This has been floating around for a little while, but it hasn’t been official until today. Now, the casting of Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull in THE FIRST AVENGER: CAPTAIN AMERICA is as certain as a nail pinning a pigeon to a tree branch (?!?!)… because Marvel’s released an official announcement stating so, thusly. I have to say I’m pretty pleased about this because Hugo’s been the best part of a lot of movies he’s been in. I whittled many a fleeting moment in my misspent youth doing impressions of his monologues in THE MATRIX series. Indeed, I never quite heard the words “purpose” and “inevitable” the same way after those movies.
Anyway, I’m sure this casting had a lot to do with Weaving and director Joe Johnston enjoying working with each other on THE WOLFMAN. And, I suppose this ties up the last major loose end in the Cap movie’s casting department. You’ve got Chris Evans as Cap (of course),Sebastian Stan as Bucky, Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, (maybe) Tommy Lee Jones as (possibly) General Phillips and now, Hugo Weaving as Herr Johann Schmidt. Once again, I’ll say that you should probably get used to this cast ensemble, because my gut tells me we’re going to see a lot of them throughout the various sequels. You might think these characters are limited to their appearances in World War II, but keep in mind that the Red Skull turns out to be just as long lived as Cap, Bucky might come back as the Winter Soldier and Peggy’s younger relative, Sharon, is supposed to be her spitting image (meaning that Hayley Atwell will probably play both).
I suppose the only characters left would be any Nazi toadies like Baron Zemo and Baron Von Strucker as well as the various Invaders like the Mighty Destroyer, Union Jack, Spitfire, the Torch and (if they were feeling really adventurous) the Whizzer.
-- Tom Pinchuk is the writer of UNIMAGINABLE for Arcana Comics and HYBRID BASTARDS! for Archaia. Pre-order the HYBRID BASTARDS! hardcover now on Amazon.com.
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