Not to brag and/or scream "Toldja!", but at least Paramount is making the right call. Let's be honest, the best hope of making Captain America: The First Avenger into a crossover hit is to appeal to the... um.... overly nationalist audience members. It worked pretty well for GI Joe: the Rise of Cobra, where Paramount subtly sold an international and relatively apolitical action fantasy as some kind of 'action movie for us regular Americans'. It's a balancing act, as the film needs to make major international coin in order to turn any kind of profit, and the Marvel movie universe cannot survive on Robert Downey Jr. alone. On the plus side, the film is a 1940s World War II period piece. So it won't be hard trumpeting up an overly sentimental view of American might and righteousness during a period where, give or take an atom bomb or two, we actually were in the absolute moral right. Paramount will have to juggle marketing this 1940s American fable to both those on the Right (many of whom seem to forget or don't realize that the Nazis were defeated by a bunch of quasi-socialist liberals) and the Left (many of whom have been so turned off by the decades of Might = Right politics that even the suggestion of America's absolute moral authority in the realm of armed combat brings to mind Fox News banners). Of all the marketing campaigns being waged this summer, this will be the most interesting one to watch, if only for the theoretical political implications. And of course, all of this chat once again makes one wonder: why is Paramount not opening this thing over July 4th weekend?!?!Scott Mendelson
I wonder if they'll choose selling it to the hard left (We're always wrong and evil!) or the hard right (AMERICA RULEZ!!!!) depending on the trailer, im sure they can mash up footage to send either message.
ReplyDelete....and as always forget that most of us are actually somewhere in between.