When Sam Wilson flew onto the screen last February in Captain America: Brave New World, he had everything you’d expect from the Sentinel of Liberty. There was the star-spangled suit; the unparalleled hand-to-hand combat abilities; and of course he had the shield, given to him by Steve Rogers in Avengers: Endgame.
But there’s one thing that Sam (Anthony Mackie) lacked, which also set him apart from his predecessor: the super-soldier serum. And for veteran scribe Rob Edwards, one of the screenwriters on Brave New World, that makes all the difference.
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“Sam did not take the serum. That’s one of the big challenges to writing the character, but it winds up being a great thing,” Edwards tells Den of Geek. “It would be very easy for him to take the serum and run through walls and all kinds of things. But his superpower is not strength. His superpower is heart. It’s the fact that he knows he cannot fail. He knows there is no A-minus for Sam Wilson’s Captain America.”
For Edwards, that unconventional superpower sets Sam apart from Steve, but not from the rest of the MCU. Rather, Edwards argues, it ties him to the franchise’s beginning.
“That brings us back to where we were at the beginning of the MCU with Iron Man. These people are mortal. You punch him, he’s going to hurt.”
Letting the hero get hurt runs contrary to the logic of even a movie like Brave New World, as the movie’s audience includes kids. But Edwards, whose screenwriting credits include Treasure Planet and The Princess and the Frog, knows how to keep kids scared and interested.
“Kids aren’t afraid to be scared,” Edwards declares. “They go to Disneyland or a haunted house, and they go down a wild runaway car or underwater, stuff like that. And kids like it!”
“I remember overhearing a five-year-old kid at a screening of The Princess and the Frog who said, ‘Everybody says I was going to be afraid of Dr. Facilier, but I’m brave!’ And the listener goes, ‘Yeah, me too!’ I think kids like that. Walt Disney himself had the huntsman coming in with an axe in Snow White. We’re scared for a little while, but we get through it. It’s cathartic and it’s wonderful. You’ve got to give kids credit for being able to see the movie for what it is.”
That’s a lesson Edwards keeps in mind for his latest project, the animated film The King of Kings. Directed by animator Jang Seong-ho, a veteran of Korean classics such as Park Chan-wook‘s Joint Security Area and Jang Joon-hwan’s Save the Green Planet!, The King of Kings is an adaptation of an adaptation, bringing to the screen the Charles Dickens book The Life of Our Lord.
The King of Kings doesn’t shy away from some of the nastier parts of the Christian Gospels either, including the slaughter of the innocents, the crucifixion of Jesus, and the death of Lazarus. But for Edwards, that’s all part of the good news that is the Easter story.
“The story always promises you that it’s going to be okay,” Edwards says. “Things might get scary, but in three days, something’s going to happen. Happy Easter! That’s the best part: that it’s dark for a little while and then you have this explosion of happiness.”
Of course Edwards and Jang do get some help in The King of Kings by drawing on a master writer in Dickens. The English scribe would tell the story of Jesus to his children every Christmas and retained a fatherly tone even when he wrote The Life of Our Lord, assuring his kids as he described scary material.
The King of Kings replicates this approach by having Dickens (Kenneth Branagh) narrate the story to his son Walter (Roman Griffin Davis of Jojo Rabbit), effectively placing the two next to Jesus (Oscar Isaac).
“We make the story entertaining all the way through by using Walter as a surrogate for the kids,” Edwards explains. By focusing through Walter, who would rather hear stories about King Arthur than go to church, The King of Kings avoids preaching at its audience.
“If you watch The Matrix, if you watch The Golden Child, if you watch any of these ‘Chosen One’ movies, they’re very much based on the story of Jesus,” Edwards points out. “So why not go to the OG?”
The idea of tracing the story through history appealed to Edwards, a self-described “research junkie” who has done deep dives for all of his projects. “The way you learn to tell stories at Disney and Pixar is that you do a lot of research. So I know more about green tree frogs than anyone. I know a lot about pirates because of Treasure Planet. And you have to do a lot of research in the Marvel Universe. I love just sitting there with books and books and spending days and weeks diving into things, trying to find a method to tell the story.”
Of course seeing a movie do well is also fun for Edwards, as in the case of the $413.7 million-grossing Captain America: Brave New World. “I’m very proud of the movie, very proud of the way people are reacting to it. People keep going back week after week, and it really warms my heart.”
And what of Wilson’s heart, the thing that makes him the latest in a long line of chosen ones and makes him the Captain America of the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars? According to Edwards, heart will make Wilson a hero for the ages. “Sam’s mortality is what’s going to take him into the next phase,” he declares.
The King of Kings and Captain America: Brave New World are now playing in theaters worldwide.
The post Captain America 4 Writer Explains Key Difference Between Sam Wilson and Steve Rogers appeared first on Den of Geek.
