Art of the Title - Captain America - The First Avenger

The opening title sequence shows lots of propaganda from WW2, and it sets the tone for the film as being an American friendly film. It shows the film is going to be biased on the USA side of the war with images of the classic Uncle Sam of USA and iconic flying eagles. Within the opening sequence there are no actual pieces of video footage. There is a lot of 2D and 3D motion tracking of the classic American war posters. The opening title credits are also motion tracked to move with the different images. The background soundtrack is a very patriotic American sounding track which is provided by a very dramatic and cinematic orchestra. Within the opening sequence there are a lot of images including guns, airplanes and American flags, all of these are the Mise-en-scene which make us feel a certain way about what we are watching. We found out that the director of this film Joe Johnston got the original idea to do the title sequence in this certain way from one of his previous films 'The Rocketeer'. This was becuase it had an 'art deco' feel to the film and he wanted to to mix that with the WW2 theme of Captain America, this was the starting point to producing the opening sequence used in the film.

Overall this opening sequence is a very bold and set's out to tell the story of WW2 within its two and a half minute running time by showing how strong USA was within the war.

Shown to the left are four of the WW2 propaganda posters used within this opening sequence, they are all well known and are iconic to look at, which is why Joe Johnston chose to use them.

Click here to watch the full opening sequence