Backgrounder on the reviewer: what I know about the Captain and the Avengers stems primarily from friends *coughNickcough* who are big Marvel fans. I’ve also seen some of the animated movies. Thus, what I know of Captain America can be summarized as “Steve Rogers is a good guy but is physically weak. He becomes the only product of a Super Soldier program developed to defeat the Nazis in World War II. However, in his last mission, he falls into the Arctic and remains frozen until he is discovered and defrosted in the present day. He also eventually gets it on with the Black Widow.” As such, there will be no comparisons to the comics whatsoever.
Yes, there was a typhoon yesterday but that didn’t stop my family and I from going to ATC to watch “Captain America: The First Avenger” on its first day of release. I had zero expectations coming in, as I hadn’t seen any promo material aside from the official trailer and the famous (or infamous?) “Captain America Fuck Yeah” parody. Well, maybe I had one expectation. I was expecting Chris Evans to fail as the Cap because he’s of the same type as Ryan Reynolds – I could not recall him ever portraying a character that was not a wise ass and/or douche. The verdict? It was really good! š My ranking of the summer comic book movies: X-Men First Class > Captain America > Green Lantern=Thor.
“The First Avenger” is an origin movie, detailing Captain America’s journey from skinny-but-goodhearted-guy Steve Rogers to OMG-AWESOME-SUPERHERO-but-goodhearted-guy Captain America. His path to hero-dom is not smooth: his mentor (creator?) is assassinated by HYDRA (the Nazi deep science division headed by the Red Skull) and he’s relegated to the role of mascot. It’s not until he disobeys orders and successfully rescues 400 POWs (including best friend James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes) that he shows everyone what he can do. He then leads his own elite team (the Howling Commandos) and destroys HYDRA base after HYDRA base. His ultimate test is stopping the Red Skull from dropping bombs on the world’s major cities.
I found the movie very exciting to watch – certainly more exciting than Thor or Green Lantern. It’s a fictionalized 1940s and the Cosmic Cube is involved, so we get superpowered energy weapons, high-tech submarines, Vita-Rays, the works! The cinematography was excellent – it set the wartime-yet-hopeful mood that Cap Am should have. The script was also pretty good – for the most part, it gave the non-comic book fans the needed information without resorting to talking heads. Tommy Lee Jones’ deadpan one-liners made me laugh.
(nope, no spoilers below :D) Continue reading “My date with the Captain”
