1990 ‘Captain America’ Director Albert Pyun Made A Different Version Of The Film You Haven’t Seen
Director’s cuts of major motion pictures are nothing new, but they’ve received a special status in recent years. The reason why is not hard to figure out. Some audiences think an alternate cut will treat them to a better version of a film or the purest form a filmmaker intended.
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This line of thinking goes back to the Richard Donner cut of Superman II, and even earlier, but went into overdrive with the demands for the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League. That endeavor took on a life of its own and became a catalyst for similar pushes within comic book movie fandom.
There are calls for the completion of the Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad and the Schumacher Cut of Batman Forever. There’s also a campaign championing the restoration of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace to its original glory of two hours and 14 minutes. (Cannon Films cut it down to around 90 to get more showings, but that’s another story.)
DC films seem to dominate this milieu. However, on the Marvel side, there are cases of fabled “better” versions of movies that are truer to a director’s vision. Enter Captain America, the first adaptation of the comic from 1990 produced by Menahem Golan (one-half of the Cannon Group and a producer behind their nuclear Superman blunder).
Spider-Man slipped through his fingers, and Superman failed to take flight again, but Golan wasn’t ready to give up on comic book characters just yet. Having fallen out with his business partner Yoram Globus, he was on his own with limited credit, though that never stopped his ambitions before.
Cap was a property that could keep expectations realistic and Golan had a man eager to do the job and fulfill that criteria. Writer-director Albert Pyun proved himself on Cyborg and was then assigned to adapt something he was passionate about as a lifelong comic fan.
However, Pyun was on a different wavelength from the one Golan was on as he wanted to do justice to his representation played by Matt Salinger. The former had a political thriller in mind with elements of a love story about a man out of time.
That runs fairly parallel to how the hero was portrayed in print over the years, and most of those ideas are reflected in the final product with one exception. Pyun wanted a nonlinear structure in which Steve Rogers’s wartime origin and mission unfolded out of order piecemeal via flashbacks.
The film was supposed to start at the point where Steve, strapped to a rocket, averted disaster in Washington and saved the life of a boy who grew up to become President (Ronny Cox). From there, he would’ve jumped to Cap thawing out and the blanks would fill in through the course of tracking down The Red Skull (Scott Paulin).
Pyun’s desired tone was also more somber and lacked the backup of generic pop songs. Golan wasn’t happy with this and, believing he knew better, had Captain America recut into the chronologically ordered version we all know and vilify.
Albert Pyun died from a combination of multiple sclerosis and dementia in 2022. According to his widow, he carried around canisters to the end that contained his version of a movie he was proud of. Moreover, he hoped the world would see it one day – the way he meant for it to be seen.
Not many have, but a growing few gazed upon it in an unofficial work print that has been floating around for quite a few years. Naturally, those who watch this ‘Pyun Cut’ say it is superior to the theatrical slop Golan gave us.
That judgment is up to the eye of the beholder. “Better” and even ‘good’ are subjective terms. Designating Pyun’s Captain America either one might not say much about it compared to the alternative. Still, in fairness, its story deserves to be told like the myriad other subverted visions.
YouTuber Film Trap did a deep dive and comparison of both cuts you can watch below.
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