By Rosie Knight, Columnist
There’s a reason that I’m lucky enough to write a column here at Random Lengths centering on all the incredible movies and TV shows made in San Pedro and that’s because our lovely town has been at the heart of many Hollywood productions over the years.
While productions in Los Angeles are still getting back to their pre-COVID / pre-strike levels, San Pedro has been the home to a number of recent shoots including hit series like Abbot Elementary, NCIS Origins, and a new unnamed Nic Cage period piece. It was while taking a walk around Fort MacArthur to see if I could spot South Bay legend Cage for this very column, that I really got familiar with the barracks, which ended up inspiring this column after I watched the newest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and immediately spotted the famed location.
It’s not the first time that San Pedro has hosted the world’s mightiest heroes, most recently and prominently in the third Ant-Man movie, Quantumania, where our very own 6th street in San Pedro was used to shoot the opening and closing sequences set in San Francisco. While those were comedic scenes starring Paul Rudd, quipping his way through the streets, Brave New World is more of a political thriller than a superhero film, centering on the failed assassination of the fictional president, which makes the use of Fort MacArthur even more fitting.
Standing in for Washington, VA, Fort MacArthur plays a vital role in the film acting as a secret military base that holds the dangerous and intelligent villain known as The Leader. Returning to his role in one of the first MCU movies The Incredible Hulk, character actor Tim Blake Nelson brings to life the numbers-obsessed supervillain who is trapped beneath our beloved Angel’s Gate Park. It’s Anthony Mackie’s hero Sam Wilson who is the beating heart of the story, aiming to save his good friend Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), the first Black man to take on the mantle of Captain America during the wartime efforts of America’s attempts to recreate the Super Soldier serum that brought Steve Rogers the original Captain America to life.
That secret Black history of Captain America was first revealed in the brilliant and heartbreaking comic, Truth: Red, White & Black by writer Robert Morales and artist Kyle Baker. Inspired by the brutal reality of the Tuskegee experiments, Truth asked us to think about the cost of scientific discovery and the harsh truths that are often behind American “success stories”.
In that way Captain America: Brave New World coming to San Pedro feels fitting, especially with Isaiah Bradley as a core part of the story, just like Captain America, San Pedro has a hidden history of brilliant Black people who are often written out of the story of our city. Something that our Managing Editor Terelle Jerricks has been uncovering with his fantastic series of stories on the Hidden History of Black San Pedro. So when you watch Disney’s latest blockbuster hit and spot San Pedro, let it inspire you to uncover our true history and all the often-forgotten people who played a part in building the city that we all love and live to this day.