The Other Black Captain America

Couldn't have been made recently, anyway.

Batman, until the Dark Knight, wasn’t Batman. It was entertaining for sure, but it wasn’t worthy of the literature of comics. Today, I’m playing Comic Book Guy in defense of excellence.

Over at The Radicalist, my new favorite Substack, I was prompted to think about and summarize what I think of Anthony Mackie as Captain America. (I didn’t listen to the story, before I wrote this). And in the end, considering all that I watched in that other series with him in some dark East European caper with the Winter Soldier, I think he’s a Troubled American. What he possesses is an inexplicable complexity that is not really worthy of what I think Captain America ought to be. In many ways, Mackie’s Cap is incomplete and struggling, and that struggling messes with his heroic character. What he lacks in clarity and resolve he makes up for, from what I can see in the previews for the next film, more power.

If you are into Black Power, then more power is the answer, and if black people are messed up in the head, well they can occasionally do that hero thing and make up for it. Because America is stupid enough to need common sense correction, and the hero might as well be black, so Mackie’s Cap works, sorta, in that way. Right?

But every 12 year old knows that Mackie’s Captain America is not half as righteous and heroic as Chadwick Bozeman’s Black Panther. Even though Bozeman’s Panther is nowhere near as powerful as Mackie’s Cap, he’s twice the man. He has got resolve and clarity. He defends the honor of his native land. He’s a better hero.

Every hero has a weakness, a vulnerability. I think Mackie’s Cap’s vulnerability has to do with a lack of patriotism. I think this lack of patriotism is what we’re supposed to think about Mackie’s blackness in the context of representing America and carrying the vibranium shield. There’s a bit too much of The Boys cynicism in the idea behind this particular Captain America. Now think about it in the What If series. There was no such lack of patriotism, I mean bold, balls-out patriotism in the female Cap, Captain Carter. There was also in Gail Gadot’s Wonder Woman, no sense of betraying the ideals of her upbringing as Princess Diana of Themyscira.

We already know the knock-em dead balls to the wall partiots of the best of America. Obviously Steve Rogers did it with his clean cut persona and his nearly perfect integrity. But we also have seen black characters with that same kind of do or die patriotism in defense of freedom, justice and the American Way. The number one contender is, of course, Dennis Haysbert who both in the series 24 (with Keifer Sutherland) and The Unit, knocked it out of the park. But he’s obviously too old an actor to be anything but The President or the billionaire global industrialist. By the way, The Unit was created by David Mamet, who has been railing against SJWs and their corruption of the arts, from day one. The second contender ran into some personal problems but also knocked it out of the park. That’s Jonathan Majors, who killed it in Devotion. I think John David Washington would make a fairly good Cap, but he’s a very sharp individual and I’m not sure that Marvel can find the right writer to make it work.

This is why I started by talking about the Dark Knight. I think it would take somebody like Mamet or Christopher Nolan to write a proper black Captain America and cast the right actor for the role.

I liked Mackie best in Synchronic, which I think was an underrated film, which is also saying that his presence as an actor leaves something to be desired in the role of America’s greatest anything. His playing against type just doesn’t work for me. I think he does a great everyman but his charisma and swagger has to be understated in order to be the kind of hero we Americans like. He doesn’t come across like Michael B. (for Badass) Jordan in that regard, not that Jordan ever understates anything with subtlety. Compare him to the new sensation Aaron Pierre whose Rebel Ridge is a study in intelligently controlled nuclear fury. I kind of want to see Aaron Pierre as a villain. I kind of want to see Delroy Lindo as a criminal mastermind too. I’m fairly certain that if Will Smith doesn’t play a villain soon, his career will be over. So other than Majors and Washington, I think the only other black male actor I can think about who could make an absolutely killer Captain America would be LaKeith Stanfield.

We just need a writer and a director who actually respect American patriotism to remake a real American hero for the ages. Is it morning in America or what?

Oh by the way. Jeffrey Wright is perfect as The Watcher. And Sam Jackson is perfect as Nick Fury. Keith David was perfect as Spawn in the animated series. Those things don’t happen by accident.

You know, the guy who did Am I Racist thought I could be a good writer. Hmm..