The upcoming Captain America: The Winter Soldier seems to have even more buzz than usual surrounding it, which says a lot considering few movies generate as much buzz these days as a Marvel movie. While audiences definitely gave Captain America: The First Avenger high marks, it seemed like star Chris Evans did not fully grow into his patriotic character until The Avengers. Because of that, many are expecting Evans and the rest of The Winter Soldier cast, including Robert Redford, to deliver a home run superhero movie. In an interview with Moviefone, Evans speaks about his initial reservations about taking the part, having a deeper connection with the character, why iconic actors are flocking to sign up for Marvel movies, and why it’s important for him to take a step out of the Marvel universe every once in a while.
Though Evans had played a superhero before (The Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movies), Evans had reservations about signing on to play a more high-profile solo hero in a series of movies. He recalls, “My biggest concern was that my life was going to change from an external standpoint. I thought the attention that the movies would garner would elicit a change in anonymity. That I wouldn’t be able to live my life the way I wanted to. That hasn’t been the case. If anything it’s been more of an internal struggle, you know.” While Evans can’t deny that he gets more attention than he used to, for him it comes in waves. He explains, “There’s an influx when the movie comes out. After a couple of months it subsides, and I go back to business as usual.”
Evans points out that there is an advantage to playing a character over a series of movies, which is growing to understand the character on an increasingly deeper level. He says, “You’re always going to get closer, you know. You’re never going to know the character less. So even though I feel pretty confident that I knew the character then, the same way I’ve changed, he’s changed. We’ve grown together.”
On top of that, Evans feels that the stakes of Captain America: The Winter Soldier have been raised simply by the addition of acting icon Robert Redford to the cast. However, he points out that recently many acclaimed actors have been cast in Marvel films. He says, “Look at Iron Man 3. You’ve got Ben Kingsley. You’ve got Guy Pearce. I think what actors want more than anything is to be a part of good films. It’s not enough just to do good work in a film because you can do good work in a bad movie and the satisfaction is not the same. You want to make a good product. That’s the goal, because we love movies. We don’t just love good performances. We love good movies. And Marvel has the Midas touch.”
Though Evans will soon be suiting up as Captain America for The Avengers 2 and The Avengers 3 (and surely another Captain America sequel somewhere in between), he finds it important to make sure he adds non-Marvel projects to his schedule, like the drama 1:30 Train that he recently starred in and directed. He confesses that he sees his future more behind the camera than in front of it, saying, “I mean these movies are fantastic but the things that I want to do in my life, the things that I really find to be my passion and my goal aren’t necessarily in front of the camera. I kind of want to get behind it a little bit more and do a little bit more of the storytelling as opposed to the performing.”