Is Will Smith still in the running for Cap?

July 22 2009, 11:44am

Can even the vaunted Super Soldier serum save the Captain America movie from it’s biggest foe — international audience ambivalence?

MTV sat down with Kevin Feige, and gave an interesting bullet point list of Captain America news, including the fact that Will Smith — one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood, who has conquered the 4th of July numerous times with films like Hancock and Independence Day — is still in the running for Captain America, as well as some of the Thor runner-ups. Now, the thing that’s interesting for me is the fact that based on these notes, it’s clear that Marvel is really nervous about parading a guy in the Stars and Stripes in the current world climate. Indeed, the film won’t even be marketed as “Captain America” abroad, but as “The First Avenger” — and they’re ditching the typical route of searching for an “unknown” to play the lead character (which worked so spectacularly with Hugh Jackman as Wolverine) in order to bring in someone who they know will bring in the money. And to be honest, who else would be on that list? Will Smith is exceedingly bankable — but Feige says that if Smith were cast, Kyle Baker’s “Truth” storyline, which repositioned the Super Soldier Project as a Tuskeegee-like experiment on unsuspecting African-American troops, would not be used. Tom Cruise, once the most bankable star in Hollywood, is still clawing his way back to respectability after his public weirdness made him a tabloid target. That said, Forbes has an interesting list of bankable celebrities (granted, Will Smith is at the top of that list), with Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Matt Damon all on the list — and after rewatching the Departed the other night, I could definitely see Damon nailing this. But in my opinion, I think Marvel is really selling the cultural cache of one of its most heroic characters short. It did a surprisingly effective job with teasing the Super Soldier program in the most unlikely of films — the Ed Norton remake of the Incredible Hulk:

But even more importantly, Captain America doesn’t serve politicians or administrations — as Frank Miller once said, he serves the Dream. In this case, the dream of a better world. While having a World War II epic is certainly within Marvel’s prerogative, I feel like Captain America’s best quality is the fact that he is a man out of time — in short, he’s a human time capsule of all the nobility and selflessness of a bygone era, and I think it would be interesting to see him wrestle with the post-9/11, post-Enron, post-Operation Paperclip era, where America has teamed up with the enemy, and clasped new ones to its breast, but still strives for greatness. (In other words, Richard Donner’s Superman meets Austin Powers, but played straight.) It’s this sort of story that could confront the rest of the world’s ambivalence to the U.S. head-on, and would really give some solid allegorical weight to a prequel that may otherwise be written off as an action flick. What say you, Rama readers? Do you think Will Smith could be the One? Is there another bankable star you think would be ideal? Tell us what you think about “The First Avenger: Captain America”!