Matt Salinger starred as Captain America in Albert Pyun’s 1990 film – and the original cut of the movie has been discovered.
As much as Captain America movies now are known for whizzy special effects, for (thus far) Chris Evans wanging a shield around, and for nine figure budgets, there was a time when that absolutely wasn’t the case.
Go back to 1990, and you get Albert Pyun’s take on Captain America, a low budget affair that had its already sparse budget slashed in the weeks up to filming. Matt Salinger took on the title role, and you’ll find Ned Beatty and Ronnie Cox in the ensemble too. The film reportedly cost just $3m to make, which wouldn’t cover the cost of Chris Evans’ knitwear in the first Knives Out film.
While not on the scale of the Justice League Snyder Cut, there was a director’s cut of the movie that Pyun assembled before his death in 2022. But now, with a tip of the hat to Film Buff Online where I spotted the story, one Albert Pyun fan says he’s got hold of the director’s original cut of Captain America.
Justin Decloux is the author of Radioactive Dreams: The Cinema Of Albert Pyun, and on his Letterboxd account here, he’s revealed he’s got hold of Pyun’s original cut of the film. This is a version that the director reportedly guarded, locked away in five 35mm film cans, and one that he never got to see reach the public.
It’s still got some way to go there, but Decloux reports this original cut is a radical altering of the much-maligned original movie. He goes into detail here about what’s different, writing…
I’m not saying this version is going to change everyone’s mind about the movie because, if anything, it double down on a lot of stuff people disliked, and it’s still got all the same problems of the original: A lack of action, “silly” costumes, and some definite “decisions” – but goddamit, in his original cut you can see a genuine authorial intent guiding an impossible production, to the point that out of all of Albert’s films, it may be the most emotionally coherent
In terms of where things go from here, it’s less clear. Issuing the new cut is likely to be a hell of a legal minefield, and Decloux is inviting anyone who can help ‘untangle the complicated legal mess’ to get in touch.
The original cut of 1990’s Captain America is out there, if you’ve not had the pleasure of a Marvel film that cost less than $10m to make.
