David Bradley's Harry Potter Past Caused A Problem For Marvel's Costume Designers
With "Avengers: Endgame" behind us and Chris Evans having retired from the Marvel Cinematic Universe until further notice, we can all agree that "Captain America: The First Avenger" is the best Steve Rogers solo film, right? From its character work to its action sequences and a rousing score by the legendary Alan Silvestri, director Joe Johnston's WWII adventure is a top-tier MCU movie. While it may lack the visceral melees that the Russo Brothers brought to its sequels, "The First Avenger" delivers more than enough whiz-bang thrills and Brooklyn attitude to make up the difference (that and its politics are much less confused than those of "The Winter Soldier").
Johnston's superhero picture also boasts what is still one of the MCU's most distinguished casts, pairing Evans with Hayley Atwell, Tommy Lee Jones, Sebastian Stan, Hugo Weaving, Stanley Tucci, Toby Jones, and Dominic Cooper. Even Natalie Dormer, David Bradley, and a pre-"Doctor Who" Jenna Coleman turn up in brief supporting roles, with Bradley appearing as the nameless "Tower Keeper" who crosses paths with the nefarious Hydra agent Johann Schmidt aka Red Skull (Weaving) and his men while they're stealing the Tesseract from its hiding spot in Nazi-occupied Norway. It's a flawless tone-setter for everything that comes after, bringing to mind similar pulp action-adventures like "Indiana Jones" and "Hellboy."
By that point, Bradley was already 40 years into a prolific screen acting career that had begun on British television in the early 1970s. Stateside, however, he was (and, to this day, is still) best known for performing in a certain boy wizard franchise. That caused a little trouble when it came time for the "First Avenger" costume department to dress him for the occasion.
Filch enters the Marvel Cinematic Universe
When he wasn't glowering at Hogwarts students as the caretaker Argus Filch in the "Harry Potter" movies, Bradley spent the 2000s doing variations on the character in other films, playing the cruel gambler Nigel Bray in Douglas McGrath's "Nicholas Nickleby" and confounding Simon Pegg as the grumbly farmer Arthur Webley in Edgar Wright's "Hot Fuzz." When it came to "The First Avenger," though, the movie's creatives quickly realized his "Tower Keeper" was a little too much like his Wizarding World counterpart. As Johnston recalled on the "First Avenger" DVD commentary:
"David Bradley, of course, played Filch in all the 'Harry Potter' films. And the first costume design we had for him looked exactly like his Filch character [laughing]. In fact, we said, 'Where's the cat?' That's all he needs."
Happily, Bradley has gotten to branch away from his Filch persona since The Boy Who Lived's story came to an end on the big screen. While he's not about playing unsavory characters like the malicious Walder Frey on "Game of Thrones," he's also portrayed his fair share of nobler types thanks to his collaborations with Guillermo del Toro on "The Strain" (where he played the Van Helsing-esque vampire/Strigoi expert Abraham Setrakian) and as Merlin in the animated "Tales of Arcadia" franchise, in addition to voicing Geppetto in del Toro and Mark Gustafson's stop-motion "Pinocchio."
Since we're on the topic ... isn't it weird how Filch — one of the few members of the Hogwarts staff incapable of doing magic — was the one charged with keeping an entire castle clean? Filch is a jerk, sure, but how much of that stems from the literal wizards around him making him do their dirty work? You can add that one to the long list of dubious subtexts in the "Harry Potter" franchise.