Captain America: The First Avenger writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely have an interesting problem in front of them. At the end of the character's first solo movie, due out this July, he is brought into the future where he will team up alongside Iron Man, Thor, and The Hulk to form The Avengers. Yet back in February the pair was hired to start writing the script for the solo movie sequel. The big question, of course, is if the sequel will stick with the character in a modern setting, or will tell more from the battlefields of World War II. The answer? Both.
Markus and McFeely recently sat down to speak with MTV where they divulged a bit about their plans for Captain America 2. While they said that the movie is still very much in the planning stages - Markus says that they are just throwing out ideas and that there's no negativity in the process yet - one thing that they did confirm is that they will have "two entire timelines to play with" and that there's more to Cap's fight against the Nazis than what we see in the first movie. They are, however, taking the smart route and are going to look at reactions to The First Avenger to gauge where fans want to see the story go. Said, McFeely, "If it does well and people embrace the World War II aspect of it, maybe there's pressure to return there in a large way. But if they don't embrace that aspect and just love Chris Evans as Steve, maybe there's less pressure to do that — you can just keep him in the Avengers universe."
The pair also spoke on the uncertainty that comes with The Avengers arriving before their next project does. Explaining how it works, Markus likened it to the struggle of the comic book writers, saying, "All of those Avengers characters have solo comic books. You have to say "Captain America was on vacation the day when that solo adventure happened," or explain why Iron Man didn't call all of his super-powered friends when he was fighting that guy. It's a bizarre problem to have... It's not really a problem, actually." McFeely followed that up by saying that he expects more pressure to be put on director Shane Black, as Iron Man 3 will be the first Marvel movie to come out following the major superhero team-up film.
I think that there may also be an unspoken angle here. Before production began on Captain America: The First Avenger, Joss Whedon, who will be directing The Avengers, did touch-ups to the Markus/McFeely script, meaning that they may know quite a bit about where the character is heading. Shame that we still have to wait another three months to find out.
