” comics.

“It’s something different. It is influenced by the comic book, but it goes off in a completely different direction. It’s the origin story of Captain America. It’s mostly period— there are modern, present-day bookends on it — but it’s basically the story of how Steve Rogers becomes Captain America.”

How do fans of the comic storyline feel about this? Were you expecting a different type of movie? The First Avenger: Captain America is scheduled to hit movie theaters on July 22, 2011.