Johnston blabs about Captain America and Jurassic Park
Joe Johnston is one popular director, mainly because he’s the helmer to the much anticipated February release of Universal Pictures’ The Wolfman. What quite a few people seem to be forgetting is the fact that he’s attached to direct a couple of other high profile upcoming projects, the two of them being The First Avenger: Captain America and Jurassic Park IV. Yes, even I forgot for a moment that there was going to be one more sequel to the popular Steven Spielberg franchise.
BoxOffice.Com got to sit down and chat with the director about all sorts of things, mainly getting the scoop on what’s going to be happening in the feature length version of the red, white and blue superhero along with those prehistoric terrors.:
It’s not going to be a Captain America that you expect. It’s something different. It is influenced by the comic book, but it goes off in a completely different direction. It’s the origin story of Captain America. It’s mostly period—there are modern, present-day bookends on it—but it’s basically the story of how Steve Rogers becomes Captain America. The great thing about Captain America is he’s a super hero without any super powers. Which is why this story, among the hundreds of superhero stories, appealed to me the most. He can’t fly, he can’t see through walls, he can’t do any of that stuff. He’s an everyman who’s been given this amazing gift of transformation into the perfect specimen—the pinnacle of human perfection. How does that affect him? What does that mean for him emotionally and psychologically? He was this 98-pound weakling, he was this wimp, and he’s transformed instantly into this Adonis. You’d think he got everything he wanted. Well, he didn’t get everything he wanted. The rules change at that point and his life gets even more complicated and dire. For me, that’s the interesting part of the story. It’s got some great action sequences in it and some incredible stuff that we’ve never seen before. But at the heart of it, it’s a story about this kid, who all he wants to do is fit in. This thing happens and he still doesn’t fit in. And he has to prove himself a hero—essentially go AWOL to save a friend. Eventually at the very end, I don’t want to give away too much, but he does fit in. But it’s the journey of getting him there that’s interesting. And it’s a lot of fun.
Well, there is going to be a Jurassic Park IV. And it’s going to be unlike anything you’ve seen. It breaks away from the first three—it’s essentially the beginning of the second Jurassic Park trilogy. It’s going to be done in a completely different way. That’s pretty much all I can tell you. If you think of the first three as a trilogy, number four would be the beginning of a second trilogy.
Jurassic Park is one of those franchises that could be endless, just as endless as The Land Before Time animated features. So it is possible to see them go different routes with the story, find even more interesting dinosaurs of the like. With the basic plot overlay that Johnston gave us, he sounds pretty confident on the source material which hopefully will lead onto a confidence over handling the entire feature. Either way, Captain America sounds pretty promising at the moment.
