Comic-Con: Captain America: The First Avenger Panel (Teaser Trailer, Footage And More Revealed)

By Peter ScirettaJuly 24, 2010 8:00 pm EST

The Marvel panel began with an exclusive Comic-Con teaser trailer for Captain America: The First Avenger. After the jump you can read my notes from the panel, including a description of the teaser and a full scene which was screened for Hall H.

The teaser begins showing clips from World War II superimposed over close-ups of the Captain's shield, while audio plays of FDR's "Day That Will Live in Infamy" speech. On screen text reads: "Stories emerged.... But one story has never been told.... Every army starts with one man." Cut to a shot of a silhouette of Captain America. On screen text reads: "Next Summer you will meet the First Avenger" We then see a short shot of Chris Evans in costume as Captain America shown from behind/side. Captain America logo. Cut to another shot of Evans in costume, this time from the front view. We don't get to see much as he tosses his shield at the camera.

Notes from the panel:

Director Joe Johnston calls the film "a classic adventure love story with an edge." he says that his favorite movie of all time is Raiders of the Lost Ark, a movie which he also worked on. He says that Raiders feels as modern today as it did they day it was filmed. This is his goal for Captain America.

Joe says that while he has studied the complete history of the character, he's a fan of the Brubaker version of the Captain America. So they decided to Borrow certain visual elements from Brubaker version, but are "going a bit more modern than the original."

Johnston also says that "if we don't love steve Rogers before he gets transformed, we won't love Jim after."

Filming has been going on for a few weeks now but Chris Evans only started on set five days ago and claims that he "did some nice gentle scenes to get my feet wet."

Marvel head/producer Kevin Feige admits that Chris has only been in a test version of the suit. The footage from the teaser trailer was filmed at a costume test. "The suit is coming together well but isn't finished yet." he says it's more realistic than the cartoony version of the suit that leaked a month back. "It is something that is unequivocally the Captain America uniform but fits the time period."

Hugo Weaving says he listed to tapes of Werner Herzog to help him get the voice of Red Skull. He has only worked one day in the mask, and he has "only started" getting to "make the mask work. "

They then premiered footage they claim was filmed just last week. The footage was very rough, complete with timecode. The footage begins with the title card "Norway, May 1942" we see told older men in a stone castle-like interior. The walls are shaking, dust and dirt falling. The wall implodes inward as a Nazi soldiers come rushing in, and examine a crypt in the center of the room. And then Johann Shmidt (Hugo Weaving pre Red Skull) makes his entrance from the huge hole in the wall. He orders the surviving old man to hand over "The Tesseract." The man tells Shmidt that what he is looking for is just a legend. Shmidt responds, "then why go through so much work to conceal it?" The crypt is opened, and inside is the bones of a crusader holding a misty crystal white cube. Shmidt picks it up, and says "The Tesseract was the prize of Odin's collection." But he isn't fooled. He throws it down on the ground, smashing it to bits. This is not what he was looking for.

He then turns his attention to the wall, which contains a large wood caving of Yggdrasil, the Norse Tree of Life. In the wall he finds a hidden compartment. Hell pulls it out and opens it. Blue glow fills his face. Shmidt says to the man "You haven't seen this yet, have you?" The man responds, "It's not for the eyes of ordinary men."

What is inside the box is the Cosmic Cube, which according to wikipedia:

"Unknown to almost everyone in the Marvel Universe, including its creators, the nature of the mysterious energies are such that, after a sufficient but undefined period of time, the matrix will become self-aware and evolve into an independent, free-willed being still possessed of the original Cube's tremendous powers; the new being's overall personality is psychically imprinted with the beliefs, desires, and personalities of those who wielded it as a Cube (e.g., The Shaper of Worlds, wielded for a long time by an insane and warlike Skrull Emperor, immediately destroyed a large portion of the galaxy that it was located in once it became sentient). On Earth, the Cosmic Cube containment matrix was developed and created by a society of para-military scientists known as A.I.M. to further their ultimate goal of world conquest. The object is revealed to be so powerful that it drove MODOK—another A.I.M creation who assisted with the formation of the Cube—insane. Master villain and former Nazi the Red Skull obtains the device. Although apparently now all-powerful, the Skull became overconfident and was tricked and defeated by hero Captain America. It was found by Prince Namor, but while battling the Avengers he lost contact with it, and it fell into the Earth.[volume & issue needed] Later a shard of the Cube is also used by A.I.M to power the android the Super-Adaptoid, who is sent in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Captain America. The Red Skull eventually retrieves the Cube and toys with Captain America, but is defeated when A.I.M uses an object called the "Catholite Block" to dissolve the cube."

The footage looked like a amalgamation of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Hellboy.