Review of Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) by Matthew O — 09 May 2016

(SPOILERS AHEAD).

Out of all the superheroes in the Avengers ensemble, Captain America always seemed the least interesting to me. I used to judge superheroes based on their powers. Hulk was a huge, green monster with brute strength, Thor was a God that controls lightning and carries an awesome hammer, Iron Man has a wicked cool suit of armor with all sorts of cool gadgets, Captain America... uh... he has his shield. When I compared him to the other Avengers, there really isn't a whole lot to him. So I wasn't really interested to see his own movie, especially when I heard people saying it's just an okay movie. But, after watching THE AVENGERS, I became intrigued with his character and wanted to learn more about him.

Considering the origin that the movie was focusing on, I was pretty impressed. Because I didn't really read anything about Captain America, just the basics of his character, I never knew what to expect in this movie, what was going to happen. For what this movie is, I thought it was really good. It doesn't really feel like your typical comic book movie, mainly because it was set in the 1940s when America started to become involved in World War II. I really liked how they followed the story of Steve Rogers (Captain America) as this really frail and wimpy soldier who just wants to fight for his country, which perfectly explains why he's called Captain America. Although, his frail appearance looked kind of weird to me. I thought he was a little too skinny that made him look like he had polio or something, and it also made his head look ginormous by comparison. I really liked how they portrayed this particular part of his story, how he was going to become Captain America. Like how he was originally supposed to be part of a "super-soldier" experiment. Which by the way, it's the 1940s. How do they have this kind of technology? Anyway, seeing how this experiment didn't work out, it was a clever idea for the public to advertise him in the costume that we usually see him in, a silly and colorful superhero suit. I was also getting into the relationship between Rogers and the people he works with. I felt a pretty strong connection between them, notably with Peggy Carter. And it's all the more effective when Rogers parts from his time period at the end, realizing he may have just lost everything he cared about.

Many people see this movie as an okay comic book movie, and I can see where they're coming from. There are a lot of your typical movie clichés, both from comic book movies and war movies, and it does get distracting at times. But, sometimes I think they know they're doing these clichés. Like, there's a scene where a guy throws a child into the water. You would think he would not be able to swim and Captain America needs to rescue him, but he does know how to swim and knows he doesn't need to be saved. They poke fun at that cliché, they didn't need to follow the same exact formula. But, there's also the obvious American symbolism, the mad scientist, the bad guy with the disfigured face, all that stuff. Speaking of which, I thought the villain, Red Skull, was kind of weak. I know a lot of people seem to really like this villain. Yeah, he looks cool and Hugo Weaving plays the part well, but he's pretty much your very standard comic book villain. He wants the ultimate source of power that will make him the most powerful person ever. Plus, when comparing to the seriousness with Captain America's side of the story, he's pretty goofy and it makes the tone of the film a little inconsistent. The pacing was also a little inconsistent. There were some scenes where it took more time than needed to get to the points of the story. Maybe I wouldn't mind that so much, but there were also some scenes where it felt very rushed. Like, when the mad scientist gets assassinated right after they performed the experiment and they immediately lose the formula they were originally going for. Also, Rogers really seemed to have gotten use to his new abilities unusually quick. No big realizations or anything, he just kind of goes with it. And there was virtually no impact when the villain gets killed...or sent to another dimension, I don't know what happened to him. It just felt very abrupt.

Joe Johnston directed this film and you can tell. He does a really good job making films like this one and THE ROCKETEER look like something from a different time period. The action in this movie also felt like something out of a war movie. It actually gets pretty brutal at times, especially for a comic book movie. It's all the more entertaining when you put in Alan Silvestri's very bold and heroic score. Listen to the main theme, it's pretty awesome.

Overall, I find CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER pretty underrated. I'm not going to act like this is one of the greatest Marvel movies out there. But, for what it needed to be, they did a pretty good job despite the clichés and some inconsistencies. I think this film perfectly sets up for the upcoming events that would lead to his involvement with the Avengers, and I wanted to see where he will go from there. It made me become interested with his character, which says a lot considering that I've never gotten into his origin story, and it really got me excited for THE WINTER SOLDIER.

Grade: B+.