The original Winter Story arc flashbacks to Bucky and Cap adventures a little bit here and there. Does this film allow you to do that? Kind of go back into Bucky territory again, or was it all present day going forward?
Stan: I think it was important that the movie was going to stick to present day. I think we sort of arrived at that, and we wanted, you know…I think that’s what it called for, but there is a level of reminding everybody in terms of reinstating those things to sort of…so that you really do remember what that relationship was.
Right. Right. Obviously, you’re sporting a completely different book for this film. I mean, what was your initial reaction to it? How’s it been, kind of, wearing that new costume?
Stan: “Oh God. What will it look like?” [laughter] I was very open to it, you know? I was very…obviously I’ve never had long hair, I mean…but as an actor, the thing is that you got to get out of that comfortability level once in a while, and I was really excited to sort of not recognize a little bit myself when I looked in the mirror, and between the costume and sort of the overall look of The Winter Soldier, it was nice. Then all the credit really goes to Legacy and the costume team who’ve done, I think, a pretty incredible job in terms of just, you know, going from page to reality, which is obviously really hard to do sometimes with certain characters that look really cool when they’re drawn and then, how do you make them look that way in real life? So it was…I think there was no question that whatever was needed to make him as authentic as possible is where I was at with it.
Did they make the arm…does it hinder you at all when you were doing some the action stuff? I don’t know if they made it like…
Stan: No. Actually, I was always worried about that, but no. It actually kind of informed, in a way, a lot of character stuff for me, because I had enough time to sort of work with it. I think it sort of changed the way I was moving, and it was one of those things where you know, I sat and I thought, and thought, and thought about what it was going to be like on the day, but until you just sort of get into it completely, until it was just on and everything, then that discovery kind of came to light, and it was really neat because I felt like…it just was like the missing piece, and then I was really informed kind of where to go with it.
How challenging was the physical regimen to be able to train him the way he is now?
Stan: I mean, maybe I walked around the house a little bit with like, a plastic knife in my left hand all the time. There might’ve been some of that, but it’s all in terms of just…the thing for me was, you know, flexibility was kind of like the key factor I think that I was trying to be very mindful of, and obviously that there was so many pieces to the costume and everything. Being able to continue to move freely, and especially the way the team, you know, wanted to take the fighting style of this particular movie and the direction that they wanted to go, it was…yeah.
It was important to be flexible and in shape, at least just in terms of a confidence that you can step on set and be comfortable with what you’re doing and…but a lot of it also just has to…a lot of it is just kind of remembering what it was like when you were a kid and when you’re being able to imagine, and go off on it and be free with that, and so that was like, part of the fun with it. I mean, I don’t know how else to explain it. That tends to be a challenge in itself because, you know, you sometimes take things so seriously, and you want to sort of be in the best of this, in the best of shape, the best of that, but at the end of the day, you got to remember to have fun, and if you just kind of like allow yourself to do that, you kind of just somehow end up doing everything better.