UFC welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre will appear as a famous cheese-eating supervillain in next year’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
French-Canadian welterweight Georges St. Pierre is a great real-life fighter but his accent, reminiscent of an unrefined Jean-Claude Van Damme, isn’t exactly the most Hollywood-friendly cadence ever. Nonetheless, he’s about to take on a role in what will presumably be one of the biggest summer blockbusters of 2014, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and it’s a role that’s actually just about perfect for him.
I’ve been out of the comics game for awhile so I struggled, before I dug into the Latino Review report, to think of who St. Pierre could play without seeming completely out of place. Bucky? Too old. Sgt. Rock? That’s DC. Charles de Gaulle? That might work, but I don’t think De Gaulle ever kicked anyone in the face, and why would you hire a guy like St. Pierre if face-kicking isn’t in the job description?
The answer, as it turns out (and I eventually gave up and looked, although it should have been obvious) is Batroc the Leaper, a French mercenary who specializes in savate, a form of kickboxing. Batroc doesn’t possess any superpowers but, rather like Batman, he’s in perfect physical condition, an expert in hand-to-hand combat and, as a former French Foreign Legionnaire, a skilled military tactician. He’s also had several run-ins over the years with Captain America, Spider-Man, The Punisher, Deadpool and many others.
Even so, he’s not entirely a bad guy, and has in fact joined with the hero types on occasion when his villainous employers got a little too dastardly for his liking. Best of all, Batroc, as a comic character, has a thick, stereotypically French accent, as typified by lines like, “Men wizout honair deserve no mercy!” I think that’s the sort of material that Georges will really knock out of the park. And I can’t wait to see the mustache! Or, as Batroc would say, “moustache.”
Captain America: The Winter Soldier takes place after the 2012 film The Avengers and follows Steve Rogers’ struggle to fit into the modern world. It is currently scheduled to come out in April 2014.
Source: Latino Review
Published: Mar 25, 2013 10:00 pm