Captain America: The First Avenger [2011] (1 disc)

Random Trivia For This Title:

• Jon Favreau was originally chosen by Marvel Studios to direct this film, but he chose to direct Iron Man. ^[?] Nick Cassavetes, was also considered to direct this film, and had been set as a director for Iron Man in December 2004.
• To prepare for her role as Peggy Carter, Hayley Atwell trained six days a week. She also based her performance on Ginger Rogers: "She can do everything Captain America can do, but backwards and in high heels."
• Howard Stark finds the lost Tesseract at the end, which leads him to creating blue print designs about the cubes structure and overall power, which can be seen in a case of paperwork that Tony Stark looks through in the middle of Iron Man 2.
• Sam Worthington and Will Smith were in early talks for the role of Captain America. Later on Garrett Hedlund, Channing Tatum, ^[?] Scott Porter, ^[?] Mike Vogel, Sebastian Stan, Chris Evans, ^[?] Wilson Bethel, John Krasinski, Michael Cassidy, ^[?] Chace Crawford and ^[?] Jensen Ackles were on the final shortlist for the role. Kellan Lutz, ^[?] Ryan Phillippe and Alexander Skarsgård carried out auditions, but ultimately the role went to Chris Evans. Alice Eve, Gemma Arterton and Keira Knightley were considered for the role of Peggy Carter. Emily Blunt turned down the role.
• Louis Leterrier viewed some of the concept art for the film, and was impressed enough to offer his services, but Marvel Studios turned him down. However, his film The Incredible Hulk features a small appearance by Captain America: a deleted scene set in the Arctic features his body hidden in a slab of ice.
• The film was originally meant to be a standalone film, but after Joss Whedon was hired to direct The Avengers he was given a copy of the film's script and made a few rewrites to tie it in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe: "I just got to make some character connections. The structure of the thing was really tight and I loved it, but there were a couple of opportunities to find his voice a little bit - and some of the other characters - and make the connections so that you understood exactly why he wanted to be who he wanted to be. And progressing through the script to flesh it out a little bit."
• The wall art hiding the Tesseract at the beginning of the film shows the Tree of Life, the same concept design that Thor shares with Jane Foster in Thor. The Asgardians from Thor are the "Gods" referenced throughout this film.
• The Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) searches for a powerful artifact, the Cosmic Cube. In Transformers, Weaving voiced the villain Megatron, who also searched for a similar cosmic cube-shaped relic (the AllSpark).
• Although not specifically identified by name in the film, the agent in 1940s attire at the end when Steve Rogers wakes-up is played by Amanda Righetti, and is listed in the credits as "SHEILD agent". She is also identified as Sharon Carter (Peggy Carter's granddaughter and love interest of Steve Rogers in the comics) in The Avengers movie.
• There are several references to Raiders of the Lost Ark, which Director Joe Johnston worked on as Art Director:
  —Red Skull's consumption at the hands of the Tesseract is very similar to how the Ark of the Covenent kills the Nazis.
  —Cap throws a HYDRA bad guy into a fighter plane's propeller.
  —After he holds the Cosmic Cube in his hands, Johann Schmidt/The Red Skull makes a comment about how the Fuhrer "searches the desert for trinkets."
• Contrary to popular belief, a body double was not used for Chris Evans for the scenes when he was skinny. The filmmakers had originally planned to hire a body double and superimpose Evans' face onto the double's body, but ultimately scrapped the idea since director Joe Johnston claimed that Evans moved in a unique way and that no body double could replicate his movements. Ultimately, the filmmakers utilized digital technology to "shrink" Evans down, essentially erasing portions of his physique, until they came up with what the filmmakers called "Skinny Steve". Over 250 shots were filmed like this, and because the shrinking process left empty space in the background, many of the scenes had to filmed in front of a green screen so that they could superimpose the backgrounds back into the scene.