While Marvel’s had no trouble incorporating unresolved material from previous movies into its recent fare, the studio took its sweet time bringing back threads from 2008's The Incredible Hulk. Abomination showed up in She-Hulk after a brief punch of a cameo in Shang-Chi, and next year’s Captain America: Brave New World is set to go even further by bringing back multiple characters: Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford), his daughter Betty (Liv Tyler), and Tim Blake Nelson’s Samuel Sterns, aka the Leader.
Recently, Nelson appeared on Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside of You podcast, where he dished a little on returning to this character. Interestingly, he revealed the Leader will be done “as practically as possible with an absence of digital stuff.” The Hulk villain’s got a pretty big head as a side effect of being bombared with the gamma radiation that granted his super intelligence. Normally, that giant cranium would probably be something done with CG, but given the last few MCU movies have been dinged for dodgy CG—to the point that its in-house VFX team unionized just last year—it seems Marvel’s decided to let that big ol’ head be a practical effect. In fact, Kevin Feige and fellow producer Nate Moore were both “on board 100%” to do the character as practical as they could.
Hearing the Leader won’t be a visual eyesore is good to hear, and reaffirms how this movie is playing things more reserved than the more fantastical MCU flicks. Earlier this month, director Julius Onah stressed that Brave New World would be fairly grounded and push Sam Wilson to his limits. Nelson similarly hyped up the film as “very much reality-based,” and heaped praise onto Marvel and Onah for getting as real as possible. For him, that approach with the Leader was something he was “really gratified to do,” and one he thinks will benefit the overall film. “It’s wonderfully directed by Julius,” he said. “I’m very happy about [this movie].”
Captain America: Brave New World releases on February 14, 2025.
[via IGN]
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