It’s clear that Captain America will be a changed man when we catch up with him again in Avengers: Infinity War – and not just because he’s grown himself a beard. As you can see from his worn-out suit in the movie, Steve Rogers is no longer the Star-Spangled Man With A Plan and has been living as a fugitive for the past couple of years, since he broke his pals out of the Raft back in Captain America: Civil War.
But how exactly has Steve been altered by these experiences? Chris Evans spoke to ScreenRant recently about the extent to which his character has changed by Infinity War and revealed that the events of both The Winter Soldier and Civil War have forced Steve to become “disillusioned” with the things he used to believe in. In fact, he’s much more like Black Widow these days, who’s become his partner-in-crime-fighting since we saw them last.
“I think Cap knows how to compartmentalize. I’m not gonna speak to what the film addresses, but in terms of my character, I think he is slowly – he’s becoming disillusioned as he gets older. Every single movie, he learns a little bit more than the world isn’t the way he kind of wants it to be, and I think that’s why there’s a connection between him and Black Widow. Black Widow has seen a lot more than he is, and is kind of a little more calloused, and I think in a lot of ways, he looks up to that and learns from that.
First, it was kind of the hierarchy of a kind of government structure that fell apart, and then there was a friendship that kind of betrayed him or abandoned him, I should say. I think when those things happen, it’s like a destruction of a belief system to some degree, and you kind of can be a little cold as a result.”
Even if Cap has grown “a little cold,” he still has the same old noble spirit and Steve Rogers has still been playing the hero while on the run – he’s just been doing it cloak and dagger style in order to avoid capture.
“I’ve dropped the shield essentially. I kind of went rogue a little bit. But again, I think it’s in his nature to be of service, and I think to some degree in order to maintain sanity, he had to kind of function within a system. That’s how his brain works, there has to be some kind of functioning factory that he can operate within.
And so he’s been running these missions, answering to nobody, really. I mean, it really is the sign of a broken person. But yeah, that’s the wear and tear.”
Of course, Steve will have to come out of the shadows to team up with his old friends in Infinity War, as the world needs all of its heroes united once more in order to stand a chance against Thanos. And, as the recent trailer showed us, it looks like Captain America might be the one man who can hold his own against the Mad Titan.
Just how he’s able to do so is unknown, but all will be revealed when Avengers: Infinity War blasts its way onto screens on April 27th.
