I’ve expressed optimism in the recent wave of Marvel Studios movies. This interview with Captain America director Joe Johntson, though, has me kind of worried:

It’s not going to be a Captain America that you expect. It’s something different. It is influenced by the comic book, but it goes off in a completely different direction. It’s the origin story of Captain America. It’s mostly period-there are modern, present-day bookends on it-but it’s basically the story of how Steve Rogers becomes Captain America. The great thing about Captain America is, he’s a superhero without any superpowers.

You mean except for the super-soldier serum in his bloodstream? Which lets him dodge bullets and decapitate people with shields from long distances? And enhances his ethical judgment?

Oh, you weren’t being literal.

He can’t fly, he can’t see through walls, he can’t do any of that stuff. He’s an everyman who’s been given this amazing gift of transformation into the perfect specimen-the pinnacle of human perfection. How does that affect him? What does that mean for him emotionally and psychologically? He was this 98-pound weakling, he was this wimp, and he’s transformed instantly into this Adonis. You’d think he got everything he wanted. Well, he didn’t get everything he wanted. The rules change at that point and his life gets even more complicated and dire.

There’s a psychotic Nazi with a giant red skull for a face trying to kill him! For seventy years! That can uncomplicate things pretty rapidly.

The more salient worry about Captain America is how you do a depoliticized, non-jingoistic movie about him. Or whether you say it can’t/shouldn’t be done and make a full-fledged polemic.