When you want to know what's going on in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you talk to Marvel Studios President of Production, Kevin Feige.  Luckily, I got to sit down with Feige when a small group of journalists visited the set of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  Feige told us everything that's going to happen in Phase Two, Phase Three, and beyond (yeah right).  He did, in actuality, tell us how the film came about, and how its events will have big ramifications for the MCU at large.While on set, Kevin Feige commented on hiring directors Joe and Anthony Russo, choosing to go with the style of a 70s conspiracy thriller, and introducing the Winter Soldier. Hit the jump for the interview.Question: So I guess to start, Joe and Anthony Russo, their careers have been â theyâve done nothing even close to like this. What was it about them that you guys felt made them the perfect directors for this project?Kevin Feige: Well, you know, itâs worked out well for us when weâve taken people that have done very, very good things. Very rarely are one of those good things a big giant blockbuster superhero movie.Right.Kevin Feige: You know. Elf for Favreau. Good TV for Joss. Good Shakespearean drama 15 years ago for Ken Branagh. And in the same way I was a big fan of â I donât watch a whole lot of TV but the TV that I was watching that I found interesting â their name kept popping up on it. And then I knew they had also â they made that Soderbergh-produced movie with George Clooney. It was like, âWait a minute.â So theyâd done this interesting stuff in TV and then theyâve done that movie which was interesting in and of itself. They had been popping up in the trades for being attached to various features. I said, âSo obviously theyâre interested in features. Letâs bring them in.â And like all of our director choices, it starts with meetings. It starts with, are we connecting with a certain idea. And Iâd pitched them our idea for Cap 2. And youâve heard me describe it, which is a loose description, a broad description as a sort of 70s political thriller. But thatâs what I pitched to them.Right.Kevin Feige: And they lost their minds. They just started coming back and coming back and coming back with great ideas and great ideas and great ideas. And I just believed they could pull it off. And now is where, you know, two-and-a-half weeks, three weeks from finishing I feel very, very good about what we have so far.Why is the time right for something like that now as opposed to maybe a third entry dealing with the Winter Soldier.Kevin Feige: Well, this sort of is a third entry. I mean, right â thereâs Cap 1 with his origin in World War II and only the last two minutes - oh my God, heâs in the modern day. Avengers played a little bit with his feelings of what itâs like to be in the modern day but he didnât have a whole lot of time in that film because heâs introduced to the team. Heâs got to fight off the alien invasion. So it did feel like this was absolutely the right time to deal with how he can come to terms with a past that is long gone and is seemingly never coming back. Dealing with the shades of gray of the modern era and certainly of being a part of an organization like S.H.I.E.L.D. And then just as perhaps heâs finding a niche for himself, his past comes back and lands like a ton of bricks on his head in the form of Winter Soldier.So why was that sort of 70s conspiracy thriller the right template to tell that story?Kevin Feige: Well, weâll see next year if it was the right template when itâs all finished and its working. But itâs â you know, we make a lot of superhero movies here at Marvel Studios and I believe the key is to make them all different and to make them all unique and to make them all stand apart while connecting together. And thatâs what the comics do, you know. You can find Captain America stories that are as sort of two dimensional and red, white and blue as you would think from the costume. Then youâve got great stories in the seventies and eighties and then you have the amazing Brubaker run which is sort of a, you know, dealing with, albeit 100% in the Marvel universe, with this notion of conspiracies and authority isnât what it seems to be coinciding with when Cap returned in the early sixties and then suddenly ten years later thereâs Watergate and heâs gone through the seventies. Thatâs interesting stuff to me. So weâre sort of pulling from all of those tales for this story. And like the first film was a Marvel superhero origin story masquerading as a World War II propaganda movie, this is a Marvel superhero sequel masquerading as a seventies political thriller. And then, frankly, all the stuff thatâs happening now with the NSA and the news is just â is pretty amazing timing for us because thatâs much of what Cap is â thatâs the kind of thing Cap doesnât particularly like - that our fake comic book organization and real life national security organization seem to be doing. Which again is always nice when youâre big entertaining fun competent movie can touch into some aspect of a grounded real world â no matter how crazy that real world may be.Comic book readers are accustomed to tonal and stylistic shifts in a characterâs new iteration. How are you going to help mainstream moviegoers adapt to the tonal and stylistic shifts in this movie from the first movie? It sounds like itâs gonna be pretty different with Cap still at the center.Kevin Feige: It will. I mean, Iâm betting that more people will have seen Avengers who are coming into Winter Soldier than saw Captain American 1. It certainly â it can be a direct sequel to that film. It can also be a direct â it is a direct sequel to The Avengers. And if you look at the whole Marvel cinematic universe, I think the audience has already been with us for that tonal shift. You know, they know when that Marvel flip logo comes it can be an Iron Man-Clancy-techno-thriller. It can be this fantastical, you know Thor film. It can be a World War II film. I mean, theyâve already stayed with us for all of these different genres under the umbrella of the cinematic universe that ⦠itâs not about betting theyâll come with us. I think theyâre demanding that we continue to evolve and grow and shift sort of our models.This movie does have the most characters from Avengers continuingâ¦Kevin Feige: Yeah.With S.H.I.E.L.D. with Black Widow. Did that just sort of naturally feel like that would be the right thing â the Iron Man and Thor sequels do feel less connected.Kevin Feige: Yeah. You know, we always wanted â as youâve seen in Iron Man 3 now for Tony to go back to his world in Malibu and Stark Industries. Thor going back to Asgard. We werenât gonna send Cap back in time. We werenât gonna send him back to his home. He had nowhere else to go. Thatâs part of the story. Thatâs part of how we meet him at the beginning of the movie. And it just made sense that he was the one that stayed with, you know, what remains of the Avengers at the end of the movie.We heard that this is like a year after The Avengers. How does this fit in the timeline with everything else â Iron Man 3, Thor 2.Kevin Feige: It is, you know, smack dab between Avengers and Avengers 2. You know, the continuity between Thor and â it takes place after both Thor and Iron Man. So itâs sort of the continuity of the release of the film is the continuity of the film as well. Which was sort of the case with the first phase one films but it was a little trickier. But this very much, you know, the ramifications at the end of this film go directly into Avengers 2. Much more so than the other films.How much continuity carries over, because at the end of Iron Man 3 with the Vice President getting arrested, is that something that fits in at all, or did it exist in the world of Captain America 2?Kevin Feige: It exists â yeah, it exists in the world, you know. There just is â there were some elements of Avengers that were referenced in Iron Man 3 but we didnât go into a whole lot of detail because we were following that particular story. You can â youâll hear about some of those past events, but this is very much a S.H.I.E.L.D., a Steve Rogers focused storyline.Getting to what you were talking about earlier, The Avengers was such a worldwide phenomenon, so I can imagine that it inspired a lot of people to go back that hadnât seen the phase one films to go see that.Kevin Feige: I think so. I think thatâs true.So to what degree can you kind of rely on that when youâre making this movie in terms of not having to deal with going to backstory â kind of just approaching the story head-on.Kevin Feige: Well, we know thatâs true, right, because the Blu-ray sales and the DVD sales of the other films started going up again when Avengers came out â when it came out again on home video. But frankly, I believe every movie should stand apart, right. If you hadnât seen Star Wars, I think youâd probably watch Empire Strikes Back and get it.Sure. Yeah.Kevin Feige: The same way, you know. I really think â I think this movie should work. It needs to work for people whoâve not seen Avengers or Cap 1. It needs to work for the people whoâve seen all of them.Right.Kevin Feige: Thatâs important to me that the movies can play on multiple levels like that. So I guess itâs â you know, weâre always on alert for getting too inside baseball but at the same time sometimes you can be so inside baseball that itâll just go over the heads of some. So as long as itâs not distractingly inside baseball.Sure.Kevin Feige: So two characters are like, âRemember this?  I do. Haha.â And some people in the audience are going, âWhat are they talking about?âRight.Kevin Feige: Unless itâs Hawkeye and Widow talking about, you know, Budapest in which you know, âOh, maybe some people thought there was another movie where that happened?â, but it didnât matter, right, because it was just about their backstory.You talked about the big picture of phase III and then how this one sort of fits in with your grand plan.Kevin Feige: Iâve no idea what the big picture of phase III is.Phase II, sorry.Kevin Feige: Right. Well, it is about, you know, part of it â talking about it from a filmmaker level as opposed to sort of a story level â itâs about â and youâve all heard me say this before. Teaching the general movie going audience about the notion of the characters existing separately, coming together for specific events and going away and existing separately in their own worlds again. Just like comic readers have been doing for decades and decades. And part of my early, early goals was to get movie audience used to that â to that kind of thing. And knock on wood â so far with Iron Man 3 itâs worked. But people didnât throw tomatoes at the screen going, âWhereâs Nick Fury? How come Thor doesnât help them take down Guy Pearce?â People sort of are accepting that thereâs a time when they should be together and thereâs a time when theyâre not. So that was one of the first goals which is why we made the Iron Man 3 that we made, why weâre making the Thor movie weâre making and why Cap does sort of fold back into that a little bit more. And in terms of the â you know, itâs all about going deeper into the stories. The more moviegoers that see these movies and are participating in watching these movies with us, the more inside baseball you can be. And suddenly itâs not a small group of people, itâs a large group of people. And thatâs what I like very much is that the continuity of the films now are becoming â itâs becoming known and accepted to, you know, like my friendâs mother was asking me about, âIs this character coming back?â Itâs like, âHow do you know that?â Because of the movies which is great.Do you approach actors â these amazing actors now like Redford, Glenn Close in Guardians. Are they surprised when you approach them or at this point, you know, the movies have become so big that itâsâ¦Kevin Feige: I think it varies. I think it varies. I mean, sometimes they approach us. I mean, sometimes they â and Robertâs not shy. Mr. Redford is not shy about the fact that his grandkids are a fan of this and he wanted to do something that his grandkids would watch him in. So that works out very well in those cases. In some cases ⦠like we approached Glenn Close. You donât have to do quite the song and dance. They sort of â they know what we are already and I do think until we royally screw it up they think itâs a safe place to come and put on a costume and stand in front of a green screen and at the end of the day come off, you know, very well.Now that you have Guardians on the way, is this the time to take risks? going out there on a limb. Is there any way that you feel the need to protect yourself, if thereâs a safety net if this doesnât catch on.Kevin Feige: If Guardians doesnât or ifâ¦Yeah.Kevin Feige: Well, I mean, I think weâve always been rewarded for taking risks. I think when Fox hired Bryan Singer it was a risk back in the day. I think obviously Downey was a risk at the time and I had to twist a lot of arms to get that â to push that through. So â and by the way, when we were doing the first Iron Man film, the X-Men franchise had already been a giant hit. The Spider-Man franchise was already a giant hit. So you - the safety net becomes Marvel itself. Itâs that red brick logo on top of the title â right now means something to people.  The way the Pixar thing does. Itâs not so much of a - people go, âOh, I get kind of what this is will be.â So it did seem like now is the right time to do something like Guardians which is different. I donât know how big the Iron Man fan base was. We all knew what it was. We all knew Thor. But general audiences were like, âOh, is he a robot? Oh, is that the guy that has blonde hair, the helmet guy?â They didnât know much more than that. Itâs not like those were Spider-Man before the movies. Those were not well known. Guardians of the Galaxy is even less known than that. They had been in some cartoons. Theyâd been in video games. Guardians. Although now theyâre popular because now, you know, the publishing side is raising their profile. But most importantly, you always just want to make a good movie. You always want to make it an interesting movie that plays for people whether they have a deep affinity or nostalgia for the characters or not. And with Guardians itâs sort of liberating because there are very few people that have the nostalgia for that. Weâre still being true to the books. Weâre still pulling all our favorite elements from those books to make the movies. But I like that most people will think and experience it as a brand new and fresh film.
Kevin Feige Talks CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER
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How much was contingent on getting Rocket Raccoon's voice?
Kevin Feige:Â You know, a lot. I mean, itâs â you know, just like it was getting our Peter Quill. Youâve all seen the photo that he tweeted the other day.
Yes. [laughter]
Kevin Feige:Â Theyâre all important. Theyâre all important. And I mean â and weâll have the voice â I think soon. We want to get one soon so that â to inform the animators. But weâve got a great design. Weâve got a great look. Weâve got a great digital effects company bringing him to life and now itâs all about that voice.
Are you past the arm-twisting phase of having to get things done? Are people more understanding your vision or at least letting your success get you past some things you might have had to push more?
Kevin Feige:Â I think so but to be fair itâs â I mean Marvel has always been unified. Itâs sort of the reason we were gonna start doing movies ourselves was to tell the stories the way we wanted to. And I donât know why itâs the case that the actual, you know, property owners are the ones that were willing to go take further risks with their material than the licensees studios were back in the day. But Iâm glad that was the case. And itâs definitely the case. And I think frankly thatâs because we just understood the characters more or believed in the characters more. But I donât want to suggest that itâs like the me against the world. Itâs not. And Marvel has been very unified in the way we want to proceed.
How did that meeting with Vin Diesel go?
Kevin Feige:Â Itâs happening at three oâclock today. [laughter] It literally hasnât happened yet. Heâs coming in today. Itâs just a general.
Are those meetings more to just to like kind of get â like figure out the interests on their part like where you possibly see themâ¦
Kevin Feige: Yeah, there are lots of actors come in here all the time. Not all of them have 43 million Facebook followers and say, âIâm going into Marvel.â But sure, I mean thatâsâ¦
So itâs less so. You have a specific idea of what you want or just kind of aâ¦
Kevin Feige:Â It varies.
Okay.
Kevin Feige:Â In this specific case of Mr. Diesel thereâs no specific idea. Itâs just a meeting. And sometimes thereâs â sometimes there is a specific idea. But usually â I mean sometimes we just go right into an audition into, you know. I didnât meet Chris Pratt until weâd already decided. Iâd watched six of his tests and we decided to meet him. Because sometimes I donât want to be â it doesnât matter how fun they are at dinner. It matters what they look like on that screen. But it is happening today.
Itâs interesting, itâs already like an interesting complicated universe or like you said something might happen in one movie that will affect the other movies. Now that you have the TV show, too, S.H.I.E.L.D. will that be, I assuming taking a lot of planning, you know, to make S.H.I.E.L.D.âs a hit? Itâs airing in April and Cap comes out â something happens in Cap that affects the worldâ¦
Kevin Feige: Yeah. Well, you know, the studio is not involved in the day-to-day of the show. Jeph Loeb and the TV division is overseeing that. But of course thereâs crossover. I was just in a meeting with those guys and Iâm about in two minutes to go back to a meeting with those guys to hear the overall picture and to, you know, to hear their ideas and how they deal with the events and Thor and the events of the Cap. Their ideas for season two, should there be one, to make sure they lead into Avengers and donât ⦠the key to that show, just like they key to all the movies is that, it has to stand alone. It has â if you stripped out all the connective tissue, is it worth watching? And it has to be â and then itâs all bonus and itâs all gravy when thereâs that connective tissue. And thatâs what theyâre doing a very good job on so far is building in that fashion.
Captain Americaâs a very old-fashioned hero. And I was wondering how, when you saw DC sort of make Superman relevant by taking that good guy and turning him grittier and darker, but we havenât done that with Cap, who at his core is a hero. Iâm curious about how you go about making that relevant to the audience and ensuring that it doesnât seem old fashioned or out of place in todayâs world.
Kevin Feige: I donât mind if it feels old fashioned. I donât mind if he feels out of place. He is out of place and he is kind of old fashioned in the modern era. I care if he feels two dimensional. I care if he feels boring or if he feels in any way not like a fully formed character. But in this movie weâre embracing that side. Thatâs part of his conflict with Fury and with some of the other members of S.H.I.E.L.D. is the fact that he has a â heâs from a different place. He has a different set of values, I think. Or at least he thinks he does initially. And we want to play into that and run towards that which creates conflict, which creates drama, which creates character. You know, weâre careful not to make him a goofball fish out of water, you know. We donât spend a lot of time with him trying to understand what an iPhone is. Heâs, you know, if you took a 23-year-old â what do we calling Cap, I donât know, 27? If you took a 27 year old and introduced him to something theyâve never seen before theyâd probably figure it out. They wouldnât be completely flummoxed. So weâre avoiding sort of the what is a cell phone. What is this magic glass that you type onto. We have some fun with it. And frankly Cap because heâs been around in the modern day for a little while post-Avengers, he sort of has fun with peoplesâ expectations. He sometimes pretends not to understand something when he does. He goes, âOh, I forget.â He goes, âI get it, I get it.â To, you know, again make him more than just a perfect two dimensional Boy Scout.
What are the sort of joys and pains of making movies the way that Marvel does with an eye on other movies and interconnectivity and an eye on secrecy â all of those elements that are pretty singular to the way Marvel does it. For you whatâs great about it and what is challenging?
Kevin Feige: Well, itâs all pretty great. I mean itâs, you know, as we keep making them we â I want to keep an eye on not painting ourselves into a corner or not â you know. Because again, a lot of what weâre doing is modeled on the comics but thereâs also pitfalls to look out for. Thereâs a reason, you know, comic universes have to reboot after ten or 15 years because they start to fold in on each other and it becomes very, very confusing. I think thatâs less of a danger when youâre only doing, you know, four hours â four-and-a-half hours of entertainment a year â two movies a year. But thatâs one thing that we want to be careful to avoid. I donât think weâre anywhere near that yet. So itâs really all just sort of fun to be able to have access to all those characters and all those stories as we make them. The secrecy thing â I donât know that itâs unique to us. I think every filmmaker wants to save the surprises for the screen. You know, weâve got security guys walking around on every set and holding up âDonât Take Pictures, Pleaseâ signs and things like that. And everyoneâs taking pictures of it â you know thatâs gonna happen. We sort of stopped chasing that frankly. I mean, I think people are savvy enough now to know that if a pictureâs taken from behind a tree with a long lens, if the pictures look great, as most of Winter Soldier pictures looked pretty cool I thought, some of them look like professional â like really damn cool. You know, we used to try to get ahead of that and do our own photo shoot beforehand but the truth is we just spend all of our time getting ready for that day when heâs gonna be in front of the movie cameras for the first time. And sometimes, you know, a picture appears behind a tree with a long lens and they guy doesnât look great or itâs a stuntman. I do think people are savvy enough to know, Oh thatâs not the way itâs going to look in the movie.â So itâs just the way it is now. And Iâve always said the only thing worse than a photographer in a tree is no photographer in the tree because nobody cares. Weâre filming a big street, thereâs nobody here. I thought that happened to us once in Iron Man 2. We were filming in Randyâs Donuts on Iron Man 2 and he was in there, but was nobody there. Weâre like, âWhat, thereâs nobody there?â And I was like, âBecause nobody cares!â And we go home and thereâs this unbelievable shot of him in the â they were in a buildingâ¦
Hiding in the bushesâ¦
Kevin Feige:Â Yeah, there was somebody far away. Yeah.
With leaks, and other things that get out, are you guys actively playing now with expectations? Maybe putting out misinformation? Are you engaging in that sort of thing?
Kevin Feige: Iâm wondering if thereâs a clever answer to that. The answer is, âNo,â but I donât know. Maybe that gives away the game. No. I wouldnât know how to do that. Sometimes weâve talked about - talk about name and put something out there. I think a few years ago we tried that and they were like shut up, we donât believe you. But, no, I mean itâs much of â you know, some of the information isnât true sometimes when it comes to casting because their agents, because people know whoâs coming in for meetings and things like that â rarely is information 100 percent private. And sometimes itâs completely off the mark. And thatâs funny and that becomes its own business for me. Right? I mean people who thought that Tony was gonna go to space to meet the Guardians of the Galaxy at the end of Iron Man 3. Okay. They can think that. So it almost creates â people are doing misinformation for us.
Thank you. Have a good meeting.
Kevin Feige:Â Thank you, I will. Bye bye.
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