This Is How They Made Madripoor In Falcon And The Winter Soldier
Although the first season of "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" is officially over, Marvel fans still can't stop talking about the series, starring Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson and Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes. The six episode season focuses on the two characters and their life after the Blip, when all the people who Thanos gets rid of with the Snap come back. In an expansive storyline, "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" also takes on topics of immigration and race in the series, with Sam contemplating what it would mean to be the first Black Captain America while fighting a group of misguided revolutionaries called the "Flag Smashers." At the same time, Bucky tries to come to terms with his actions as the Winter Soldier and develop his own identity as Bucky.
As the two superheroes work together to stop Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman) and the Flag Smashers, even bringing in Baron Zemo (Daniel Brühl), they travel to interesting new places. This includes Madripoor, a fictional island in Southeast Asia that is basically a lawless paradise for criminals. There they find Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp), living in exile after helping Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), Sam, and Bucky during "Captain America: Civil War." It's safe to say that a lot of interesting events happen in Madripoor, and Marvel fans hope to visit the location again in the future.
In the new documentary series on Disney+, "Marvel Studios ASSEMBLED," Marvel reveals exactly how Madripoor was designed and brought together for "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier."
Madripoor is inspired by locations around the world
In reality, Madripoor was constructed in a couple of back alleys in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, where most of the series was filmed. But Raymond Chan, the show's production designer, took inspiration from various places he's visited around the world and put it all together, constructing an innovative, new world for these familiar characters. In the documentary series, Chan explains that they chose the back alleys as the filming location to get a "more gritty ... claustrophobic" feeling for the "lawless society" that is Madripoor. But the research didn't stop there, as Chan had to design a whole city on top of the location.
After a few months, the team found a small street in Hanoi, Vietnam, "where the owners would step out of their back doors, and there was this rail track running literally two feet away from their back door." Chan brought this detail into Madripoor, along with the design of a bridge in Mozambique — likely the Maputo–Katembe bridge that crosses over the Mbuluzi River — which Sam, Bucky, and Zemo can be seen crossing in the series (Club of Mozambique). Clearly Chan knows what he's doing, as he and the rest of the production team on "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" successfully brought Madripoor to life, creating a stunning, believable depiction of the fictional island where criminals run wild.