When it comes to entertainment, there are often connections between seemingly unrelated projects that most fans might not expect. Sometimes, it’s a situation where actors appeared in projects together long before they would share the screen in a blockbuster, or a writer works on a television series inspired by a major IP only to end up working on that major IP in the future. But sometimes it’s a forgotten project that ends up having a huge impact, at least in the case of one Disney superhero flop that would end up helping bring one of the best MCU movies to life two decades later.
In 1991, Walt Disney Pictures released The Rocketeer. The film, which stars Billy Campbell, Alan Arkin, Jennifer Connelly, Timothy Dalton, Paul Sorvino, Terry O’Quinn, and Tiny Ron Taylor, didn’t exactly soar at the box office and that’s a shame. Based on Dave Steven’s comic, the movie followed the adventure of stunt pilot Cliff Secord, the rocket pack that he uses to fly without a need for a plane, and his superheroing that leads him to fighting Nazis who want the rocket pack for themselves. It’s a high flying (pun intended) adventure and a far better movie than the box office would indicate, but it also paved the way for Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011, thanks to director Joe Johnston.
While The Rocketeer disappointed at the box office, that doesn’t mean people didn’t notice Johnston’s work or the stylistic choices that went into The Rocketeer. When it came time to make Captain America, Marvel chose Johnston for the film in part because of his work on The Rocketeer. The two stories are, in a lot of respects, very similar. They are both set in roughly the same general timeframe, the World War 2 era — The Rocketeer is set in 1938 and while Captain America is set in the early 1940s — and the Nazis are threats in both stories. Both stories rely on scientific achievement as a plot point with the rocket pack for Cliff and the super soldier serum for Steve. The result are films with similar grounding that are both about good-hearted heroes, and they share a lot of visuals as well, creating a world set in the past that doesn’t feel like a period piece.
But if you look closer, the two films are even more alike. Cliff Secord and Steve Rogers are actually surprisingly similar men. They are both very much underdogs in their worlds who want to be more but are, at least initially, limited by their circumstances. Cliff is just a stunt pilot before he gets that jetpack. Steve is a sickly, scrawny guy who very badly wants to fight for his country before he gets the serum. Both men, when science and technology unexpectedly give them an advantage, both step up to do the right thing and fight the bad guys even though that fight puts them both in impossible circumstances.
Both Cliff and Steve also have love interests that are similar. The Rocketeer’s Jenny Blake is an aspiring actress with big dreams, but who also takes no crap and is key to figuring out who one of the Nazi spies is. Captain America’s Peggy Carter is, well, she definitely can take care of herself and ends up a hero in her own right. But even bigger than the character parallels and the setting, both films share a style. The Rocketeer and Captain America are both period-accurate in a lot of ways and details and as we mentioned, neither film feels like a period piece. The balance of camp and pulp with a serious story is perfect. One can argue that Captain America does it better, but honestly? That’s because Johnston was able to try it all out with The Rocketeer first. It’s really not that much of a stretch to say that we wouldn’t have Captain America: The First Avenger as it is, one of the best MCU movies, if there hadn’t been The Rocketeer.
While The Rocketeer was the blueprint, the sad truth is that even though years later people have discovered the film and realized just how great it actually is, The Rocketeer has never gotten the success it deserves. Disney has tried numerous times to turn The Rocketeer into a franchise — there were sequels planned for the 1991 film from the start that never got made because of the poor box office. In 2012, they attempted a reboot, with a remake project put into development that never moved forward. 2016 saw another project enter development, The Rocketeers, that would have taken place six years after the movie and would have been set in the Cold War. 2021 saw yet another project announced, The Return of the Rocketeer, a Disney+ movie that would have also taken the franchise in a different direction. None of those projects have ever made it off the ground. The only project to actually make it was a Disney Junior animated series that followed Cliff’s great-granddaughter. It lasted only one season.
And time might be running out, at least for Disney, to do something with The Rocketeer. The Rocketeer Trust is trying to get the rights back in June 2028, which marks 35 years since Disney licensed the property. However, The Rocketeer has been thriving on the pages of comics. IDW has been putting out some very well-received The Rocketeer stories that remind fans just how great the character is.
Did you realize the Captain America/The Rocketeer connection? Let us know in the comments.
