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when you think of Iconic Marvel Comics characters, you probably first think of Spider-Man or wolverine, right?

That is the effect that successful recent brand marketing can have on a company; Spider Man and Wolverine have been in successful movies and on Saturday morning cartoons, both of which only help to raise their profile.  However, back in the Sixties, Marvel’s version of the previously existing Captain America character was right up there with spidey for popularity.  Marvel is hoping that with the rigfht film project this could maybe be the case again.

So far however, Marvel’s track record with the character on screen is nothing to brag about. the 1980’s and 1990’s saw a couple of Captain America movies released, one for television and one intended for theaters but ultimately released straight to video. These were nothing to write home about - in fact the TV movie had Cap riding around on a motorcycle while carrying a clear see-thru shield and wearing a motorcycle helmet in place of his familiar cowl. Ugh.  The second movie had the costume right but still came off as cheesy, complete with the Red Skull (a Nazi villain) having an Italian accent?!?

So there is some celluloid history with the character that Marvel would like to try and make the public forget by hitting them with an impressive new vision of Cap. Honestly, any new Captain America movie  would need to be visually exciting to engage the audiences’ interest. As well they have to figure out a way to make the character look well, how should i say this? Visually acceptable on screen with regards to his costume.  Getting this right would go a long way towards helping us forget the past lackluster efforts with the character.

So far we know a few things  about this upcoming version of the character. the release date is May 6th, 2011, and the director has been named. Joe Johnston was recently announced as the director for the C A movie. We also know that the foundations for this characters existence in the Marvel movie-verse have already started to appear; in Iron Man, we get a quick glimpse of the famous red, white and blue shield of Cap’s.  In the recent Hulk movie we got to see a fight sequence involving a character treated with the super soldier serum that was originally given to Captain America including a reference to its origins in World War II.  In addition, there was at least one scene deleted from the final cut of the same Hulk movie that supposedly included a brief glimpse of Captain America trapped in the ice! Wow, talk about obscure, huh? But that is cool when you consider that in the comicbook, Captain America was frozen in a block of ice for decades after WWII.  That could set up an interesting lead in for the new Cap movie - if they choose to run with this tidbit.  By the Cap movie’s release date, we can also assume that it is being developed as alead in to the upcoming Marvel Avengers movie as well; that could help or it could put more pressure on it to deliver. Time will tell…