“The Air Force had a specialty group,” reveals Mackie. “Like the Navy SEALs. But instead of giving them the ability to quietly go in and manoeuvre through hazardous territories, they gave them the ability to fly…” he smiles. “It’s a lot of me on wires screaming and them saying ‘Action’ and me flying around. …I’m deathly afraid of heights, they always say, ‘Oh, we’re just gonna take you this high.’ Then they take me and swing me.”
“When we were in Cleveland, the Russos called me and said, ‘Alright, we’re gonna put you up on a bridge and we want you to jump down. You see you’re about to hit a car, so we want you to stop before you hit the car.’ I’m like, ‘Well, the cable guy is supposed to stop me, because these aren’t real wings.’ They’re like, ‘No, no, no. Just hit the ground and go to the car.’ So they pull me up and they let me go. In midair I realized, ‘I’ve never flown before. So I have no idea how to stop.’ I see the concrete coming towards me, and I realize the rope is gonna catch and I’m gonna swing head first into this car. So I put my feet down and I roll into this cab, hard, and everybody runs over to me and says, ‘Are you okay?’ I’m like, ‘I think I know how to land. Let’s do it again.’”
“It’s 10 times tougher performing with wings,” admits the actor. “I’m like, ‘Wait, I’m the only dude that’s on strings? Everybody else gets to walk around or drive cars and I gotta fly?’ When we had our first conversation about the movie, my biggest statement to the Russos was, ‘You better not make me look like an idiot.’ That was my greatest fear. Even though I wanted to wear red spandex, I was hugely afraid of looking like a pigeon! As the Falcon aged [in the comics] and grew up, his uniform grew up,” continued Mackie. “The uniform we have now is the uniform of an adult… The Ultimate look gives him a sense of purpose and makes him look like a badass. The wings can look funny at times, so you have to do something to combat that – at no point in time do you want him to show up on film and have people laugh. That’s what we’ve been able to find, between the tactical suit and the Ultimate suit. As the franchise goes on and you see more of me and Captain America, the suit will evolve into the Ultimate look, the hard-leather black look. The suit that he has in this movie is more of a military suit because it’s the first time you see it.”