Marvel unveils new titles for CAPTAIN AMERICA, THOR and IRON MAN sequels

If you’re a fan of all things Marvel, then today might see you reaching for some clean underwear a couple of different times, as the House of Mouse/Ideas unveiled quite a bit for Phase 2 of their cinematic universe at Comic-Con this past weekend.

In our first Marvel story of the day, we get the new titles for Iron Man 3, Thor 2 and Captain America 2, the latter of which tells quite a bit of story.

First up was the film titles, which revealed via the film logos. Now if you remember Marvel actually already revealed the logos a few weeks back, and while Iron Man 3’s logo essentially remained the same, Thor 2 and Captain America 2, all had some pretty interesting suffixes added.

Plot wise, I can’t really think of anything among Thor’s comic book past to explicitly tie into The Dark World, but it does tie back to Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige’s earlier allusions that Thor’s second cinematic feature won’t be quite as much of an adventurous romp as the first as it introduces us to the more seedier side of Asgard. He’s also said that Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Jane Foster’s (Natalie Portman) relationship will be front and center, which also ties into reports that the Enchantress and Skurge will be the main villains. Enchantress is an Asgardian goddess who uses twisted magic and seduction to try and get Thor to love her, and using fellow Asgardian, Skurge’s love for her, she manipulates him into trying to kill Jane Foster.

The big logo reveal though has to be Captain America: The Winter Solder. For you non-comic fans, the Winter Soldier is actually a character you’ve already met before. In Ed Brubaker’s now modern-classic comic run, the character was introduced as a highly skilled cybernetic assassin who was able to go toe to with Captain America. Cap eventually discovers that the Winter Soldier is none other than his old WW2 partner and friend Bucky Barnes, who had been assumed dead in the same Arctic explosion that had left Cap frozen in the ice. Turns out that he had been fished out by the Russians, who was able to revive and save his life through cybernetic prosthesis. Kept in cryo-stasis, he was was brainwashed to do their bidding and over the next 70 years, would be routinely thawed out, sent on missions and then put back on ice once the job was done, hence his new codename.

In Captain America: The First Avenger, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) was last seen trying to save Cap (Chris Evans) from an explosion and being blown off the side of a snowy mountainside for his troubles. The fact that there was no shot of the body was blatant foreshadowing that Marvel was going to introduce a cinematic version of the fan favourite character, I just never expected it to be this soon. The way the character was introduced in the comics, he was initially just a peripheral character with more and more being revealed about the character until Cap’s eventual discovery of his identity setting off an epic confrontation between them. I personally would have loved if he was introduced in this second film, but only have him becoming the main antagonist in a possible 3rd film.

With untested action directors Anthony and Joe Russo at the helm, I just can’t say whether they will be capable of giving the character enough room to grow so that the reveal of his identity has real impact.

Last Updated: July 16, 2012