Joe Johnston On How Captain America Will Tie In To The Other Marvel Films

We know you have a lot of questions about Marvel's upcoming Captain America: The First Avenger. Top of the list probably isn't 'how does this film tie into the other Marvel films?' and yet that's the question that is being answered for now. Director Joe Johnston is talking about the tie-in moments, and the answer might actually be refreshing.

Director Joe Johnston told CBR:

There are links between all the Marvel films, mostly ones that only the fans will pick up on. We have several subtle references to certain elements in Thor, but since Captain America is a period picture taking place in the 40's, there are fewer opportunities for contemporary links to the rest of the Marvel universe. We can, however, create events in our story that will be paid off in Avengers and other Marvel pictures.

Which is a long way of saying that Cap won't do a whole lot of tying in to other films. Given the way things are going, that might be a good thing. At first Marvel's big connected movie universe seemed like a great thing, but the logistics of properly assembling such a thing quickly began to look like a difficult thing to manage.

How do you write scenes for a film, which will be shot six months from now, that are intended to refer to a project that might be written a year later? And, when one film (like Iron Man 2) is intended to point the way towards a bunch of other films, how do you let that film breathe and be its own thing? With respect to Iron Man 2, it seems like things got pushed too far towards the connectivity angle. And since Captain America points directly towards The Avengers, hopefully the example of IM2 has been taken into account.