Emails #24: The Black Wall

Steve Rogers sees a group of vets kneeling at a wall. He goes to talk to them. It is the Vietnam War Memorial- a black wall listing the fallen from that war.

BEN: I like that. He should probably walk through the cemetery of foreign wars first, the familiar, then to the unfamiliar.

RICK: Or... From older to present day to tie them together by association.

Steve Rogers is sitting at a bar knocking back shots of Kentucky Bourbon. A group a tough looking bikers come in. "That your bike out front?!"

Cap fights with bikers. Cap befriends bikers who turn out to be vets from wars he knows nothing about. It is battle which binds them. Each in turn feels betrayed and let down by their country, the people. Caps understands this... I think this kind of scene is kind of cliche, but I totally like the idea behind it.

I like where you're going with this. The whole black suit thing doesn't have to be central, but another item on the stack of things that are making Cap uncomfortable.

The Red Skull wants to humiliate Cap and tarnish his symbolic value so much that he is worthless. Cap wouldn't go on repeated "black" missions. He stands for principle in all things and at all times. That is why I said the black costume was single use. After being awakened, Cap must be disillusioned as well as discredited. The biker bar thing is just to get him out on the road. How else will we get Cap thrown in jail with the Aryan Nation? "Word from the top, let him live. That doesn't mean we can't give him a tattoo to remind him of where he's been and who beat 'em..." Cap gets a large swastika tattoo on his stomach and a giant eagle carrying lightning bolts on his back. These will heal but Cap and the audience doesn't know that yet.

Ha! I totally forgot about the prison thing :) Interesting about the tats. I think we can do something that works, but is a little more fresh than the biker bar. I like it, but the location is so expected.

I believe the reason why I was thinking he'd be planted in prison is because it takes so long to be tried and convicted and then, couldn't he bend the bars whenever he wanted?

OH. I see. Of course he can, but he's a law abiding citizen and this is his low point. I'd have to wonder if something has to happen inside the bar or bar-like scenario where he gets caught up in some major crime. Maybe he's the fall guy or a woman gets killed and he really doesn't know if he killed her or not (and his emotional state allows him bow to the system.) I mean, he could be running with a gang of Vets who wants to take down a Neo Nazi gang. Red Skull pulls strings and gets a lawyer who preys on Cap. She comes in pretending a friend sent her and acts on Steve's fears (like he doesn't want his name published) and "fixes" everything. Then, she of course pulls a switcheroo. A plea bargain is approved and Steve will only serve X years in exchange for information. Information he doesn't have, but the "friend" provides through the lawyer. (The lawyer may flip later out of respect for Steve and/or fear of Red Skull. That might be his way out of prison.)

Red Skull will manipulate Cap at every turn. He wants to humiliate him. The biker bar is just a throw out there idea.

We don't have to show the whole manipulation, just enough so that it makes sense later on in the narrative.

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.
-Thomas Paine

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.
-Franklin D. Roosevelt