In this final “amp-up” to The Avengers, we get the last superhero movie of the summer, and boy have there been a lot of them. Captain America: The First Avenger travels back in time from the point at which Iron Man and Thor take place (the other pre-Avengers superhero flicks) to a 1940’s New York City, where the weak and scrawny Steve Rogers’ (Chris Evans) biggest dream is to enlist in the army and fight against the biggest bullies of the world (in this case the bullies are Nazis). Due to his unflinching patriotism, he is enlisted in a special “Super Soldier” program among whom Stanley Tucci plays a German scientist (but he’s from Queens so it’s all good) and Tommy Lee Jones plays a hard-edged colonel. Rogers’ newfound strength leads him to don the persona of Captain America, and he leads the fight against HYDRA, an evil sub-culture of Nazis led by Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), a trench-coat wearing sonofabitch with a red skull (you guessed it) for a head (think Ghost Rider meets Hellboy meets Col. Hans Landa)The current stream of superhero movies can be acknowledged as factory-like right now. It seems as though studios have been churning out these pictures like there’s no tomorrow; flicks like these have to do something new or innovative, something we’ve never seen before, in order to stand out among the overpopulated genre. The problem with Captain America isn’t necessarily that it’s god-awful, but it’s so mediocre and been-there-done-that. There’s nothing in this movie I haven’t seen before, and there’s nothing that even stood out to me in particular. From the opening scene (which “borrowed” heavily from The Thing) to Cap’s transformation (Peter Parker was another nerd-turned-buff hero) to the overall look (Sky Captain/Sucker Punch), I never felt like I left familiar territory. Some may think the alterna-history Captain America presents is interesting, but with Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds having been out for only a couple years, it hardly holds a candle.
Even the action in the film was uninspired and procedural. I honestly cannot remember any of the action scenes in this film. In Thor (which I did not care for), at least his most important asset, his hammer, was used innovatively in a few scenes. Every hero has his “main weapon” – Thor his hammer, Green Lantern his ring, Wonder Woman her lasso – and Captain America’s is obviously the red, white, and blue shield. Although it is used prominently in the film, no new life was brought into it. Take for example this summer’s X-Men: First Class (which I consider the best of the X-Men franchise) – there’s a character named Azazel whose main “thing” is that he can teleport anywhere, along with whatever and whoever he is touching; this power was exploited creatively by having him grab onto his victim, teleport 50 stories into the air, and then drop them to their doom. It’s that kind of creative ingenuity that I wish Captain America featured more of – but in the end I just remember a lot of explosions and guns going off.
A big peeve of mine in recent blockbusters is the over-use of CGI. To me, these types of movies work best when practical effects and CGI are used together to aid the other (like in Iron Man). But the entirety of Captain America to me seemed as if it was processed through a computer. During the pre-experiment scenes with the digitally altered Chris Evans (due to being so buff in real life, Evans was digitally manipulated to look tiny and frail), what first came to my mind was Little Man (the shitty Wayans Brother's film) because it looked so uncanny and clearly touched up – they should’ve hired the people behind the special effects for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. While Steve Rogers and his buddy are walking through the World’s Fair early in the film, a simple walk-and-talk scene jars me because clearly a green-screen was used for everything but the actors (no wait, except for Chris Evan’s digitally altered head, of course). If handled well, CGI can greatly add to a picture and establish its world (just look at what the Harry Potter films have done), but here the effects took me out of the experience.
Besides action, characters in a superhero film are everything. If we cannot root for the home team, it’s game over. Chris Evans here is not terrible in his role and Tommy Lee Jones is impossible to dislike, but at the end of the day I just didn’t really care what happened to anyone. Red Skull to me was a totally lackluster villain with unclear motives (he’s just dismissed as a cult-loving, power-hungry, evil dude) and the “love interest” was forced and unnatural. As opposed to the Mary Jane/Peter Parker relationship in Spider-Man that was intimate and interesting, here it’s as if the screenwriter was simply going through the motions (“well, guess we have to have a love interest now…uhm…ok, I’ll just insert this girl here, and here, and here, aaand, we’re done). Chris Evans makes for an OK, not great, Captain America. I did like the fact that even after his amazing transformation, he still retained his “scrawny-ness” and left room for character development. He shows the right amount of courage and patriotism for the role as well, but I still believe someone out there would’ve made for a better Cap’.
Captain America is simply forgettable. Its biggest flaw is its fear of aiming higher. Judging from his credentials, it seems as though the director, Joe Johnston, is a studio yes-man and that may explain this end product. Even though the backdrop may be different, the story is the same thing we’ve seen time and time again. The superhero origin story is wearing thin at this point, and with The Amazing Spider-Man due next year, we’ve seemingly only begun with the beginnings.
Rating: C-
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