Lady Jessica and I were toying with the idea of going to see The Avengers over the weekend, but it dawned on me that we hadn’t yet seen Captain America: The First Avenger. So I went to redbox.com and reserved the Blu-ray at a local kiosk. I’ll certainly explain in more detail below, but in short I found it to be one of the most disappointing of the recent Marvel superhero movies.
Let me first say that I am by no means an expert on comic books, particularly Marvel comic books. I read comic books as a kid and collected a lot of Superman comics during the whole death-and-life of Superman period in the early 90′s. They’re still sealed in plastic in a rusty file cabinet in my garage. I’m mostly approaching this as a fan of movies who likes the idea of comic book superheroes. It’s been amazing to watch Marvel weave their movies together in the last few years building up to the release of The Avengers. I’m not sure such a thing has happened before in movie history.
Captain America tells the story of Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a short, weak, asthmatic who desperately wants to join the U.S. army during WWII (problem number one for libertarians), but due to his health problems and lack strength is turned down four times. During his final attempt to enlist he’s noticed by a German scientist named Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci), who gets Rogers cleared to enlist and brings him into a secret scientific unit where he’s trying to create a super soldier. Rogers shows his character when he leaps onto a dummy grenade during basic training tossed by Colonel Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones), who is skeptical of Erskine’s assessment that Rogers is the right man for the job.
I don’t recall us getting a good explanation for why Erskine defected to the U.S., though it’s clear that he dislikes the evil Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving). Schmidt, also known as Red Skull, was horribly deformed when he insisted on taking an early version of Erskine’s super soldier serum. Erskine tells Rogers that it enhances the characteristics of the person taking it. If you’re good, you become great, but if you’re bad, you become much, much worse. Rogers is chosen by Erskine because as a weak man he will know the value of true power. Meanwhile Schmidt has discovered a super weapon that allows his organization, Hydra, to take on the world.
Though Rogers is successfully transformed into a super soldier, Colonel Phillips is unwilling to put him to work on the battlefield, so a U.S. Senator enlists him to go on tour selling war bonds. In a meta turn of events he even stars in a line of comic books and movies. Eventually he takes part in a USO tour to the troops in the field. That sets off a turn of events that gets him into the fight and ultimately in a battle to take down Hydra.
Now onto the items of interest to libertarians. To Steve’s credit, he doesn’t want to run off to war for reasons of blood and glory. When asked by Erskine if he wants to kills Nazis, Rogers says he doesn’t want to kill anyone, he just doesn’t like bullies. He also is very loyal to other members of the U.S. army, and feels like he can’t stay behind in the States while other young Americans are laying down their lives. So Rogers at least has noble motivations for joining the war. The problem is he’s clearly the victim of a lot of propaganda, as are the viewers of this film. Captain America is yet another movie that unquestioningly portrays America as the “good guys” and its enemies as the “bad guys.” In truth, no war is that black and white, and we dangerously deceive ourselves to believe so. Not only is Rogers the victim of war propaganda, he participates in spreading it by allowing himself to become the symbol for the U.S. war effort in his war bonds tours and comic book and movie appearances. I’d like to credit the filmmakers for exposing that aspect of America’s involvement in WWII, but I don’t think we were intended to recognize it as the bad thing it was.
It’s also hard for me as a libertarian to get behind a hero who is literally covered in red, white, and blue. I mean, his name is “Captain America.” Even at the best of times he’s like a walking billboard of nationalist propaganda.
For all of the faults this movie has, acting quality is not one of them. How could it be with the likes of Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci, and Hugo Weaving? All amazing actors. Chris Evans also acquits himself well in the titular roll. It’s very interesting that he got the part given that he played The Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movies, but he did a great job. I haven’t said anything at all so far about Hayley Atwell‘s character because, well, there doesn’t seem to be much point to her being in the movie other than keeping it from being what most WWII movies are: populated exclusively by men. Maybe her character is significant in the comic books, but she seemed tacked on in the movie.
Given that Joe Johnston also directed The Rocketeer, a movie I love, I was expecting great things from this movie. It certainly has lots of exciting action, and they did a good job of giving it a 1940′s look and digitally turning Chris Evans into a 90-pound weakling at the beginning of the movie, but it really suffers in the departments of pacing and story. For a movie that is nearly two hours long, it seemed to go by very quickly and not in a good way. Understandably it spends a good deal of time setting up the characters, but then there’s a quick middle portion that shows Captain America leading his squad of U.S. soldiers against the forces of Hydra before a final conflict takes us out of WWII. The problem is this middle portion seems really rushed. I guess maybe the only way to do it justice would have been to make two or three movies and slowly tell the story that way with a final Return of the Jedi style showdown between Rogers and Schmidt.
Then there’s the story. I’m usually the first to come to the defense of silly plot points in a super hero movie, and this is where the comic book fans will hate me, with the excuse that it’s “just a comic book movie,” but the plot of this movie seemed really goofy. I like that they tied this movie in with Thor by having Schmidt find and exploit Odin’s “magic” cube, but Nazi’s with laser guns just seemed a little over the top. It’s possible the fault lies with me, not the filmmakers, but I was unable to suspend my disbelief, probably because they were messing so much with real U.S. history. For some reason I can suspend disbelief with Iron Man because his story takes place in the present. Maybe a modern day billionaire really could build a super suit. Sure, I’ll buy that. But for whatever reason this movie makes me feel like I’m watching the history of an alternate reality. They even seemed to imply that Captain America’s take-down of Schmidt at the end of the movie ushered in V-E Day. I also think on some level I was hoping for a realistic, gritty, Battleground-style gloomy WWII movie. I think an opportunity was missed here.
Finally, the ending makes no sense. Captain America and Schmidt have a big fight inside a Hydra super bomber en route to New York City. For reasons that aren’t adequately explained on-screen, Captain America is unwilling to try to land the plane, and instead decides he has to ditch it in the ocean. They could have thrown in two lines of dialog stating the plane had been unalterably locked in on its course, but I don’t recall us getting that. We then cut to modern day New York City where Rogers wakes up after having presumably been frozen in the Arctic ice for seventy years, but this too isn’t adequately explained on screen. Not even a throw-away line about how the cold temperatures mixed with the unique bio-chemical structure of his super solder serum-infused body to allow him to survive ageless in the ice. Nope. As one of my friends on Twitter put it, it really seemed like they just made this movie to get us to The Avengers.
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