Captain America: The Winter Soldier Star Calls the Movie "Avengers 1.5"

In an interview promoting his new movie Pain & Gain, Captain America: The Winter Soldier star Anthony Mackie said that there are so many superheroes appearing in the film that it's less Captain America and more The Avengers. "First, I'll say that being a part of it is great. I think that Marvel has it down to a science and they've been very deliberate about what they want and what they don't want out in the world," Mackie told Moviefone. "And they're very focused on timelines as far as releases and stuff. This movie, Captain America, has kind of become Avengers 1.5; if you look at the cast they've put together, if you look at the number of characters that are in this movie. I mean, it's a huge number of superheroes and characters. The basic idea is that you have Captain America, Black Widow, and Falcon that get together to take down the Winter Soldier." If you think that sounds odd coming from somebody who works for Marvel, you'd be right--they took great pains to make sure everyone knew that Iron Man 3 was very much a story about Tony Stark and that The Avengers weren't to be used as a deus ex machina in every Marvel film from now on. Still, there are a couple of reasons the "Avengers 1.5" quote might not get Mackie in any trouble. First of all, being that he's still getting used to his time-tossed life, Captain America's only real "life" so far is S.H.I.E.L.D. Those are the only people he's had time to get to know, as far as we can tell, and all of the characters confirmed to appear in the movie so far are pretty closely associated with S.H.I.E.L.D. Even Iron Patriot, rumored to have an appearance in the movie but as-yet-unconfirmed, is working for the U.S. government in Iron Man 3, meaning that he'd have a logical placement in a S.H.I.E.L.D.-centric story. Second--Iron Man 3 simply has no particular need to piggyback on the success of The Avengers. It's a wildly successful film property in its own right. Captain America? Well, the film did well...but not like the other Marvel movies. Thor came in with lower expectations than Captain America: The First Avenger, but still outperformed Cap by about half a million dollars on its opening weekend and $5 million during its theatrical run. That's not much, obviously, in the scheme of things but given the fact that so many fewer fans knew about Thor going in, it resonates. Both of those movies made a bit less than $200 million domestically during their theatrical runs, which is more than $100 million less than either Iron Man film so far released (put another way--the first Cap made closer to Green Lantern-type money in its opening weekend than Iron Man money) and probably pretty close to what Iron Man will make in its opening weekend in a few days, if foreign box office is any indication.