First Captain America Poster Goes Gritty And Dark

After a whole slew of images from the film hit the Internet over the last few days, we've finally got the look at Captain America that you'll be seeing everywhere before its July 22 release-- the film's official one-sheet poster has debuted at Marvel.com, and you can check it out below. While most of the images have emphasized Cap as a bright and shiny, red-white-and-blue American hero type, the poster is going gritty and grimy, Cap holding his shield low and bowing his head, surrounded by flying debris as if he's in the middle of battle. It's not exactly a "dark" look at Captain America, but not the blue-sky optimism you might expect either.

The costume looks great, as it has in all the other images, and Evans continues to look good in it, so I'm mostly intrigued by what they're going for with all the grim imagery. To me this poster screams "Captain America is not Superman, and this is not necessarily a happy superhero movie." Contrast it to the photo on the cover of Empire Magazine a few weeks back, with Cap standing in front of a giant American flag like Patton. Then again we learned from director Joe Johnston recently that Cap's sidekick Bucky will be a "much darker character," so maybe that's some of the influence we're seeing in the poster.

One more thing to consider-- we know the marketing campaign will de-emphasize the "America" part of Cap for the international audiences, since the entire world still isn't necessarily wild about us after the last 10 years of foreign policy. So maybe this is a look at what the international posters will be like, and an American one will let the superhero seem a little more powerful? Take a look at the poster below and discuss that and more in the comments.