Marvel launches another super franchise with this action-packed origin story, which follows Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) as he volunteers for a secret experiment during World War II. Transformed into a superhero named Captain America, Steve goes after the Axis. With his perfect physique and heightened reflexes -- and his sidekick, Bucky (Sebastian Stan) -- Steve battles the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), a super soldier created by Italian fascists.
When Marvel announced that they were establishing one universe connecting all of its heroes to form The Avengers, many people didn’t think it could be done. Yet here we are with one last movie to go before the big payoff comes through and they have done exactly what they said they were going to do and they got fanboys salvating at the mouth. But before we can get to The Avengers, first there is Captain America. It was one of the best marketed blockbusters that made it seemed poise to take the crown for best comic book movie of the year away from X-Men First Class, but as we know about Thor, the footage can be deceiving. Thor had a terrible looking ad campaign, but wound up being fantastic. It’s the exact opposite for Steve Rodgers and company.
It starts off fairly well, before Steve Rodgers undergoes his transformation. It quickly does a good job of setting up his personality, his resistance to run away, and the inner strength that makes him the perfect candidate for the super soldier experiment. The problem is we don’t see enough of it. This is the first of many times the film feels rushed. After he does his transformation, the film throws in a creatively unexpected sequence showcasing the Captain as a walking ad to support the war. It feels out of place yet perfect role that showcases the characters past life as a weak powerless man. All of this feels as if the film is headed to somewhere special, but once he dons the suit and takes the frontline, things get really messy, cheesy, and just plain boring.
Every single one of Captain Americas battles goes as follows: running through the door, throwing shield, shooting bad guy, deflect bullet, all to the fine viewing of slow motion. It got extremely boring fast. It probably had to do with the Hydra soldiers being duller then the stormtroopers from the star wars saga. They acted as if they had never gone into battle or didn’t have ultra-high tech weapons that would overwhelm any other army. I think just seeing Captain in action would be good enough, but it wasn’t. You have to put some kind of face to the enemy otherwise it just turns into one long blur. The nemesis to him, Red Skull, was much better than previous Marvel villains aside from Loki. They dwelled just deep enough to understand that he had higher ambitions than Hitler and wanted the world to bow down to him as the god he was. His motivations were high, just poorly executed in action.
Almost as perfect as Downey was for Tony Stark, Chris Evans feels right for Steve Rodgers. He is never really the problem with the film. His charming usually cocky smart remarks and gone and instead turned into a underdog turned winner who has a massive heart who just wants to feel a sense of purpose. It’s a role that Evans has never done before, but accomplishes much more than that here. His love interest, Peggy Carter, is nice to look at from the neck down, but ends up proving she is nothing special and isn’t worthy of the Captain; All around terrible role and even worse dialogue. Huge Weaving tries to do much more with the Red Skull role, but his character isn’t given enough to screen time in the right moments. He’s supposed to be a genius, yet seems to stand around doing nothing at the most inopportune times. As for everyone else, they pretty much turn in forgettable roles in the grand scheme of things. Not a signle one seems to stand out to even be worth mentioning.
The final big superhero film comes to an end with a big wave of disappointment as both Green Lantern and this proved to but bad to forgettable. This seems to help set up the Avengers far more than any other film, but the terribly written world war 2 story seemed to make it never feel quite right and ends up being Marvels worst adaption to date. It never seemed to live up to the potential, but I fault The Avengers for that because the film had a predetermined fate far before it even began filming. With that, despite the medico of this film, I would still feel a sequel could end up being fantastic in the modern world with a rare chance to start over for scratch since a slew of new characters would have to come into the mix due to the vast time jump. If you decide to see Captain America, go in knowing full well it’s not very good but is still important in the large scale of things.
Overall Score: 5/10
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