During a promotional interview for the home entertainment release of Captain Phillips, HeyUGuys caught up with British composer Henry Jackman (X-Men: First Class, Wreck-It Ralph), during which they managed to grab a few words about his work on the upcoming Marvel Studios sequel Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
“I can’t say too much because I know Marvel will shoot me, but Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a brilliant film that is part of the Marvel franchise but the directors John and Anthony Russo are geniuses. It’s a Marvel film that’s taking it one step further. They’ve made Captain America much more contemporary. The story is set in 2013, so it’s not a period film and it doesn’t have Indiana Jones style Nazis running around the place, it’s all set in the modern era and it’s a cross between a superhero and a modern political thriller so that’s already awesome. What’s great about that is because it’s a Captain America film you need these traditional, thematic elements which eventually come through in act three of the film, but also the film is super-contemporary. Plus, Winter Soldier is this crazy, dark, RoboCop-type figure who is somewhat human but mechanised, completely messed up. Slightly human but completely tortured and completely manipulated, but crucially mechanised”
“So I said you know what, I’m gonna do something completely crazy and dark for the Winter Soldier, and I’m just gonna go for it,” he continues. “I hadn’t worked with these directors before, and away from picture I just wrote a suite for the Winter Soldier that was about six or seven minutes long that I spent ages on and treated it like a record. The idea being that if I get this vibe right, if I nail this six or seven minute thing which I think is the essence of the character and it’s super radical and it’s not that traditional and not completely orchestral because I want to save some of that for Captain America, let’s just see what these guys say. I played it for them really loud, and after they were finished there was a bit of a silence, and then Joe [Russo] went ‘I love it! Awesome!’ (laughs) What was really cool about it was that he said that piece was so great and unique and it doesn’t sound exactly like film music, do me a favour and don’t do that thing when once we start working on the movie it gets sanitised or watered down. Whatever it is I just heard, I really want to hear that in the movie and not just 20% of that in the film, and that gave me all the information I needed about how creatively brave these guys were and it works in the film, and I’m really proud of it. And this track that I’m talking about will be on the CD in it’s original form”
Meanwhile, in other Marvel music news, Edgar Wright has revealed via Twitter that BAFTA-winner Steven Price (Gravity) is set to compose his long-awaited Phase Three movie Ant-Man…
Huge congrats to @SteveBPrice for his Bafta Award for the ‘Gravity’ score. I guess I should drop the news that he is scoring ‘Ant-Man’.
— edgarwright (@edgarwright) February 16, 2014
Captain America: The Winter Soldier opens in the UK on March 26th and in North America on April 2nd, with Chris Evans (Captain America), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Sebastian Stan (The Winter Soldier), Cobie Smulders (Agent Maria Hill), Hayley Atwell (Peggy Carter), Toby Jones (Arnim Zola) and Maximiliano Hernandez (Agent Jasper Sitwell) joined in the cast by Marvel newcomers Anthony Mackie (Pain & Gain) as Sam Wilson / Falcon, Emily VanCamp (Revenge) as Sharon Carter / Agent 13, Frank Grillo (Zero Dark Thirty) as Brock Rumlow / Crossbones, George St-Pierre (Death Warrior) as Georges Batroc / Batroc the Leaper and Robert Redford (All Is Lost) as Alexander Pierce. Meanwhile Ant-Man will kick off Phase Three of the MCU on July 17th 2015, with Paul Rudd (Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues) playing Scott Lang and Michael Douglas (Hank Pym) appearing as Hank Pym.
Originally published February 17, 2014. Updated April 11, 2018.
