There are several things that signal problems on a film shoot—budget overages, falling behind schedule, sudden firings and late reshoots being chief among them—and once upon a time, news of any one of those things was enough to get a production labeled as being “in trouble”. But increasingly, late reshoots in and of themselves aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Case in point: Marvel routinely plans on spending a few weeks toward the end of their production schedule reshooting material/adding new stuff to their movies. And for them, it’s worked every time.
The latest Marvel movie to go under the reshoot scalpel is Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It’s due in theaters on April 4 and just three months before its release date they’re spending a couple weeks on reshoots. That’s a little nerve-wracking, but Marvel has fallen into this habit and it has always resulted in better movies, which is probably why they now just plan on having late reshoots and factor the cost into their budgets from the get-go. Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World both underwent the same process at the same stage of post-production, and both movies were better off for it. Which is why my reaction to the news of Marvel reshoots is just a shrug. If it were anyone else I would consider worrying about the movie, but with Marvel it’s par for the course. They do a lot of weird sh*t that shouldn’t work, but invariably does.
And now for some spoilers, maybe! Seriously, this could get spoilery for both Captain America 2 and Avengers 2, so if you’re sensitive, look away.
There’s a rumor steadily gaining strength that Captain America is going to get killed off, either in The Winter Soldier or Avengers: Age of Ultron, and for once, it isn’t the nerds panicking. Nerds have seen this writing on the wall since the day a Cap film was announced—we’ve been assuming this was inevitable. It’s only a matter of how and when, not if.
Without getting into hardcore nerdery, the central players in Steve Rogers’ assassination in the comics are all in Cap 2, and the comic book run Death of Captain America is being turned into a tie-in novel for the movie, so. But just as Cap’s death is assumed, so is his resurrection. After all, he’s already died once and come back. It seems like rumors about Cap getting knocked off are getting tangled up with rumors that Joss Whedon is going to kill someone—for realsies—in Ultron. He’s spoken several times about wanting to make Ultron all about suffering and loss, but I highly doubt he’ll be allowed to (permanently) kill a character who fronts his own franchise. A much more likely victim for Whedon’s axe? Duh—Hawkeye.
Attached – the Captain America covers EMPIRE
