Captain America: The Winter Soldier - Five Things We Learned This Week

With the start of production kicking off this week on Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Iron Man 3 coming in less than a month, it's been a pretty active week for reports coming out of Marvel's next pair of sequels. What were the big takeaways about Captain America: The Winter Soldier this week? Read on... We have an idea how the movie will look When the Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase One box set was released, a number of pieces of concept art came with it, giving fans an official first look at the new Cap universe. You can see those images, which include the Winter Soldier and Falcon, scattered throughout the article. The press release that announced the launch of the film's production also came equipped with the image at top, which shows Steve Rogers at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. And later in the week, the first unofficial look at the movie came out, as a piece of purported concept art turned up on the Internet.

Robert Redford is Alexander Pierce Robert Redford will star in the film as S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Alexander Pierce, according to the press release Disney released to announce the start of the film's production. The character in the comics served in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Accounting Department before becoming a "sleeper Agent" of S.H.I.E.L.D. as an expert in decoding Class A dispatches from the subversive organization HYDRA.

Pierce functioned as a contact between Nick Fury and Tony Stark and later as an aide and bodyguard to Fury. It seems likely they'll alter that history somewhat, and that if it resembles his comic book timeline at all it will be that he worked with Howard Stark, not Tony, and with Fury's predecessor (although he might BE Fury's predecessor, since the actor has referred to himself as the head of S.H.I.E.L.D.).

Sharon Carter is Agent 13

This probably isn't a surprise, but Sharon Carter won't be just the love interest, which is how all the early casting reports kept referring to the character. EmilyVanCamp's character is referred to as Agent 13 in the press release, suggesting that the studio may try to keep her identity quiet for the first part of the film. Whether Captain America will know by the time he starts into a relationship with her, that she's related to his will-the-or-won't-they girl from The First Avenger isn't yet clear, but we should find out how that all plays out since Hayley Atwell is confirmed as returning to reprise her role as Peggy Carter (likely in flashback).

Georges St-Pierre is Batroc the Leaper In what he's described as a small role, UFC fighter Georges St-Pierre will appear in the film as Georges Batroc, better known as Batroc the Leaper. Of course, Guy Pearce referred to his role as Aldrich Killian as "little more than a cameo" in the early production phases of Iron Man 3, and reports from the set, interviews, trailers and the junior novelization have all suggested that's misleading at best. There won't be a lot of flashbacks

In spite of the fact that Hayley Atwell is back, and most are assuming that's for a flashback sequence--and the fact that characters like Bucky Barnes and Arnim Zola would seem to lend themselves to it--the filmmakers told Collider this week that they're avoiding going down that road. "We were heading down a particular road that had a few more generous flashbacks, and we didn't go quite down that road," co-writer Stephen McFeely said. "Frankly, [Marvel Studios President] Kevin Feige came in and said like two words and we went "Oh, those are two really good words. Let's go that way." I mean I'm very pleased with where we've ended up." What does that mean for a movie in which so many characters have ties back to World War II? It's difficult to say, although the plot device of those files Cap was given on his men in a deleted scene from Marvel's The Avengers could provide an out.