Captain America: The Winter Soldier comes out on Friday. This is your daily reminder that it’s really good (it’s tied with Iron Man for the highest-rated Marvel movie yet). Since it’s the last week of publicity, we have a lot of new appearances from Chris Evans as he shills hard in the last days before the box office is open for business. Over the weekend he appeared at the Kids’ Choice Awards, looking vaguely like he wants to die, and today he’s in New York, dressed like a Bible salesman on Good Morning America and clearing up those pesky retirement rumors that have been plaguing him ever since he said he wanted to retire from acting.
Evans tries to play it off like we’ve taken it out of context, but his original remarks were pretty clear. “I think I’ll take a little break from acting.” HIS words. Did that initial sentiment get away from him a little? Yeah, probably. I don’t think for one second the guy actually intends to quit acting. In fact, by the end of the year, coming off the back of two strong performances in Winter Soldier and Snowpiercer, he’ll probably find himself with better offers than he’s gotten in a long while. But dude, don’t act like we made this up out of thin air. You said you wanted to quit, and you’ve spent the last two weeks extracting your foot from your mouth.
That’s been the tone of his press tour—it’s the Chris Evans Take Back Tour of 2014. Yes, he’s going to finish out that Marvel contract. No, he’s not really quitting, it’s just that he’d rather direct—and he’ll probably star in those movies he’s directing. Rinse, repeat. Meanwhile, as the Chris Evans Take Back Tour of 2014 keeps rolling along, Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan are flying under the radar, being charming and engaging and really, they should have gotten more of the public appearances. They—Mackie in particular—are so much more interesting than yet another round of the “No, I’m not actually quitting” foot-out-of-mouth dance.
