Captain America: Making Movies With Stan, Joe, Jack in the 1990s.
Superheroes in Hollywood. An on-going series of articles looking at the various superhero films pre-2000
‘I've never met them. Are they alive?’
Work for hire practices were still in vogue with comic book companies well into the 1990s. If you wrote, or drew for Marvel or DC, then the company owned everything you did. Not only could they reprint it forever, and not pay royalties, but they could, and did, sell the characters (and the concepts that invariably came with them) to any Hollywood studio that came calling. The result led to Marvel selling characters to anyone that came along, resulting in the Marvel Universe being diluted across numerous rival film studios and producers. The Marvel situation became so complicated that it would take decades to legally sort out who owned what.
The practice of Hollywood raiding comic books reached its zenith when German producer Bernd Eichinger bought the rights to The Fantastic Four for $250,000 and, when faced with losing the option, turned it over to legendary low-budget producer Roger Corman who would make the first Fantastic Four movie with a budget of $1,000,000 in 1993. Marvel Comics had the official premiere of the film stopped while the film was screening and blocked its release for theatre, video and television.
Avi Arad, then a senior executive at Marvel Comics, was later quoted as saying that Marvel bought the film back from Corman and Eichinger for, ‘…a couple of million dollars in cash,’. Marvel destroyed all prints, along with the films negative to ensure it wouldn’t ever see an official release. The movie would remain unreleased, with pirate copies making the rounds of comic book conventions and collectors. A one-off $250,000 cash injection for Marvel for the rights of The Fantastic Four ended up costing Marvel millions with nothing to show for it.
Because he had produced a movie in the required time, this meant that Eichinger still owned the film rights to The Fantastic Four. After the successes of both Spider-Man and The X-Men, Eichinger was able to produce two more films, releasing them through 20th Century Fox, thus keeping the film rights out of the hands of Marvel Studios control. Similar stories exist for Spider-Man, which was sold to Cannon Films for $225,000. When Cannon Films went bankrupt, the rights to Spider-Man remained in limbo, passing to Carolco, and other studios before ending up at Columbia Studios. Marvel would regain some control over the character in 2015 when Sony Studios and Marvel Studios reached a deal. Where Sony Studios would license the character back to Marvel.
Other Marvel movies were made. Most of them were so bad that they’re not even shown on daytime TV in Ohio or Dubbo. Why were they so bad? Because the people who made them thought that the source material – comic books – were lowbrow and they could do far better. They were Hollywood and comic books were for kids. And who cared about who got credit? Not Hollywood.
Take 1990’s Captain America.
Since the disaster of 1979, Marvel had made it clear that they wanted Captain America at the cinema and, by golly gee, they were going to get Captain America at the cinema. They got Conan there, didn’t they (conveniently ignoring the fact that Conan was a licensed character).
Originally announced back in 1984, the first ads for the film showed a John Romita drawn Captain America against a generic background (see above). The script was to be written by James R. Silke (it wasn’t) and produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Damningly the movie was said to be, ‘Based on Stan Lee’s Marvel Comic Strip Character’.
Whoops.
There was one major problem – it wasn’t based on Stan Lee’s character. Stan Lee didn’t create the character. Jack Kirby and Joe Simon did.
After seeing the ad, Simon and Kirby went on the warpath. Kirby had long been battling Lee over creatorship and ownership (another topic that deserves its own book, which many people have tried to write but failed as they favor one side only) and Simon had long claimed that he, alone, had created Captain America. Kirby was just his artist.
One thing both Simon and Kirby could agree upon was that the character was created before Stan Lee ever stepped foot inside Timely Comics (which became Atlas Comics, which became Marvel Comics). They contacted Marvel, Lee himself and the now expanding comic book media and screamed. Simon and Kirby blamed Lee and accused him of being a credit hog, a thief and just a downright shitty person. The comic book community echoed Simon and Kirby. Lee denied all involvement and instead blamed Golan and Globus.
Golan and Globus didn’t give a shit. Not their clown, not their circus as far as they were concerned.
Their next ad, in 1985, for a big budget, low rent Spider-Man movie bore the same credit. This time the supporters of Spider-Man’s creator, or co-creator, Steve Ditko began to squeal. Never mind that Kirby was, at that moment, telling everyone and anyone who’d listen how he’d created Spider-Man. But then Joe Simon was doing the same. Ditko, who’d long retreated into his own world, couldn’t care less. He knew the truth and that’s all that mattered.
Another year on and the same Captain America ad appeared. This time Silke’s name wasn’t present, but Marvel executives James Galton and Joseph Calamari were. And it was still Based on Stan Lee’s Marvel Comic Strip Character’. The cries got louder and louder.
By this point Michael Winner, now widely known for a series of increasingly right wing, violent and awful Death Wish films, in which an aging Charles Bronson shot and beat to death any young person he found on his lawn, was attached as director. The ads removed Stan Lee’s name but reinstated Silke.
Winner got as far as preparing a scenario for the Captain America film, which he then sent on to Marvel’s Editor in Chief Jim Shooter. ‘Here is the result of our efforts!’ Winner wrote to Shooter. ‘I am rather pleased with it (biased though I am!). Any ideas, suggestions, comments, bouquets, flaming arrows, or whatever are welcome.[i]‘
God (and Shooter) only knows what ideas, suggestions, comments, bouquets, flaming arrows, or whatever Shooter sent back to Winner, but Winner’s follow up wasn’t as breezy. Gone was a jaunty, handwritten, ‘Dear Jim,’ replaced by a formal, typed, ‘Dear James.’
I’m not sure whether your comments are favorable or unfavorable! What you seem to be saying is that as a civilian it amused you, and as a Comics Chief it did not.
I do not really think we did not try to go in an area where ‘suspension of disbelief’ was important.
In films as well as in comics there is an area where the audience accepts - particularly in something called Captain America - those things are going to happen that are not normal. Indeed, if they did not we could not possibly make Captain America. For example, the audience accepts Superman spinning round and disappearing into the ground.
It accepts in Back To The Future a car going at 88 miles an hour and going backwards in time at that precise moment; together with a great deal of other unreality. I think cinema is full of acceptance of certain things like this.
We steered clear of the really high camp stuff in Marvel Comics such as Snake People and Greek Gods coming back and fighting all over the place.
I actually think I like the comics more than you do! I thought quite a bit of the dialogue in the comics was really rather good, and to a large degree we have kept the characterizations therein.
I think what both the comics do, and movies do, is overlay a fantasy world onto the real world, and people reading a comic, as you say, expect to see fantasy; and people going to see a film about a comic character historically have also accepted this. They also accept it in the Spielberg movies because they are preconditioned to what they are going to see. Whilst of course they would not accept it if Charles Bronson suddenly flew in Death Wish 3! On the other hand the word ‘fantasy’ has been used in relation to the Death Wish pictures in that they take reality one or two steps further than it actually goes. Comics of course take reality many more steps further than it actually goes.
Films are not a completely ‘real-life medium’. It depends on the film. Certainly, anyone going to see a film called Captain America would not expect it to be a slice of real life![ii]
With that Winner signed off and departed, back to the land of the geriatric Bronson’s Death Wish (as the Simpsons so beautifully put it, ‘I wish I was dead, oy!’) to be replaced by Albert Pyun. Funnily enough, Winner was right. People would accept the fantasy world of comic books if it was done right.
Simon and Kirby wanted Lee’s name removed and they got it. All was calm until another series of ads appeared in 1987, this time stating, ‘Based On The Character Created By Stan Lee’. Kirby must have vomited his toast the morning that appeared in Variety.
That was the final straw. Legal papers were drafted, and notices of intent sent on to Golan and Globus, Marvel Comics, Stan Lee and anyone else connected to the film.
James R. Silke was also out, replaced by Stephen Tolkin.
More importantly, the credit line now read, ‘Based on Characters Created By Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’. Stan Lee still got his name on it all though, acting as Executive Producer.
Pyun was also attached to the Spider-Man film, so clearly Golan and Globus believed he could deliver the goods. He’d made a name for himself making increasingly low budget films such as Radioactive Dreams, Alien from L.A. and 1982’s surprisingly good in a bad way, The Sword and the Sorcerer.
To be blunt, Tolkin was an unusual choice as writer. His credits at the time included writing such hard-core fare as Knots Landing and Delta House (the easily forgotten television offshoot of Animal House). His sole qualification for the Captain America gig was that he’d done an uncredited rewrite at the last minute for Masters of the Universe, a comic bookish related film with Dolph Lundgren and 2009 Best Actor Academy Award Nominee for Frost/Nixon, Frank Langella.
Langella has probably spent the rest of his life hitting people in the throat when they start talking about Masters of the Universe.
Stephen Tolkin sat down and explained how he came to write the 1990 Captain America film.
‘They sent me the previous scripts and underlying material and the comic strips. They knew my work and thought I could do a good job. They gave me a month to write it. They told me, ‘We must start shooting June 1987.’ I finished it and they didn't start shooting until June 1989[iii].’
So far, so good. Or was it?
My take was that he's the absolutely sweetest, most innocent guy; totally guileless. He's like a crab without a shell, in a world where everybody is completely defended, cut off from their emotions. When he becomes Captain America, he doesn't change at all; he stays himself. Quite honestly, I took a leftist slant on the whole thing- I saw it as my leftist superhero story. The basic story is idealistic: An earnest, sweet, naive kid from 1943 appears in Los Angeles in the late '80s, and it's just what that means[iv].
It went through more revisions during production than it did before. They changed it a lot in the shooting and editing of it. All the revisions we did between then and 1987, I did work very closely with the director and some of the actors. After that, they changed it a lot on the set, and they changed it a lot after they shot it. The finished film is quite different from the script, without any script changes having been made. Just from how they rearranged scenes and stuff.
This chopping and changing on the set wasn’t the only problem the movie had. It was doomed from the start. You see, Tolkin had never read a single Captain America comic book before he accepted the job.
I was always a Superman and Archie kind of guy. I had never read a Captain America comic before I wrote that script. I couldn't have sketched his uniform for you. I read the comics to get a sense of his uniform, to get a sense of the Red Skull. The only thing from the comics that's in the movie is the creation, the laboratory scene. That's it.
What I invented was the idea that the Red Skull and Captain America were both invented by the same doctor using the same process. She creates the thing for the Nazis, and they use it on a human. She's outraged and then escapes to America. That was my invention. I liked the idea that. they both were created from the same process. Why is it a woman? I don't know. It was sitting on my desk, and I thought, ‘Hmmm.’ I loved the actress who played her. She was great.[v]
Captain America in constant battle with the Red Skull is a core thread throughout the comics history, beginning in World War 2 and contininuing into the present day. The Red Skull is a Nazi, Cap is a true American, so he has to stop the Nazis. It’s a great storyline and, in its way, makes perfect sense. Ying and yang. Superman and Luthor. Archie and Reggie.
It makes perfect sense if you’ve read the comic books. The problem was, by his own admission, Tolkin had never read the comic books. He preferred Archie.
I dropped all that bullshit. He's a very wealthy Italian industrialist who's like a hitman. This guy has been responsible for the death of both Kennedys and Martin Luther King and John Lennon. He's had all these people killed in an effort to crush the spirit of America. Now he's going to kill the current president, who's like a really great guy.[vi]
This was Tolkin’s own conspiracy theory in action. This was his cut price James Bond story.
The ‘bullshit’ that Tolkin dropped was decades of stories and mythos built by Simon, Kirby, Lee, Gene Colan, John Romita, Steve Englehart, J.M. deMatties, Roger Stern, John Byrne, Mike Zeck, Jim Steranko and countless others. For a man who read Archie, their efforts were merely bullshit.
Not that Tokin cared. When asked if he’d even bothered to reach out to Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, you know, the guys who created the character to get some insight, he was blunt. ‘No, I've never met them. Are they alive? I would have loved for them to have read my script.[vii]‘
So, I read a couple of Captain America comics, enough to know that I didn't need to read any. I got a couple things out of them, though. I got my whole story out of one frame; I think it was a Stan Lee thing. It was a great shot of Captain America from below. He has just come back from the ice in the '60s, and he's thinking, 'What's wrong with all these people? Don't they believe in anything?' I realized ‘I'll do that for the '80s!' That one frame gave me the whole idea of Captain America going through all this soul-searching over what has happened to the world.
To prepare myself for writing this, I watched every James Bond movie I hadn't already seen. I wanted great action sequences, but I wrote one that they couldn't do financially. At a seaside resort, Captain America and Sharon are chased by the bad guys, so they grab a paddle boat. It breaks apart, so they jump on an aquaplane, then on a jet ski, and then water skis. Every possible water sport conveys the chase, like one of those big ski chases in a Bond movie.[viii]
Jack Kirby might have pounded Tokin into the ground like a tent stake if he’d read the script, especially if he’d learnt that the whole movie was one big James Bond rip off inspired by a single Stan Lee scripted panel. But Stan Lee loved it and that’s all that counted.
And bugger me with a stick, it’s a movie called Captain America. So where is it set? That’s right.
Europe.
‘It takes place in Italy, and this is one of those mystery things. Menachem Golan, whose company made it, said to me in April 1987, ‘Set it in Italy.’ I said, ‘Why?’ to the executive producer. They didn't know why, and Menachem said to set it in Italy. So, I set it in Italy, and set the whole story around this Italian guy. It actually gave me a lot. Then, when they set about making it, they said, ‘It's too expensive to shoot in Italy; we'll shoot in Yugoslavia.’ Which, by the way, looks more Italian than Italy.[ix]‘
It recalls that exchange in Animal House where Flounder asks Bluto why his new name is now Flounder.
‘Why not?’ Bluto drunkenly burps in his face, as if that explains everything.
You can just imagine the exchange.
‘Why are we setting this film in Italy?’
‘Why not?’
Makes sense. Go for it.
Despite boasting a solid supporting cast featuring Ned Beatty, Ronnie Cox and Melinda Dillon, the film bombed. The costume and character just weren’t the same. It was…different.
Not that you’d see much of the costume. ‘I quite honestly thought, 'How long can we sit and look at this stupid red, white and blue costume?’’ Tokin reflected. ‘All he can do in this outfit is run around, wave his arms and be a superhero. It gets boring after a while. Superman is Clark Kent a lot in Superman. I had him in the outfit only in act one, when he attacks the Red Skull, and again at the very end. What I had - which they didn't shoot because it was too expensive - was a scene where he’s wearing a shirt and blue jeans over his uniform, and he's caught in a burning bus. He stays on the bus to convince somebody he's dead, and as the flames burn his clothes off, he stands there revealed in his uniform.[x]‘
Despite everything, Tokin firmly believed in the movie. ‘The film came in at almost four hours! To cut it down to an hour-and-a-half, they had to cut everything, and I mean everything. This movie doesn't make sense in its current state. I was really set up. I was sitting there watching, thinking, 'Oh, my God, this is a masterpiece!' but it didn't keep going that way. The first 15 minutes are exactly as I saw them. Captain America is about two things: Resistance to the power cartels that run our lives, and the need to take personal responsibility in fighting them. That's missing from the movie; you won't see that in the film. Albert assembled the best cast and the best locations, extremely good production design, wonderful cinematography. So why doesn't it add up?[xi]‘
There you have it. The movie, as written, was a masterpiece, ruined by the director and producer. Blame them. Tokin was happy. The money he made paid off his house. Such are the ways of Hollywood. Shit pays.
The 1980s and early 1990s saw a glut of Marvel movies. Three ‘made for television’ movies based on the TV series The Incredible Hulk got released.
(Missed opportunity. DLR *was* Thor)
(But, nope, we got…this guy)
For 1989’s The Trial of The Incredible Hulk, Marvel characters Thor and Daredevil were dragged in. Not that any of the characters bore the slightest resemblance to the comic books. Thor was just some muscle man (Eric Kramer – nope, me neither) wearing a wig and sprouting phrases that would have made Stan Lee cringe. They’d have been better off using David Lee Roth, although he was wearing a wig at that point too.
Daredevil was former soapie star Rex Smith. For this film, Rex was shown running around in his pajamas with a blindfold on.
(As an aside, Rex had tried to make it as a singer as well. His best-known song was a duet, Everlasting Love, with Rachel Sweet. Sweet wiped the floor, vocally, with Smith and gave him a beating that surely must have set him up for the whipping he got in the Hulk film. To be fair, Rachel Sweet could wipe the floor with anyone, vocally, and still could.)
When asked if it would be the same Daredevil that was, at that stage, hugely popular in the comic books thanks to Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli, writer-producer Gerald DiPego proudly announced that, yes, the film Daredevil was the same as the comic book Daredevil.
In his next sentence he said, ‘I'm making some slight changes in the people around him, as far as the comic is concerned. I've created some new people in Matt Murdock's law office. Also, instead of the reporter comic readers are used to seeing Matt/Daredevil talk to, there's a person on the police force who is kind of a bridge between society and Daredevil, although he doesn't know who Daredevil is. That, and the costume change is really the only difference.[xii]‘
Thus, other than Matt Murdock’s supporting cast, and Daredevil’s costume, he was the same. Different, but the same.
How would the costume differ? ‘We felt that we should go from the red costume to a dark costume to help that. If he's going to slip out into the night to fight crime, he does it camouflaged. His costume is now black-on-black, with a few traces of red as a homage to the old Daredevil. We've gotten rid of the ‘Ds’ on his chest as well as the horns, and the colors were changed. That's about it. Otherwise, it's the same. It covers down to the bridge of the nose on the mask, and there aren't any eyeholes. We've added a few things like knee pads and elbow-pads to break the lines with. It looks very jazzy.[xiii]‘
Not everyone agreed. ‘In the Daredevil show, the costume was terrible,’ said Stan Lee. ‘One of the things I told them, I was a consultant; as you know, when you're a consultant, you can talk but nobody has to listen, I told them that the fight scenes were terrible. He was fighting like Chuck Norris or like Bruce Lee, like anybody you see in any of these ninja movies. And he should have been fighting like a gymnast. What I always tried to do in the comics was give every character his own individual style. Captain America wouldn't fight like Daredevil, and neither of them would fight like Iron Man or like someone else. They all should have their own styles. And of course, it was silly-looking. It looked like he was wearing a blindfold.[xiv]‘
The costume, which defined Daredevil in the comic book, would now be redesigned, revamped and replaced. But it was the same. Just…different.
Thankfully Marvel still held the rights to Elektra and Iron Man as DiPego really wanted to throw them into the mix was well.
The same, but…. different.
The final Hulk movie, The Death of The Incredible Hulk did what it said it would on the box, and that buried the series for all time. The saving graces for the last two Hulk movies were that Bill Bixby, God rest his soul, got to direct them and control them as much as possible and he did a sterling job with the garbage thrown his way, both as an actor and director. As good as anyone who’s come after has been, it is Bixby that a lot of people identify as being Bruce, sorry, David, Banner.
David Banner. Yes, the Hulk was the same as the comic books. Just…different.
Oddly enough, what Winner wrote to Shooter in late 1985 was ignored by those who made the Marvel movies in the 1990s but were perfectly captured in the 2000s. People would, and did, accept the suspension of disbelief in superhero movies because they went in knowing, full well, that what they were seeing was not reality. It was a fable, a fantasy, a story. It’s what comic books have always been about.
When a filmmaker attempts to inject a reality base into a superhero film it all falls apart. This was something that a lot of the people who made superhero movies in the 1980s and 1990s seemed unable to grasp. Viewers would accept a Norse God as much as they’d accept that a man could make a suit of armor that would defy the laws of physics. They would accept a billionaire dressing up as a flying rat and never, ever, did anyone think of shooting him in the face, where he had no protection.
What seems obvious in the real world is simply ignored in the comic book world and with good reason. The late Norm Breyfogle once pitched his idea for a Flash comic. The first page would be Barry Allen, or Wally West, or whatever Flash was the Flash that week, sitting at his breakfast table. The next page consisted of three panels. The first had the Flash getting an epiphany. The second panel was a blur, the third was the Flash resuming his breakfast, having eliminated all crime on the planet at the speed of light.
As he would do, if he was real. Superman could end all wars; the Avengers could do the same. What government could possibly fight the Hulk or Asgard if they decided to invade. It’d take more than a sixty-year-old one-eyed man to stop that.
The reason why Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame worked so well is because the way Thanos acts is the same way that a lot of people would act themselves or expect those with great power to act. To commit arbitrary genocide on a universal scale. And, when in possession of the same gems, the Avengers themselves don’t use them to eliminate poverty, hunger, crime, and corruption, they bring their friends and others back to life, and let the universe carry on. They only eliminate the immediate threat and ignore the greater good.
That is why superhero films work. The automatic suspension of disbelief by the viewer and the ability to accept the absurd without hesitation. Michael Winner understood this. Jim Shooter probably did as well. The average screenwriters, producers and directors of the Marvel films in the 1980s and 1990s who insisted on moving the heroes into the real world and changing their stories, costumes and everything and anything that defined them, simply didn’t.
That’s why those movies simply do not hold up. And, other than curiosity value, they never will.
The same, just…. different.
[i] Winner to Shooter, 3rd Dec 1985
[ii] Winner to Shooter, 9 Dec 1985
[iii] Amazing Heroes #177
[iv] Comics Scene #23
[v] Amazing Heroes #177
[vi] Ibid
[vii] Comic Scene #23
[viii] Ibid
[ix] Ibid
[x] Ibid
[xi] Ibid
[xii] Amazing Heroes #163
[xiii] Ibid
[xiv] Comics Interview #85