They'd replaced the USSR flag with the Russian Federation flag, which I thought was a rather curious historical revision. I mean, obviously, the movie's ersatz 40s vibe is fictional, and, I imagine, most Americans don't dwell much on paltry issues like history, but the Russian Federation didn't fight the Nazis in WWII, and didn't exist in the 40s; but the USSR did both. The Russians lost something like >20 million of their people in WWII (and, I'm sure, much of the blame can be leveled at the feet of Stalin and the Bolsheviks, who were woefully unprepared for what the Germans hurled at them -- at least at first). But if it hadn't been for the Nazis invading Russia, and for the quagmire of the Eastern Front sapping the German war machine of lives and men -- in other words, if not for the sacrifice of those 20 million Russians--the Nazis might have won WWII.
So, to have the USSR's role in WWII excised like that, even in a fleeting credit, is a weird kind of thing. The Soviet Union was not a nice place, and did plenty of bad things--but they did fight in WWII, and they were instrumental in the defeat of the Axis. Omitting them is a curiously graceless thing on the part of the moviemakers. And why did they do this, exactly? Who were they worried about offending by showing the poster as it actually was, versus the doctored one? And as they were making the rounds of propaganda posters, were they realizing that doctoring a propaganda poster was, itself, a bow to propaganda? Or did the Hollywood blacklist so thoroughly sterilize and scour the movie industry that it couldn't even allow a teensy little hammer and sickle appear onscreen for two seconds?
I just find it curious, one of those glimpses behind the mask our society wears. A small thing, yes, but a revealing one, all the same. And, yes, the movie's a fictional tale about a superhero fighting a make-believe Nazi menace--but just the same, if they are wanting to trot out the propaganda posters of the era as a kind of tip of the hat to the era, don't doctor them for whatever weird ideological needs of the moment. As I said: over 20 million Russians died fighting in that war; give them their due, don't be so chickenshit (and, weirdly, Stalinist) to rewrite history...
You can see the doctored shot at 1:40.
