Tag Archives: Captain America

The Avengers disassemble in “Captain America: Civil War”

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Captain America: Civil War

Photo by Film Frame.

Only a couple of months after DC’s top heroes did battle in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Marvel’s Avengers are at odds with one another in Captain America: Civil War. Loosely based on the comic book series of the same name, Civil War finds the superhero team continuing to save the world from villains like Crossbones (Frank Grillo) while receiving growing scrutiny for the toll these battles take on the surrounding areas. Even the Avengers themselves can’t deny that chaos and destruction seem to follow them wherever they go, and the subsequent damage and death of innocents overshadows the good they are trying to do. In order to better keep these superhumans in check, the United Nations proposes the Sokovia Accords, an international institution to govern the activities of the Avengers and other superpowered beings.

Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) urges the rest of the Avengers to sign the Accords in order to stay in the public’s good graces and avoid further conflict with the world’s governments. Captain America (Chris Evans) feels that the Avengers should be able to act freely rather than get bogged down in bureaucratic processes, refusing to compromise. Never known for seeing eye to eye, Iron Man and Captain America’s friendly rivalry becomes more and more heated, especially after a bomb goes off at the Vienna conference where the Accords are to be enacted. When the Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) becomes the main suspect, tension reaches an all-time high within the Avengers.

Photo by Film Frame.

Photo by Film Frame.

As the battle lines are drawn, the rest of the team chooses its sides, joined by new Avengers Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland). When these forces collide in an epic airport battle scene, it’s what every comic book fan has imagined it would look like if the pages of their favorite books were to spring into live action. After the battle ends and both sides realize they have to work together to stop Helmut Zemo (Daniel Brühl), who has been playing the Avengers against one another while he tracks down the other five Winter Soldiers. But when Zemo reveals a dark secret that connects Cap and Bucky to a tragic event from Stark’s youth, an enraged Iron Man lets loose on both of them, resulting in yet another brutal fight that leaves all three of them in bad shape.

Considering the punishment the Avengers take at each other’s hands in Civil War, it will be interesting to see how things play out in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But for those who stick around for the post-credit scene, there’s a pretty strong clue as to how this web will continue to be spun.

marvel.com/captainamerica

Captain America is off to a Fortune-ate start this Monster Jam season

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Following a brief stint in the National Football League and the World League of American Football, Chad Fortune spent a fleeting few years in the World Wrestling Federation as one half of Tekno Team 2000 before an equally brief couple of years in World Championship Wrestling. Though his wrestling career was somewhat short-lived, it did give him an opportunity to parlay his athletic talents into a new field, first as the spokesperson for the NWO truck in 1999, then as the driver of the WCW Nitro Machine in 2000. But it wasn’t until 2005 that Fortune found his calling as the very Clark Kent-looking driver got behind the wheel of the Superman truck, where he remained until 2011. Having switched to the Captain America truck last year, Fortune is off to a successful 2013 thus far. He talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about continuing that success in the most heroic manner possible.

You’ve been a monster truck driver for 13 years now, which is much longer than your pro wrestling career was. What was the transition from the ring to the monster truck world like?

You know, it’s amazing where life takes you. I grew up playing football and basketball, went to college and played football, then went on to play a couple of years pro and in Europe. Then I went off into pro wrestling and here I am driving monster trucks. Monster trucks are the best of both worlds of what I was into. With the physical challenge and the one-on-one competition of the racing part of monster trucks, you’re out there trying to prove that you’re the best. Then there’s the freestyle, which is entertainment. You might think you’re just out there driving the truck and going over jumps and stuff, but everybody’s gotten so good at what we do that we have to do it better and more exciting than anybody else, which is what pro wrestling is about. It’s the entertainment side and putting that combination together, you have the highs and lows and wow factors that when you’re about to crash and you make the save, it’s like kicking out of a three count. Then you come back and get bigger air in the end and, for me, you finish your finale on the biggest pile of junk. Then I get out as Captain America with the shield and I pose. It really is the biggest expression of entertainment you can have.

When you first got into driving monster trucks, you had a truck that was made especially for your larger frame. Appropriately enough, it was the WCW Nitro Machine.

Yeah. I’m 6’6″ and about 250 pounds. A lot of the guys seem to be smaller and more compact and fit into the average truck chassis. They’re built small for safety reasons and the roll cages are tight. Being so tall, I don’t fit in any random truck. So they built me a truck specifically with the gauges tucked down underneath the roll cage to give me the maximum space, and the roll cage is spread out a little farther. It’s still very small in there for me, but nevertheless, it’s made for me. It was a WCW truck in the beginning, then it was the Karl Malone truck, the Power Forward. That was the same chassis I had up until last year, when we built a brand new truck. So that truck was about 12 years old when I retired it and it was way out of date.

Last year was your first year driving Captain America. Last year also ended up not being your best year. Do you attribute that to switching trucks at all?

I had a great start last year, but I got rocked pretty good at a show in Houston where I had a pretty bad rollover. That wrenched my neck a little bit and I had some shock issues we were trying to work out. So I started out doing well and around the middle of the season it tapered off to being average. Because it was a new truck, it was landing a bit rough and we had to work out some issues. But we’re good this year. Everything’s been going really well.

Being that you look so much like Superman, especially in that Superman jumpsuit, you seemed like a perfect fit to drive that truck. Why did you decide to switch to the Captain America truck?

I had been with Superman for about eight years and I started getting comfortable with the character and relying just on the entertainment. When it was announced that Marvel was coming out with a new truck, I thought it might be something fresh. It was a brand new truck, so I would get a new chassis, a new motor and everything. I had some input into the designs of the truck, so it’s a little bit different truck body. It’s more of a futuristic concept body with LED lights and it’s a really good-looking truck. I saw it as a challenge. Having been Superman for so long, the young fans knew me as Superman. But I’ve retained some fans as Captain America and now I come out with a shield and I wear a star on my chest rather than the S. It’s actually been working out really well. People were a little disappointed at first because I had done Superman for so long, but after they saw the new truck and the stuff I was doing with it, a lot of my fans are excited about what’s going on.

Either way, the superhero theme seems quite fitting considering your background as a wrestler, which is probably the closest thing to a real-life superhero as you’re going to get.

I take it that way. I really want to live up to everything. My training as a wrestler and a football player hasn’t changed. I take it very seriously. The way it feels being in this truck with 1,500 horsepower, it is as close as you can get to being a superhero. You have super strength, you’re crushing cars, you’re flying and you can get these things moving pretty quick. It’s like being a real superhero and it’s a lot of fun.

What have been some of your biggest accomplishments so far this season and what are you looking forward to over the next few weeks?

Our first show was in Tacoma, Washington, where I was a race champion and scored pretty well in freestyle. I’ve been in the top three or four in freestyle at every show since then. There’s a new Ukraine tire out this year with real deep grooves. I’m still running on the older style tire, which is smoother, and it just doesn’t seem like it’s getting the same traction as these other ones and I’m getting beaten in that way. I’m not trying to make excuses, I’ll just have to focus a little harder on the turns and make sure I have the grip. I’m getting ready to go to California for the second show in Anaheim at Angel Stadium. They do things a little bit differently on the West Coast where there’s a figure-eight track. The dirt seems to be a little bit more loose out there, so with the tires I have I do a little bit more skating. I think I’m figuring it out, which is going to be good for this weekend. The following weekend I’m in St. Louis, then the weekend after that I’m in Atlanta. St. Louis is the same style track as Atlanta and it will be a great opportunity to get back in the groove and prepare for Atlanta.

www.monsterjam.com

“The Avengers” assemble for stellar superhero team-up

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After years of solo stories, post-credit appearances by Samuel L. Jackson and enough speculation to fuel a comic con’s worth of nerdgasms, The Avengers have finally assembled for a 3-D spectacle that brings together some of Marvel‘s greatest heroes in ways they’ve never been seen before. And the fact that this ensemble of superheroes is directed by Joss Whedon only amps the geekdom up that much more.

Captain America (Chris Evans) prepares to suit up in "The Avengers." Photo by Zade Rosenthal

With the pieces all put in place over the past few years with The Incredible Hulk, both Iron Man movies, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, not much backstory is needed for The Avengers. Which leaves Whedon with the task of introducing the characters to each other and explaining how and why they have all come together. In steps Loki (Tom Hiddleston), the nemesis of Thor (Chris Hemsworth), to steal the powerful Tesseract, an extraterrestrial power source in the possession of S.H.I.E.L.D., the government agency directed by Nick Fury (Jackson), which forces Fury to launch the abandoned Avengers Initiative.

Realizing the fate of the entire planet is at stake, Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Dr. Bruce Banner (this time played by Mark Ruffalo instead of Edward Norton) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) agree to work together (reluctantly in most cases) in order to save the planet. Thor randomly shows up in a flash of lightning after they capture Loki, which leads to one of the film’s first big battle scenes as Iron Man, Captain America and Thor duke it out until they all realize their powers would be put to better use if they were combined rather than used against each other.

Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Captain America (Chris Evans) join forces in "The Avengers"

With Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård) under Loki’s control (not to mention that Loki is Thor’s adopted brother), the individual Avengers also have personal investments in this battle, which only adds to the suspense. Even though the story of a disagreeable group of heroes preventing the world from being taken over by alien forces is nothing new, Whedon is quite used to making otherwise tired concepts interesting again (remember what he did for vampires years before the Twilight craze and, more recently, for horror with The Cabin in the Woods?). And The Avengers has Whedon written all over it (quite literally, considering that he also co-wrote the script) with distinct egos, conflict amongst the team members and incredibly witty dialogue (he seems to have particular fun with the Captain’s wholesome anachronism, which makes sense considering Whedon’s best known for his clever stories about centuries-old vampires).

That being said, The Avengers also has a couple of the continuity flaws typical of most of Whedon’s previous works. For instance, it’s not clearly explained how Thor shows up, which is pretty important considering that the last time we saw him he was stuck on Asgard after the space bridge to Earth was destroyed. Nor is it explained why Banner’s Hulk goes from being an uncontrollable monster to being able to harness that rage (just when they need him the most, no less). But given the inevitability of additional sequels to all these movies, these are things that could easily be explained in subsequent Marvel Studios releases.

Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) smash in "The Avengers"

Until then, we’ll just have to be content with these heroes putting their differences aside long enough to stop the monsters attacking New York City through the portal Loki has opened from atop Stark’s skyscraper. Between the outstanding 3-D visuals (see it in IMAX if you can), the attention-grabbing dialogue, Alan Silvestri‘s bombastic score and just enough character development to keep the audience engaged, The Avengers is the big superhero team-up film comic book geeks and action movie fans alike have been waiting years to see. Now if only they can figure out a way to work Spider-Man into the next one (a post-credit scene proves there will be a next one, and another post-post-credit scene is added for an extra laugh), the universe will truly be a better place.

The Avengers. Directed by Joss Whedon. Starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston and Samuel L. Jackson. Rated PG-13. www.marvel.com/avengers_movie/.