Joe Johnston talks about working on Captain America

Director Joe Johnston has spoken out about his "universally positive experience" directing Captain America: The First Avenger .

Speaking candidly to ComicBookMovie, Johnston said: "To fully understand the Captain America experience, I have to keep reminding myself that I had just come off another film I shot in the UK, The Wolfman . The two experiences could not have been more different."

"I had three weeks of prep on Wolfman , a ridiculously inadequate amount of time to try to bring together the fractured and scattered pieces of the production. I had taken the job mostly because I had a cash flow problem, the only time in my career I've ever let finances enter into the decision process…"

"The production was a leaky, rudderless ship in a perfect storm, suffering from bad decisions, infighting, reluctance of the powers that be to take responsibility, and too many under-qualified cooks in the kitchen."

The production problems of The Wolfman were never a well-kept secret (and you could see it for yourself if you watched the tonally-unsure final product), but it's still interesting to hear Johnston speak so honestly.

On the difference in approach to Captain America , he went on to say "I had thirty weeks of prep on Captain America . I have a small team of qualified, supportive, creative producers who are actually helping me achieve my vision of the film."

"I had a dream cast headed by Chris Evans. I had the best designers, artists, sculptors, craftspeople… a creative team that could design, build and photograph anything and have it look amazing and beautiful."

"At times I felt as if the gods were saying, “Ahem, sorry about that Wolfman thing…let us make it up to you.” Captain America was probably the most universally positive experience I've had in this mad business."

Certainly sounds like a totally different experience, so here's hoping that The Wolfman was an anomaly, and that the Captain America results will speak for themselves.

Captain America: The First Avenger is due to be released in the UK on July 29th 2011.

Matt Maytum is the former Editor of Total Film magazine. Over the past decade, Matt has worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.