British comic book characters have never fared I feel well when reimagined by Hollywood, John Constantine, V and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen all spring to mind as “great Britons,” shamefully redone as pale cinema shadows of what made them great in the first place.
The film treatment of these comics worries me whenever I think about there ever being a Captain Britain movie and I shiver at the thought of a comic with an amazing history being made and cast on the cheap to make a quick buck.
However when David Keeler on Facebook asked me if I knew any Captain Britain movie news I gritted my teeth and started to do some internet investigation, I quickly discovered that apart from a lot of opinion pieces there is no firm news that any Captain Britain film is being made.
So if there is no news I thought why not make some up, so I’m going to write, cast and do everything else movie wise to come up with what I think will be the perfect Captain Britain movie.
So the most important question is who would I cast as Captain Britain ?
Well this was an easy choice, I feel Benedict Cumberbatch would shine in the role as he is an actor who excels in what ever role he undertakes making him perfect to star as Captain Britain and his alter ego Brian Braddock.
As to what Mr Cumberbatch would wear from Captain Britain’s many costumes I feel the simple yet effective design from his MI-13 adventures would work best.
Sadly when it comes to the female lead I don’t think there is room for Captain Britain’s wife Meggan in the movie as another superhero who isn’t a villain will take the spotlight away from Cap. Because of this I’m choosing business woman, banker and Brian Braddock’s occasional girlfriend Courtney Ross as my choice for the film’s love interest/main female lead.
As for who could fill such big shoes I’m going to choose Sophie Myles former Dr Who star and all round talented actress whose impressive TV and film CV make her a natural for the role.
As to who Captain Britain will be pitted against because I’m ” making,” this film and money is no object I’m going to have three villains torment, fight and generally annoy our hero. The first villain the film needs is Joshua Stragg or The Reaver as he is known, Stragg is needed simply because he is the baddie responsible for the chain of events that caused Brian Braddock to become Captain Britain and I like super hero movies to open with the hero’s origin.
Stragg will be found to be a pawn of the second villain mad M.P. Jim Jaspers, whose plans to rid Britain of super heroes will involve the third villain ( if you can call them that, ) the ultimate fighting machine known only as the Fury.
I fancy casting Ewan McGregor as Stragg, Sylvester McCoy as Jaspers and CGI for the Fury, all should work well, sorry but there is no room for pictures here as this post is getting a bit image heavy !
Plot wise it should be obvious from my choice of villains I want to make the fabulous Captain Britain story, ” Jaspers’ Warp, ” but perhaps with less heroes than in the original story and Cap’s origin thrown in. Why ” Jaspers’ Warp , ” well simply because it has every single element a super hero film needs: it contains comedy, tragedy, pathos and everything in between, also as it was written by talented UK scribe Alan Moore we know the characterization for Captain Britain will be spot on.
So there we go my version of the Captain Britain movie, let me know what your think in the comments and if Hollywood comes calling I’m happy to pitch in a consulting role.
Help support the Captain Britain blog.
I hope you are enjoying the Captain Britain blog if you are and want to support this site then you can do one of the following.
1) Click on my Facebook page and like it.
2) All post are tweeted by me @skaggypoet and a retweet is always welcome.
3) Send any of your friends who like Captain Britain my way.
Thanks to @Arbitrarygenius, @MothTwiceborn, @symatt,@copperbird and @Welshtroll for retweets, support and ideas.
To keep up with all the posts on this blog you can follow The Captain Britain Blog on Facebook, or on Pinterest, or subscribe to this blog by entering your email in the link top right
The Captain Britain fans' page and blog. 
Greetings from one Marvel UK blogger to another. It’s always great to see somebody else spreading a bit of love for Brian Braddock online. He doesn’t get the coverage that he deserves in my opinion. But then I do have a clear Bias in that fashion.
In terms of a Captain Britain movie? I’d love to see it. Heck I’d love to see a trilogy doing the character justice.
But I think the problem for me is that any Captain Britain movie I’d want to see would need to at least in the first instance to focus on the Braddock family. Not necessarily Brian’s father (although flashbacks of him and Brian’s mother could be helpful to the narrative) but I’d want all three Braddock siblings in play.
Brian, Betsy and Jamie.
And therein lies the problem.
Because any Captain Britain movie would be made by Marvel Studios. By Psylocke? She appeared in X-Men: The Last Stand. A movie made by 20th Century Fox.
I guess this is what has come of Marvel selling their movie rights out to other studios to make those earlier modern day Marvel movies. They’ve recently got back Daredevil through lapsed time, but as long as other studios want to use the properties they acquired they can.
We start getting to a point where we start asking which is a Marvel Universe property and which is an X-Men property? Who gets to use whom? Is Captain Britain an X-Men property via Excalibur? I’d really hope not, to be honest. But then I never really liked Excalibur being thought of as an ‘X-Book’. He was a ‘Marvel Universe’ property first and foremost, and he should never be retconned into being a Mutant.
I understand that a different actor will be appearing as Quicksilver in both X-Men: Days of Future Past and also Avengers 2. So far no legal action has stopped this. So it *might* not prove impossible for Betsy Braddock to appear next to her brother on screen. But it might yet prove tricky.
As for casting Captain Britain? Boy is that a tricky one. We’re talking about a character, after all, who every person in Britain believes has *their* accent! 🙂
I’ve heard others suggest Benedict Cumberbatch before. I’m not quite so sold. He makes a great Sherlock, but I’d prefer that an on screen Braddock be portrayed as a little less stereotypically upper class. 🙂 Sure, that was the world Brian was born into, but he was never truly of that Public School mentality. He was the Braddock sibling who did his own thing. I’d argue you could think of him as the Liberal in a family of staunch Conservatives. An idealist. Often to a fault.
I’d be tempted to aim for a complete unknown, but certainly if we were going to aim for somebody very ‘British’ I’d still want somebody who would be believable as a ‘Captain’ in an armed forces sense. One name I’ve heard mentioned before is Jamie Bamber, who played Apollo in Battlestar Galactica. That might work.
Others have suggested Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. Maybe a little bit of a push. But he *does* practically look like he was drawn by Alan Davis. 🙂
I dunno. I certainly think that Captain Britain is a worthy movie property though. Or TV property. Myticism, Sword and Sorcery paired with Logic, Sci-Fi and Alternate Universes. How can that NOT work.
We can live in hope. 🙂
LikeLike
Pingback: The Captain Britain blog celebrates its 50th post with some fun facts. | The Captain Britain Blog.
Awesome casting. Loving the blog.
I tried to photoshop benedict as Captain Britain. Here it is
LikeLike
Nice work
LikeLike
I think Rupert penury jones could play a good Captain Britain and I always had jasper played by Andrew Scott.
I thought Ben whishaw would play Jamie Braddock but then there would be a big age gap.
Are you going to cast a TV series or a Pete Wisdom or MI13 movie?
LikeLike
Haven’t any plans to do any more casting I need to sort out what I’m going to do with this blog first
LikeLike
Pingback: The Captain Britain blog celebrates its 100th post | The Captain Britain Blog.