Friday, April 24, 2015

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) Review

            I’m not going to lie, if I find a poll out there that says the majority of people went to go see this movie because it had the word Avenger in the title, it would not be surprising. Captain America was without a shadow of a doubt no one’s favorite super hero before this movie came out and surprised the hell out of a ton of naysayers. Think of it this way, there were people who believed the source of Captain America’s powers was this country. Literally. There was a small minority of people who believed that should Cap set foot off of American soil, he would be rendered powerless! (What a time pre 2011 was)
            No one was expecting anything from this film besides perhaps avid movie goers. Fans of the source material were interested as to how the most iconic Marvel Hero would translate to the big screen. Here is what we got, the most beloved movie from the Phase 1 lineup! A surprising success, Captain America impressed nearly everyone. Much like the title character of the film, this gave everyone an underdog to root for.
            America is being effected by the Second World War, and Steve Rodgers is a scrawny weakling of a man, with one goal in his entire life, do the right thing. When we meet him in the movie he already has a reputation of falsifying his own records just to get a chance to join the army. He finally does, because the character of Dr. Erskine, who sees something in Rodgers’ personality he believes to be suited for his super soldier experiment. Before undergoing the procedure Erskine reminds Rodgers to be a good man. One science fiction lab experiment later and Steve is physically transformed into the Captain America the world would come to know and love.
            From this moment on in the film we are treated to an action film that appears to lightly barrow elements of 1950’s science fiction films, with so many characters using lasers. Super science plays a large part in this film, with the character of the Red Skull being a soldier and scientist bent on world domination. There is even an element of magic and the unknown as the Cosmic Cube, or tesseract is introduced into the MCU. It’s a relic of immeasurable power that scientists on both sides of the war are trying to harness energy from.
            Although an effort is made to differentiate the film’s villain, I have to say, the Red Skull really feels very generic to me. The only thing that’s original about this character is his plan, he’s fusing magic and science in order to create super weapons to, once again, take over the world. This, although a throwback to older super villain methods, feels one dimensional when compared to Loki, who had a close past with Thor, or Iron Man 2’s Ivan Vanko who was looking for justice for his father by way of revenge.

            These negatives aside, Captain America is every bit the surprise breakout super hero film of Marvel Phase 1. And if you haven’t seen the film, but saw The Avengers, you are seriously missing some of the most important story details of that movie… UP NEXT! The review of Marvel’s The Avengers!

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