Captain America in L'Ecran Fantastique

Spoiler Warning: The next issue of French rag L'Ecran Fantastique has an in-depth interview with Captain America production designer Rick Heinrichs, in which he reveals plot points about the film.

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).

- 90% of the film takes place during the period 1939-1945, but the beginning and end of the feature film takes place today ...

- As an introduction, we see an exploration team discovered the remains of a giant bomber under the snows of the Arctic. Flashback (true beginning of the film): attack on a village in Norway (Hansberg) by troops from Hydra. Johann Scmidt is present (Skull), who has a passion for Nordic mythology. He looks for an object, the Cube [as seen in the Comic Con footage]

- The Skull is a former Nazi party member who left to found the organization Hydra. His vehicle is a car which is nine feet long, shielded and armed ... Hydra's secret base is located in the Alps, and he worked on controlling the energy of the Cube. The Cube is able to open a portal to "other dimensions of space-time. His "human" face is just a mask hiding his true appearance: Red Skull.
- Steve Rogers is a young man puny victim of mockery by thugs in Brooklyn. The body of actor Chris Evans will be digitally processed to give it that look. Steve is already friends with Bucky Barnes [his sidekick in the film]. Unlike Steve, he was accepted into the army and he was preparing to leave.

- The two friends visit an exhibition in New York, "The world of tomorrow." Among the exhibitors? Howard Stark [Tony's father]. There is a showcasing of anti-gravity boots, which only have a fraction of the energy of the cube. Stark Sr. will create the shield of Cap.

- After his transformation, Steve Rogers is used as a mascot in cinema, theater and performing in a music hall. During a performance (at Radio City Music Hall in New York) Rogers ended his show by hitting an actor dressed as Hitler (reenacting the cover of Captain America comic issue #1).

- He became a celebrity, while remaining down to earth, once sent to Europe, where he learns that Bucky was captured in a weapons factory in the Hydra. During this first mission, he frees a group that will become the Invaders.

- There will be a quick montage with several missions of Captain America: for example the sabotage of a train of Hydra. Cap and his crew rappel down a mountain and atterrisent on the roof of the train.

- The final scene: The Red Skull's purpose is to build a carrier style bomber, containing planes carrying bombs, which are destined for London and U.S. cities. The armament and machinery will be important. Red Skull uses the cube to power these machines (huge tank, bomber). There will be a great battle between the Red Skull and Captain America in the plane which eventually crashed in the Arctic.

- Captain America 2: Heinrichs evokes the possibility of a film blending the past and the present [as the current Ed Brubaker stories show]. Especially at a time of the interview, he speaks of the Hydra as an organization still in existence, and Nick Fury is fighting still fighting against it.