Falcon actor Anthony Mackie has revealed that Chris Evans almost didn’t play Old Captain America in Avengers: Endgame. In the film, Steve Rogers went back in time to restore the Infinity Stones to their rightful places – and decided to stay behind to live the life he’d missed out on, meaning he returned to the present day considerably aged.
Speaking on The Jess Cagle Show (H/T Slash Film), Mackie commented: “It's funny, they actually wanted to cast an old dude to play Chris Evans. So they brought in like three actors. They’re like, none of these, like, this isn’t how Chris will look when he’s old. Like, he’s gonna be, he’s like George Clooney.
"He’s gonna be 95 and still like handsome, you know? So, they brought in a makeup team and prosthetics and makeup and made him into an old man. And how good of an actor Chris is, it actually worked. Like, he pulled it off with his voice and everything. He did a great job.”
Following the movie’s release, Jen Underdahl, Marvel’s Visual Effects Producer, explained to WIRED how the elderly Captain America look was achieved. It wasn’t just Evans’ acting skills and his makeup that pulled off the realistic effect: a “skin double,” or “an old guy who approximates the same age and face shape of Cap, or what Cap would be,” was also used. The skin double copied Evans' performance as much as possible, and the two actors were then blended together – and Evans' body was further altered with VFX to make him look older and smaller.
Patrick Gorman, the skin double in question, posted pictures of himself in costume as Old Cap to Instagram – and Evans gave us all a glimpse at his old man makeup on Twitter.
Halfway there pic.twitter.com/frBsW4x4hQMay 10, 2019
In the scene, Cap passed the shield over to Falcon – but Mackie has also teased that we don’t actually know who the new Captain America in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will be. Though his character Sam Wilson seems a sure bet to take up the shield, could someone else entirely end up sporting the stars and stripes? We’ll have to wait until March to find out, but in the meantime check out everything we know about Marvel Phase 4.
