Captain America's past comes to the present in sequel

Brian Truitt | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Captain America: The romance soldier? | USA Entertainment Now Steve Rogers has had success with the ladies since bulking up to become Captain America. USA TODAY's Brian Truitt and USA Entertainment Now's Carly Mallenbaum analyze the superhero's complicated love life.

%27Captain America%3A The Winter Soldier%27 opens in theaters April 4%2C 2014

Chris Evans stars in the sequel along with Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson

The superhero has to adjust to today%27s world%2C politics and allies

Star-spangled supersoldier Steve Rogers fought the good fight in World War II in the movie Captain America: The First Avenger, and is getting a full taste of modern-day politics and agendas in the sequel.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in theaters April 4, 2014, catches up with Cap (Chris Evans) after he saves New York City in The Avengers and throws the Marvel Comics hero — clad in a spiffy new outfit — into the super-spy intrigue of S.H.I.E.L.D. with old friends Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson).

The first trailer for the sequel is online at iTunes Thursday at noon ET/9 a.m. PT.

Directors Anthony and Joe Russo are aiming for a 1970s thriller vibe akin to Three Days of the Condor, but they're not skimping on big, superhero sequences — Cap brawls in the tight confines of an elevator full of bad guys, for example, and a massive S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier takes a spectacular nosedive.

"There's nobody better at that kind of stuff than Marvel if you're going to attempt to pull that off and go for it," Joe Russo says. "We all tried to up the ante with what happens in this movie in terms of what's come before, and I think we've done that."

Robert Redford joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Alexander Pierce, Fury's S.H.I.E.L.D. boss in the World Security Council; Anthony Mackie co-stars as the high-flying Falcon; Emily VanCamp (Revenge) makes her debut as S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Agent 13; and Sebastian Stan, who played Cap's pal Bucky Barnes in The First Avenger, has a key role as the shadowy Winter Soldier.

"He's an amazingly drawn character. He's so well conceived," says Anthony Russo of the Winter Soldier, who first appeared in Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting's Captain America comic book in the 2000s.

"It's one of the best comic runs in the last 20 years, one of our favorite comic runs of all time, and we really want to do it justice. It was important to us to make sure he just jumped off the page to the screen."

In addition to dealing with his past, Rogers also is faced with very different politics than he's used to as he adjusts to today's world after spending nearly 70 years frozen in ice.

"Some of the people who used to be our enemies are now our allies," Jackson says. The new movie is Captain America "trying to figure out, 'Well, how do we trust those guys?' or 'How do we trust the guys that you didn't trust who don't trust you?' And explaining to him that the black and white of good guys/bad guys has now turned into this gray area."