Avengers: Endgame Test Audiences Led to a Change in Captain America Fight Scene

Fans of Captain America(Chris Evans) were pretty excited to see two versions of the character [...]

By Adam Barnhardt

Fans of Captain America(Chris Evans) were pretty excited to see two versions of the character on-screen at the same time. Despite amazing time-traveling tech, two versions of the Steve Rogers ended up meeting one another and what resulted was a pretty confusing fight that ended up being changed before the final cut was shipped to theaters. Originally, it was intended for both versions of the character to be unmasked in the fight in Stark Tower during the events of The Avengers.

However, those in test screenings of the movie quickly lost track of which Cap was which so the Avengers: Endgame visual effects team had to call an audible. As announced at D23 Expo earlier today, the previous timeline version of Cap wore a cowl that was completely added in digitally in post-production.

Earlier this year, we spoke with Lola VFX's Trent Claus, the visual effects supervisor for overseeing the team responsible for the digital addition. Along with the cowl adjustment, Lola is Marvel Studios' go-to team when they need a character de-aged (or aged), but that's a story for another time. Here's what Claus had to say about the Captain America fight in particular:

"Depending on the shot, and it really varied by shot, sometimes Chris would play the Cap that's most visible to the camera, and the opposite would be played by a stunt double, sometimes Chris would play both Caps," Claus recounts. "We would shoot it twice, once with him in one role and once in the other role, so obviously, in each case then, he's playing opposite a stunt double, and then when it comes to the final comps, what you see on screen, it's always Chris's face."

"Both Caps, whether it be Chris Evans at the time or a stunt double, are wearing Captain America suits," he continued said. "Then neither one of them were wearing a helmet or a cowl at the time. After the fact, in the edit, the filmmakers decided in order to make it easier to tell which one is which, we would add a CG helmet onto the 2012 version, so in the final film you see the 2012 version wearing a helmet, and that was completely added digitally after the fact."

Avengers: Endgame is now available wherever movies are sold.

Upcoming Marvel Studios projects include Black Widow on May 1, 2020, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier in Fall of 2020, The Eternals on November 6, 2020, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings on February 12, 2021, WandaVision in Spring 2021, Loki in Spring 2021, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness on May 7, 2021, What If…? In Summer 2021, Hawkeye in Fall 2021, and Thor: Love and Thunder on November 5, 2021.

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