“Captain America” opens with a crew of parka-clad S.H.I.E.L.D. agents investigating the wreckage of the plane Cap went down in circa 1944. Long submerged beneath Arctic ice, it finally emerged thanks to glacial shifting. The scene is like John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” but what these explorers find in the ice is a lot friendlier than an alien parasite.
The scene inside the frozen-over plane is barely a minute long and was filmed inside a studio, not the actual Arctic (if you want an idea of how arduous that could’ve been, look at the Norway shoot for “The Empire Strikes Back”). Still, the “Captain America” commentators recall it being a pain in the neck (well, ankle) to film due to how tight and complex the set was. For instance, when the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents cut a hole in the buried plane’s hull, it creates a beam of light as two men rappel down into the ship. Johnson says the lighting team “had almost no room” despite Johnston’s specific instructions.
“It was tricky to move around in here because it was on so many levels and catwalks and everything. I think there were only three or four broken ankles,” Johnston recalled. Ford adds that only three and four was “actually a pretty good number.”
Evergreen advice: always remember to look where you’re walking in the snow.
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